I love this film.
But I'm unsure of what it is trying to say:
-Don't fall in love?
-Don't trust strange old men?
-Don't get behind the times?
-Don't tell anyone you love them?
-Be more 'in tune' with your sexuality?
What are your thoughts?
Maybe that love can hit anybody hard unexpectedly. Who could possibly have predicted all this for Giles? You can run from it but you can't hide.
----
Bipartisanship doesn't mean the losers get half.
I was thinking the same thing, naturally since the role of an effete snobbish "Luddite" staunch British professor that rejects the filming of an E.M. Forster short story or novel in order to pursue an awful teen-throb American actor and try to seduce him homosexually and admit to his love for him, is so over the top it was hard to watch the first time around. I much prefer Hurt as Caligula, or as the young thug, Braddock in The Hit with Tim Roth as the young thug Byron, and Terence Stamp as the convicted thief on the run from both his nefarious past associates and the law, or as Vincent Van Gogh, or as Bird O'Donnell in The Field (1990 with Richard Harris R.I.P.). Obviously the message to the entire film is in the finale recitation of Walt Whitman's poem, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find, etc, etc, etc. Kind of an existential farewell to a lost metaphysical relationship that couldn't be expressed by either Rimbaud or Oscar Wilde, don't you think? It's a gay thing baby, you'd never understand (Tupac Shakur as Tank in Bullet to his friend and fellow drug dealer underling, but changing the word gay for the word black or vice versa). Just make sure I get a seat at Alistair Sim's Scrooge on TCM sometime in the near future before Fox gets to it. Neo-Cons can destroy even a work of art in favor of Pepsi-Cola capitalism.
shareMight be something such as the folly of unrequited love might seem absurd at the time, but it fills a moment in life and leaves an indelible mark, particularly on the beloved who might have enjoyed it more than admitted, hence Giles' wonderful ending monologue, "..and one day you'll look back on this with a note of pride in an uncaring world."
shareI haven't seen this movie for a while; something I was reading today mentioned it, and I came on over to IMDb. (And Amazon--I see it's available for a reasonable price, and since I can't recall having seen it offered on cable for many years, I think I need to buy it.)
Anyway, this movie is complex enough to be said to have several messages. (If you read the reviews on Amazon you'll see a variety.)
One thing I like about L&DoLI is that it's rare for a movie to treat unrequited love as anything other than either a tragedy or a joke. In this story, all the characters are treated with dignity, and though in conflict, for the most part they find a way to be kind and empathetic with each other.
Giles spends most of his life avoiding all human connection; when he finally wants one, it doesn't work out. But he's not diminished by the failure.
Unfortunately, the main message seems to be 'there's no fool like an old fool'. But there is also a related message about the way loneliness and social isolation render people even more unfit for social interaction because they lose more and more necessary social skills the longer they are disconnected from others.
Despite Giles' fond hope that
..and one day you'll look back on this with a note of pride in an uncaring worldGiles is just another obsessive fanboy, a ridiculous elderly one at that.