A-List: Top Five Movies About Love
By J. Don Birnam
June 11, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Oh, to be young and feel love's keen sting.

It’s spring and love is in the air. Movies are nothing if not romance, so today we explore some of the best movies about love of all-time.

Inspiration for this list comes in part from the recently released The Age of Adeline, the first true romance I have seen this year. Panned by critics who were unable to get away from the admittedly ridiculous premise of the woman who doesn’t age, the Blake Lively romance was, in my view, unfairly dismissed. In a space where so many movies superficially focus on the beauty of youth, The Age of Adeline contains a subtle message about the beauty of love as it ages. I’m fully aware of the irony in writing these words about a movie that features the impossibly beautiful and young Blake Lively. But what the movie does exquisitely is remind us that love does transcend time, space, and generations; a force that touches different people in different ways, it remains the universal language that unites us and that is worth fighting for. The Age of Adeline may not be award-worthy, but it’s a touching breath of fresh air in the season of otherwise mostly forgettable movies.

The list of superb romances in movie history is really endless. And because essentially every movie that comes out of Hollywood (from Iron Man, to Scream, to Star Wars) features love stories (or attempts at them), today I’m focused solely on movies whose central and almost sole theme is romance, or that elusive, intangible human emotion of spiritual attraction towards another being. I’m also going to exclude from consideration romantic comedies (or the list would be interminable) however hard it is to distinguish those from straight-up romances. So, with apologies to movies from Love Actually to Maid in Manhattan, the cutesy, mostly fairy-tale approaches to the subject are out today.

The idea with today’s column is to have purposefully unconventional picks, given that the topic is so broad. Otherwise, you could just Google “most romantic movies of all time” and undoubtedly you’ll come up with a list of epics that includes Titanic, West Side Story, and Gone With the Wind, to name a few. But the power of these behemoths to overwhelm subtler films is so great that I’ll try to stay away from them. Plus, while those great movies are beautiful and feature deep, and (some would say) timeless love stories, they’re also about a lot more and can be seen independently of their romantic storylines.

By contrast, the epic and magnificent Shakespeare in Love is truly a romantic movie, one that revolves solely around the love story of its protagonists and analyzes the effect of the relationship on their lives.

So, other than Shakespeare, what are some honorable mentions? Most Woody Allen films should be listed here, and a Woody Allen A-List would be an impossible task in and of itself. Who else has understood the helplessness of being in love than Woody himself, from Annie Hall to Hannah and Her Sisters?

Then there are timeless romances like 1947’s An Affair to Remember, which gave us the now-somewhat trite gimmick of two star-crossed (married) lovers that have a brief affair and agree to meet at a predetermined time at the top of the Empire State Building. And who could forget the Best Picture-winning From Here to Eternity and its classic Donna Reed love scene as the waves wash up on the lovers on the beach? The movie touched on subjects as wide as World War II and feminism, and is perhaps one of the most critically revered of any movie I could list today. It also reminds me of another Best Picture winner, Casablanca. Really, if I had any sense, that movie would top this list. Casablanca has the largest number of oft-quoted movie lines of perhaps any film in history (“Here’s looking at you, Kid,” “Of all the Gin Joints In the World…”, etc.) and on that basis alone is an all-time classic.

Then there are movies that focus on the tragic, lonely, and beautiful reality of love. Tennessee Williams’ companion pieces, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire, are in their essence romantic movies about the horrors of unrequited love or about the loneliness of love. In that vein of helpless, tragic, and perhaps realistic love, one must list contemporary classics from Ghost to Blue Valentine to the absolutely heart-breaking Amour, which deals more seriously and hauntingly with love and aging than The Age of Adeline. One could also look to Nicholas Sparks’ beautiful The Notebook, a worthy top five finisher were it not for an already crowded field.

The seventh place finisher is Moulin Rouge!, which, like other musicals, focuses on other topics and thus lowers it a tad on the crowded list, but nevertheless stars a beautiful cast in a beautiful analysis and appreciation of the ultimate human emotion.

Finally, before the main event, Ang Lee’s revolutionary Brokeback Mountain is likely the sixth best romance of all time. Daring and brave to be made at a time when the topic of gay love was not as embraced as it is today, the cowboy love story was touching and impeccably prepared with its sweeping landscape and scores, and exacting if surprising performances by the quarter of young actors that headlined the story. Ang Lee is in a subtle way, the master of romance. From The Ice Storm to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the heart of his movies is breathtaking. But it is the tragic love poem in the Wyoming plains that will be remembered as one of the best love stories of all time.

After these seemingly perfect movies, how could others compare? Again, the idea was to make somewhat unconventional picks this time around…

5. The Before Series (1995-2014)

Before he gained notoriety for Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s true labor of love was the umm, labor that is love series in the life-spanning Before movies. Featuring exquisite aging performances by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, the Before Series films feature honest, brutal, and moving portrayals of the beauty, randomness, and difficulty of constructing a life with another person in a world filled with anxiety, loneliness, and self-doubt.

