‘’In another life, we’re laughing at the fact we aren’t together in this one.’’ Has this thought ever crossed your mind, because it certainly has mine. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Can you really love a person too much?
You hear of all the stories where two people are so in love, just like in the movies, but they can’t be together. And I know what you’re thinking, ‘’if you love them, there is no such thing as can’t.’’ But in all honesty, I disagree…
For those of you who have watched ‘Malcolm & Marie’ will know exactly where I’m coming from, the film is set in a beautiful house that the pair were put up in for the premiere of Malcolm’s new film. Throughout the film, 1 hour and 46 minutes, we see the pair fight and makeup more times than I could count. As soon as it was released on Netflix, (the week before Valentine’s day - perfect timing!) I didn’t think twice about grabbing my favourite snacks to spend the evening with the beautiful and ever so talented Zendaya Coleman and the brilliant John David Washington. The film was recorded in monochrome, which actually inspired me to write this piece. The dark, hidden meaning of ‘’I love you too much.’’
I think if this film was produced in colour this message wouldn’t have been delivered so well. We see everything in colour, from how blue the sky is to how much milk we put in our cuppa tea. It allowed us to watch the raw emotion between both of the characters without focusing on every tiny detail around them.
Without spoiling it, my favourite scene in the movie is the knife scene, at 1 hour 20 minutes. Here we see Marie desperate for Malcolm’s true affection and attention. She knows herself that she is worthy of being loved wholeheartedly and not just a fraction. She communicates this to him, without actually telling him. And this is when we come back to the concept of ‘too much’, Marie knows that she is in love with Malcolm and she knows that she loves him too much to let him go even though it’s tearing her apart. It was written all over her face.
And in that very same moment, I believe Malcolm becomes aware of this, as well as his feelings towards Marie. He had been so caught up in the chaos of his own life, very selfishly, he’d forgotten about the one that was supposed to mean the most. While he was falling more in love with himself and his career, he’d forgotten how to love Marie. Meanwhile, she sat back watching this all unravel knowingly, simply because… she loves him too much.
I believe that the screenplay allows the audience to reflect on themselves as an individual as well as their own relationships with their partners. It is in fact possible to love someone too much, to the point where you can’t be with them anymore. A real-life adaptation of this changed my life for the better; if you haven't watched Daniel Sloss’ Jigsaw Show on Netflix then I highly recommend that you go and watch it right now and then come back and read this article again.
In 2019, Newsweek announced that Sloss had ended 34,000+ relationships and 93 marriages. Two years on, I can only imagine what those figures would be now. I couldn’t believe the power of how much a couple of words could impact a person, let alone thousands. It really does speak volumes.
Sloss taught me that if you don’t know your own self-worth and only love yourself at 10%, when someone comes along and loves you at 30%, you’re automatically going to think that 30% is so much when in actual fact it’s not even half.
As soon as I finished watching the show, I felt as though I had to share my thoughts with my family and friends. They all watched ‘Jigsaw’ and told me how it had impacted them. My friend Lottie messaged me saying that it had completely ‘’blew her mind’’ and that the analogy of the jigsaw ‘’hit her in the core’’, I couldn’t help but relate to this, and I’m sure many other people will too.
I think Marie was watching Malcolm piece his puzzle together in fear. His main puzzle piece is success. We watch him in the film become so obsessed with his self-proclaimed, legendary masterpiece that it becomes the centre of everything, the most important piece of his puzzle. When Malcolm didn’t acknowledge Marie during his speech, it was then she realised that even though he was the main piece in her puzzle, she wasn’t his.
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