10 Things To Learn From Woody Allen’s “Everyone Says I Love You” To Survive Love
I’ve seen all of Woody Allen’s movies; or at least those listed in IMDB and not those being kept hidden in Rupert Murdoch’s golden chests that only Hitler and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane have access to. Woody Allen’s movies are always a gem, but the brightest, arguably most gorgeous of them is Everyone Says I Love You starring gorgeous young hotbabes Julia Roberts, Goldie Hawn, Natalie Portman, etc.
The movie’s not only hands-down beautiful, it’s filled with modern day wisdom on love and heartbreak. Here’s a list of these science-based Love 101 Lessons, so the next time love hits you rock-bottom, you’re less likely to grab the nearest credit card, vodka or blade ala David Fincher’s Gone Girl.
1. Everybody Doesn’t Say I Love You
Charles Ferry: If you were my girl, I'd make love to you in every room of the house, on every table top, on every rug…
Schuyler Dandridge: We also have some lovely Early American chandeliers...
They just don’t. People who are in love protect their words like they’re original first-edition copies of The Catcher in The Rye or Fifty Shades of Grey (whatever floats your boat, man; no judgment). In fact, the reason you don’t get to hear the desperately wanted sweet nothings from your partner has evolutionary, practical roots: saying the words has no utility value and so has no reason to exist.
A research done this 2005 from Baruch College and University of New York shows that you can survive without it. In fact, it was only in the late 20th century that these words became a longtime standard. There doesn’t seem no indication that our early neanderthal roots had any use in saying I Love Yous, or whatever their version of Ich liebe dich is, in wooing a hot, foxy ape mate. So the next time you’re pained by not hearing these words said out loud to you in a boombox like John Cusack in Say Anything, just chill out because you don’t need it. Saying them three words ain’t eco-friendly, my brother.
2. You’re not falling out of love, you just need sleep.
Laura: [singing] I'm through with love, I'll never fall again!
Steffi: What are you talking about? You're only 14!
When Woody Allen’s character in the movie gets a heartbreak because he’s been replaced by a more interesting, neurotic man, he sings he’s through with love and all. But is he really? Or he’s just been lacking sleep from all that neurosis and ramblings that pan to the audience’s need for irony-filled weighty stories?
Ask a neurotic or your nurse friend who’s been watching Homeland episodes and five bucks you’ll be told that all the manic depressives who complain about not feeling alive and in love with life are straight off deprived of sleep. Science backs this up. Find any article on Scientific American and they’ll tell you one thing: inability to sleep is a major red flag for depression. And depression is just often this fancy term for being screwed by the memory of your ex. Lesson: when you start hating love or feeling out of love, get to the nearest nurse friend who can get you the cheapest deals on a shrink, escitalopram and Quietipine, and Major Depression anti-depressants. Get your thyroid checked, too; your lack of love must just be your lack of a functional thyroid glands.
INTERLUDE
3. People Who Break Your Heart May Have Tumors
I don’t want to spoil anything, but let me just say that there’s a scene in the movie where a son of a liberal conservative wants everyone to bear arms. This is horrible, destructive and outright loony for the father who espouses peace and welfare state. It turns out one of them, father or the son, has a tumor and their decisions and behaviour turn out to be just a side effect of the lodged unwanted brain meat.
This is a humongous powerful idea. Could it be that the mean people that break up with us don’t deserve our death wishes but actually need medical support? This just means that whenever you’re in love, get your brain checked for tumors first. Or whenever someone breaks up with you, try to check if they’re not textbook sociopaths. You can watch that new movie Obvious Child from Jenny Slate for how love and sociopathy can be linked.
4. Love Is For The Homeless, Too
Photographer Rosie Holtom has a powerful online gallery showcasing portraits of fashionably hip people who look so vibrant and are also so homeless. Not the depraved poor homless, but the dignified, empowered unprivileged who have a better life view than anyone of us reading this from our entitled lives.
The point of the collection, it seems, is to show us that you can’t just assume that the homeless people can’t have the luxuries the privileged have, which include vogue clothes and romance. If you think that the homeless people can be in love, too, you’d be more hopeful the next time you break up with someone knowing that you can always have a homeless person nearby to love or be loved by.
There’s an intro scene in Everyone Says I Love You where the homeless are pridefully singing the hymn of love and sharing it all to the streets, not unlike that homeless hero in Drillbit Taylor.
5. Failed Love Means Success
We don’t need to tell you how heartbroken and destroyed people in Holywood become instant success stories in their fields. Just read up on the break-up stories of Taylor Swift and how each of her hit songs comes from a detailed retelling of her flings and you’ll know that heartbreaks pay off millions.
In Everybody Says I Love you, Goldie Hawn’s divorced character becomes an esteemed champion for providing European cuisine for criminals in jail, and have made a name out of it. You could be the next person to give people a chance to improve their lives and then improve your levels of success. Imagine the stories you can sell to Wattpad or The New Yorker just for that filthy, passionate failures you had in Paris with a man you would never want to meet again.
6. You Could Have An Infinity of 3-Minute Passions
George Clooney. That’s the name we should mention first when we talk of 3-minute passions. A 3-minute passion, according to Urbandictionary, is when you intensely desire something or someone and die from that interest in about 3 minutes. George Clooney has more girls he has 3-minute passions with than there are probably fake George Clooney accounts on Facebook.
In Everybody Says I Love You, everyone swears to their deaths that their love for someone is forever. Until when they move on to the next lover. Remember this always and you’ll be hurt less in your next love game.
7. You Can Travel More
What you can instantly pin down in Everybody Says is that everyone’s travelling to expensive destinations. Woody Allen’s character lives both in New York and Paris which is nothing short of time travelling. Julia Roberts writes books in a language foreign to hers.
Natalie Portman’s character travels in different towns. If you’re heartbroken and could not see the good of the pursuit of the love, just remember the places you travelled when you were in the chase and you’ll learn that: to travel is what love was about after all.
8. Friendship Is The New Love
Goldie Hawn’s character is still friends with Woody Allen’s, and Woody Allen’s still asks love advice from Goldie Hawn’s husband’s character. It’s so charming, it’s genius. This idea of friendship forever has enveloped the core of famous TV shows like 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother but it was only in Woody Allen’s movie that the message of cherishing lasting friendships more than the ephemeral flings is gorgeously delivered.
9. Life’s More Interesting Without Love
Everyone in Everyone Says I Love You seems to live interesting, rich lives, even if they just don’t do anything other than sit around and read. The maid who’s been through the Nazi years in the movie lives a richer life than the ones who have lived through just casual flings. Just go to the nearest Criterion Selection tab in your Favorite Movie Subscription Website and get some Eric Rohmer movies and you’ll learn that even planning for the next trip is a one catapult to a fantastic story. Which should tell you that: if you’ve been through an unimaginable heartbreak, imagine the book you can sell to Hollywood writing about it. The money, the money!
