LIKE CRAZY DVD (2011)

SYNOPSIS: Like Crazy beautifully illustrates how your first real love is as thrilling and blissful as it is fragile. When a British college student (Felicity Jones) falls for her American classmate (Anton Yelchin, Star Trek), they embark on a passionate and life-changing journey only to be separated by circumstances beyond their control. "Crazily inventive & totally irresistible," Like Crazy explores how a couple faces the real challenges of being together and of being apart.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Ask anyone who’s ever been in a long-distance relationship and they will tell you straightaway just how difficult it is. It doesn’t matter how strong an emotional connection two people have; ultimately, that physical separation will take its toll in one way or another on that bond, and besides love, you’ll find that you’ll find a lot of willpower and perseverance just to make it work. Well, the consolation is that most long-distance relationships probably aren’t as challenging as Jacob and Anna’s in this movie.

We are first introduced to the couple at one point in their college years, with Anna an exchange student from London and Jacob a Los Angeles born and bred teenager. Whereas many movies might have felt necessary to paint the lovey-dovey moments leading up to their relationship, co-writer/ director Drake Doremus feels no such compulsion; instead, he trusts in the chemistry between his two key actors – Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones – to convey their fondness for each other.

And true enough, once you watch Yelchin and Jones together, you’ll understand why Doremus felt confident in the brevity. Because we so effortlessly come to believe that Anna and Jacob are truly, madly and deeply in love with each other, Doremus and his co-writer Ben York Jones place their focus on their subsequent transcontinental relationship and the toll that the distance exerts on it. Their separation is further exacerbated by the repercussions arising from a naïve move by Anna to overstay her student visa in order to spend the summer after her exchange with Jacob.

Rightfully, this is a film that thrives on the little details that link two people romantically. Without ever overemphasising on any of them, Doremus paints vividly the blissful moments of their courtship, their initial optimism that their love can sustain their relationship despite the distance, their unbridled joy when they get to spend a few weeks together, their jadedness when just talking on the phone every night becomes more difficult due to work and other commitments, and finally their doubts about hanging on when it seems easier to find someone else who can be physically present for either of them. Though it spans a couple of years, the movie loses neither intimacy nor delicacy in charting the couple’s journey of love and longing.

Key to that are the perfectly matched performances of Yelchin and Jones. Best known for playing the Russian Chekov in the rebooted ‘Star Trek’, Yelchin proves to be more than leading man material here with a sensitive and heartfelt turn as the shyly watchful Jacob. Jones too evinces the same qualities, but she brings a complexity to her character that is utterly beguiling, revealing a whole gamut of emotions from affection to yearning to regret to grief to reconciliation. And in a supporting role, Jennifer Lawrence turns what could have been an easily reviled role into something surprisingly heartbreaking, earning sympathy for falling in love with the right guy at the wrong time.

On his part, Doremus creates an elegant film around the naturally beautiful performances of his lead stars. With the aid of John Guleserian’s largely handheld cinematography, he draws his audience into Anna and Jacob’s lives, and more than we can say for most other Hollywood movies, this is one that feels real and honest. There’s some dextrous editing by Johnathan Alberts as well, piecing together the tight close-ups through jump cuts and rapid fades that communicate the protagonists’ own inner emotions sharply.

It’s no wonder then that the film had gone on in 2011 to win the Sundance Film Festival’s (where it premiered) Grand Jury Prize. Unlike the slick polished and largely manufactured love stories Hollywood likes to pass off as reality, ‘Like Crazy’ never hits a false note, delineating with tenderness and precision the struggles faced by any couple in a long-distance relationship. The bittersweet note on which it ends is also particularly poignant – because, as any one who’s been in such a relationship will tell you, things are often not exactly the same after an extended period apart. 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The highlight here is no doubt the Audio Commentary with director Drake Doremus, editor Johnathan Alberts and director of photography John Guleserian. Doremus is warm and chatty, and together with Alberts and Guleserian, share interesting insights into particular shots and sequences, especially in getting the mood and feel of the movie right.

There are also a couple of Deleted and Alternate Scenes that you can watch with or without the commentary.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The Dolby Digital 5.1 uses the back speakers largely for the soft-rock soundtrack, and delivers the dialogue crisply. Visuals are clear and sharp, and retain John Guleserian’s natural-looking cinematography.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Gabriel Chong