Love Actually Is All Around

Christmas is magic.

So is love.

“Love Actually,” captures both the magic of Christmas and the magic of love in ways that show just how alike they really are.

That Christmas is magic in spite of the fact that most expressions of it are silly, shallow, juvenile, and crassly commercial shows its real and enduring power. That love is magic in spite of how trite and sentimental most expressions of it are, how contaminated it is by selfishness, desire, need, infatuation, reveals its real and abiding power.

The story of Christmas is a story of love. Love being born. Love coming near.

Love is fun and funny—particularly intimate, sexual, romantic love, where two lovers share whispers and laughs kept secret from the rest of the world, which is why, when done well, romantic comedies capture so effectively the experience.

“Love Actually” is a romantic comedy from Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill”), about people—from the Prime Minister to a has-been rock star, actor stand-ins to a housemaid—finding love at Christmastime. It follows the lives of eight very different couples in various loosely interrelated tales all set during the frantic month before Christmas in London, England.

The movie begins with these warming words in voice over as actual arrivals at Heathrow Airport are shown on the screen: “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge—they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion . . . love actually is all around.”

Richard Curtis is the single greatest practitioner of the romantic comedy film on the planet, and I continually go back and forth about which is his masterpiece—“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” or “Love Actually,” the winner, usually the one I’m watching at the time, but in each case they are nearly flawless films, truly magical movies befitting the magic of love that is their subject.

“Love Actually,” is more episodic than most films, and it’s almost like watching a television series on the big screen. Not surprisingly, Curtis began his career writing for television and continues to pen scripts for the small screen. The intertwined and sometimes interconnected episodes work well together, weaving a quilt in which love is the thread—romantic, sexual love, motherly and fatherly love, sibling love, and the love of friendship. Of course, there is only one love (Bob Marley is right), one source, the rest is expression and things added to love like attraction or adoration or ego or libido or any other of a million, billion things.

Richard Curtis has a way of creating the heady, sent feeling of “falling” in love with wit and charm and sweetness while still grounding his work in reality and the humor of human frailty.

The magic of “Love Actually” is in what it makes us feel. This is what falling in love feels like. This is what Christmas feels like. We finish a film like “Love Actually” feeling warmed, hopeful, and leave the theater radiating positive energy and good will.

Mixed in among the wildly romantic relationships and their serendipitous meet-cute situations is the heartbreak and pain of loss, betrayal, unrequited, and impossible love.

Everything in “Love Actually” works—from the music to the settings—it really is a perfect (complete) film, and though all the performances are strong, Emma Thompson and Bill Nighly shine so brightly as to nearly eclipse all the other stars— Bill for sheer comic brilliance and Emma for her dramatic performance as a mother and wife dealing with love’s illusions.

Emma trying to pull herself together following the hurt and heartbreak of deception and disappointment so she can rejoin her family and fulfill her motherly duties as Joni Mitchell sings “Both sides” is excruciating.

“Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I’ve looked at love that way.
But now it’s just another show, you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.
I’ve looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

In the same way the Tao that can be named is not the Tao, love that is illusion is not love.

I understand passion—it’s the most powerful intoxicant I’ve ever taken, and Mitchell’s description of it as “the dizzy dancing way you feel” captures it so well, but love is a lifestyle, a philosophy, a religion, a choice, a verb. I’m all about moons and Junes and fairy tales coming real, and routinely experiences passion and ecstasy, but real love is present when these things are and when they’re not, so we’re well advised not to confuse strong feelings or ecstatic experiences for love.

Though “Love Actually” is a comedy, is both funny and highly entertaining, it’s also profound, showing the genuine but flawed ways love can be born in us, and how that parallels what can happen at Christmas.

The story of Christmas is a story of God being born into the world, of incarnation—God becoming flesh. In this way, every story of love is a story of Christmas, is a story of incarnation. God who is love, is born into the world every time we love, every time love is born in and expressed through us.

Love has come into the world. Unconditional, unreserved, unimaginable love, and whether we feel it in our fingers or feel it in our toes, whether the feeling grows or we have no feeling at all—in our fingers, toes, or anywhere else—love actually is all around.