Rightly hailed as realistic and accurate, the Before Series touches upon love in its different stages, growing as humans grow - from young and hopeful while naive, to erratic and risk-taking, to slower and more thoughtful. The brilliance of the trilogy is that the message can be seen across time: love for another person is molded by the circumstances of one’s life and takes on many different forms. If you’ve ever experienced a lifetime of love for the same person and observed it transform, there is no doubt that the Before Series speaks directly to you.

In the end, however, for the Before Series, love is timeless and it takes work.

4. Weekend (2011)

Weekend is, to me, is one of the most moving love stories of all time, despite the fact that Brokeback was the obvious candidate for the gay entry on the list. To say that this small budget, independent little piece is better than some of the giants I have listed before now is worthy of the fourth spot on this list is to say a mouthful. But, if we are thinking unconventionally, Weekend deserves the spot.

This movie’s approach to the subject is even more realistic, if that is possible, than Richard Linklater’s. If you’ve ever experienced the intense, burning passion of a time-bound affair, you will know what I’m talking about. In this movie the protagonists do not spend an entire lifetime bound to each other, but instead meet randomly on a Friday night at a nightclub, have what purports to be a one night stand, and end up spending what seems like a lifetime, but is only the weekend, together.

The story, then, is universal. And the feeling of helplessness, of fear, of sadness, but, ultimately, of resignation, that overwhelms the end of a torrid, passionate, yet pointless affair, is conveyed honestly and mournfully. In the end, the denouement is neither tragic nor uplifting for the lovers. He who leaves, leaves with a sigh. He who stays, stays with a tear. But such is life.

For Weekend, it seems, love is fleeting.

3. Jules Et Jim (1962)

The best movie ever made by the French master Francois Truffaut surely deserves the number three spot today. One woman, Catherine, ensnares the two title characters, previously best friends, in her deceitful and alluring web of seduction and selfishness. But that, according to the French existentialist, is love.

Again, personal experiences with this particular type of love may make the story resonate more to some viewers than others. But who could not appreciate the careful cinematography, the melancholic soundtrack, and the screwball tragedy of the protagonists as they go from lovers amongst themselves to bitter enemies? Why, the movie asks, must love destroy so much in its path, even the closest of perfect friendships?

The answer is not really given, except that one character escapes the seemingly inevitable doom that should befall all three, while the other two skate off into the infinite abyss together. If you haven’t seen the movie, I hope you think the combinations of which two of the three essentially die together are endless, because they are. Of course the survivor is also doomed forever, chained to tragedy by the haunting memory of the broken heart, a memory that singes like the burn of the eerie tune that captivates the narrative center of the movie.

For Jules Et Jim, arguably, love is hopeless tragedy, and betrayal.

2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

The best movie about love in modern times is, unarguably, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman’s epopee to the tragedy of love. In the best performances of their careers, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play the helpless, mismatched and yet perfect-for-each other couple that has hurt each other so much, they must resort to drastic measures to make it all go away. Their love has become so all-consuming and so destructive that actual mind-erasing procedures are the only out.

The beautiful and horrifying twist comes, of course, when one realizes that not even death (the allegory for mind-erasure, in my view) can separate us from true love, even if that love is simultaneously the most painful and destructive part of our souls. The beauty of this movie is endless, and flows from the scenes on the cracked ice, to the abandoned Montauk train tracks, to Clementine’s streaky hair, to the sinking colors of the disappearing house surrounding the stairs upon which Joel stands. The true depth of this movie is such that I’ve only been willing and able to see it once ever, and yet its music and strands remain haunting to this very day. I have never encountered a film that so accurately depicts the destruction of the spirit that is caused by all-consuming love. As with other movies, having first-hand experience with the particular narrative at issue undoubtedly creates a closer connection to the movie, but it is beautifully haunting regardless.

For Eternal Sunshine, it is clear, love is destiny and pain.

1. Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Of the literally hundreds of choices I had to complete this list, I could not settle for any movie other than the coming of age romance Splendor in the Grass. Stunningly, in the year in which she headlined the smash hit West Side Story, Natalie Wood received an Oscar nomination not for the musical, but for her role as Wilma alongside the also-young and stunning Warren Beatty, who plays Bud. Bud and Wilma are young and star-crossed, and they quickly become obsessive lovers. However, tragedy strikes when both are pulled in different directions by the vagaries and cruelties of the world they inhabit (rural America in the 1920s). Consummating their love before marriage is out of the question, and marriage before college is out of the question for Bud. Instead of consummating their love, then, the love becomes all-consuming and nearly destroys them.

Their love, of course, lasts longer than the forces that tear them asunder, but, in time, it too grows old, sours, and becomes melancholy. Indeed, it arguably does destroy them, because it destroys their ability to live happy lives. Like in real life, love gives way to complacency, emotion gives way to expediency, and recklessness gives way to practicality. The sterilization of the spirit is complete and, along the way, causes literal madness.

For Splendor in the Grass, love is the most beautiful thing in our lives, but also the most destructive.

For Splendor in the Grass, then, love is abject misery.