Like Crazy re-review
One of my favorite films from Sundance this year, “Like Crazy” won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama as well as an acting prize for star Felicity Jones. The film which centers on a long-distance relationship between British aspiring writer Anna (Jones) and L.A. furniture designer Jacob (Anton Yelchin) who meet during their final year at UCLA where the two become inseparable. But with graduation looming and her student Visa set to expire there are some tough days ahead. Somewhere between the stylized heartache of “(500) Days of Summer” and stark melodrama of “Blue Valentine,” after seeing the film a second time last week where it more than held up to my initial impressions, I’m now convinced it may actually be the best of the three, or at least the most honest.
The film skips through time covering several years while dispensing with the normal chunks of exposition and cheap drama mined by so many less sophisticated films. So it’s not about will he or she cheat on the other? It’s about that cut to someone new in their apartment, already comfortable, with their own history that we’re slowly putting together as it moves along and the heartbreaking moments like the way one texts the other while they’re with someone else. The only small nitpick I have with the film is Yelchin’s performance. Jones is so radiantly charming in the role she outshines him in early romantic scenes where you’re not really sure why she’d fall for him in the first place. But if you can get over this lack of initial chemistry, everything after that is an emotional bulls-eye.
This will all be painfully familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a long distance relationship but it doesn’t delve into the theatrics of ‘Valentine’ (future room, really?) or easy solutions of ‘Summer’ (it gets better with time), ‘Crazy’ instead sticks the landing with a scene that’s heartbreaking and brilliant in equal measure. The film goes beyond ‘will they or wont they end up together,’ it’s about the way people change and grow apart and try to hold onto something special while they have it. The fact that the film’s dialogue was completely improvised (you would never know while watching it) makes it all the more impressive of an achievement. Highly recommended.
