I think this is going to be my "word vomit" post about One Day. The movie, and the book: the former of which I've seen, the latter of which I'm currently reading.
I'm blatantly unaware of the popularity of the movie or the book or how well it's done in the UK and in the US. I mean, the whole reason both were especially captivating to me was because I saw the movie first, and any love story with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess is mine to nom. The movie wasn't exactly praised on Rotten Tomatoes, but after years of seeing movies that I actually really enjoyed panned for terrible acting or terrible storyline on the site, I have no faith in RT anymore, anyway. In this case, the critics were whining piteously Anne Hathaway's British accent, which I actually thought was fairly decent. Not excellent, but not crap, either.
I'm going to try not to disclose spoilers here, but the basic synopsis is as follows. Two college graduates, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, meet on the day they graduate. In the movie they attempt to sleep together on the night that they meet, but after Emma sheepishly confesses that she's "not good at this kind of stuff," Dexter suggests that they become friends. The scene ends with them cuddling together on the bed, smiling contentedly. Every scene thereafter has a date inscribed on the corners of the screen: July 15th, 199X, with the x+1 for every changing scene. The movie, and the book, follow them for twenty years on the same day of every year, and show us snippets of their relationship and how they develop, and eventually... well, you have to read the book.
Anyway, 1 2, your main characters.
From what I understand, people who see the movie either hate it or love it. Those who hate it dislike it because they see no direction to the story, and as a result, no depth. They believe that the idea of following them on a day of each year is, well, stupid. I beg to differ: I think I'm part of the latter group. I also think a part of me is scared to say I love it, because I risk being the type of girl who falls in love with chick flicks because of the "perfect story" they portray: a.k.a. your typical Team Edward girl. I do think it's something more than that, though. The movie felt like poetry to me. It felt realistic, and not in the least bit idealized. It details the story of two people who are trying to find their own direction in life, starting from the one point that I, personally, fear the most: straight out of college. They're so caught up in trying to find that one something that will trigger all happiness, that they don't come to the conclusion that the happiness they seek is the joy they find in each other. It's basically another cheesy way of saying "they found what they were looking for right in front of them."
One Day is one of those I Fell in Love With My Best Friend stories, but it's so beautifully written, and beautifully set in London, then in Paris, that I can't bring myself to write it off as a cliché (making me a sucker for anything set in Europe). There is depth to the story not in words, but in actions. I believe that the thing that makes this story so powerful is the fact that we follow two very ordinary people, neither of them celebrities, who believe they can conquer anything, who have the highest ambitions and the wildest dreams, just like our generation does, but things don't fall right into place for them, and they make many, many mistakes as they try to scale even the smallest feat. But in the process, they found one of the things that make life most rewarding and fulfilling: deep compassion for another person.
Furthermore, I think something special about One Day is that David Nicholls wrote both the book and the screenplay. It's rare that an author will be given control over what parts of his book will go in the movie, and it's one of the reasons why the parallels between them are so beautifully done.
Well, I do need to finish the book, but after seeing the movie, the ending is already obvious. Still, I love the way David Nicholls writes, and there were sections that made me smile, and eventually burst out laughing, in the book. The two make such a lovely pair, and such a lovely story. I will submit to cliché and say that I hope I have what they have someday, too.
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