Romantic Comedies Festival: Serendipity

A professor of mine gave us a sort of random assignment a couple of weeks ago. It was for advertising class, but she told us to write a one page reaction paper on the movie Kate & Leopold. Why? I don't know. Because she found it nice, I guess.

Anyway, I am supposed to post about that movie but I want to submit the paper first because I'm going to get excerpts from it. Don't wanna be accused of just copy-pasting a blog post. Well, that assignment, and the stress of these last few weeks, has gotten me started on a new project: a romantic comedy festival.

Thanks to Gmail's cute little Task applet, I made a list of romantic comedies I wanted to watch. I was initially planning for a marathon, but the list got a little too long. So now I think I'll just watch one per day, provided that I have enough spare time. Thank goodness this weekend is a little freer for me. I do have to get up early tomorrow (actually, wake up time is in 5 hours) to finish a research for a paper. But hey, it's my 21st Valentine as a single person. Gimme a break.

So the movie I just watched was Serendipity. I've seen it a couple of times before but never wholly. This is like the first time I watched it with all my attention. It was wonderfully light. Sigh. I love romantic comedies. Fine, think me a fool and an airhead for this specific preference but it cures a lot of life-ailments. First of all, they make people feel good. Not everyone, but it works that way for me. They take you away for a time, as movies normally do. And you start to think, what if... Well, sometimes it's just fun for me to imagine. Last, they are just relaxing. Really. I love the sit-back-and-give-your-brain-a-break characteristic of romantic comedies. Of course, they're best served with either cakes, chocolates, or ice cream. Hmm. I might just do that tomorrow.

Serendipity. A fortunate accident. The movie revolves around these two people who met and spent a few hours with each other, probably fell in love right then, and because of the circumstances (they were both committed to other people) left everything up to destiny. A friend of mine commented that she didn't like the movie too much because she found the almost-but-not-quite meet-ups of the couple frustrating and childish (particularly the elevator). For anybody who's seen the movie (and I'm not gonna elaborate for want of preserving the innocence of those who haven't), you know about the elevator and the book and the bill. It was a series of "almosts", and true, it was a little frustrating at first, but for me that was the beauty of it.

The "meant-to-be" ideaology is not taken seriously nowadays. Logic has replaced the importance of the gut-feeling. But what this movie does is take the viewer and slap them hard across the face with a basic human truth: we rely on our instincts. We are not governed by them (unless we let ourselves to be), but behind all decisions, even the most logical ones, there is some degree of instinct in them, especially in making life decisions. Some of the best decisions that have made some people very successful were instinctual. It's all programmed into our self-preservation feature.

Anyway, this movie started out with a feeling that, though they wanted to be already, they weren't supposed to be together yet, so they set out to do these tasks as experiments to see if they were meant to be together. The whole idea was, if they met again after all the random things they did (and only leaving their first names with each other) then that's validation of their "destiny". So it really pushes the whole "let fate decide" thing, which isn't always healthy, but in this case makes the movie a lot more romantic. I mean, it wouldn't be called Serendipity otherwise. Well, okay, the movie could be called Destiny or Fate but that would be totally lame, right?

I'm not really an avid subscriber to this "leave it to fate" thing. I do believe, to some degree, that some things are really meant for you, but I don't base my decisions on them. I don't choose things simply because "I'm meant to". I get that feeling afterward. Like in choosing to go to my current school, for example. I didn't choose it because I thought that I was destined to. Heck, I hated it during the first few months and seriously considered transferring. But I'm not a quitter so I stuck it out. Well into the second year, that's when I felt that maybe, just maybe, I was really meant to be here. The school's general advocacy is sort of in line with mine. It provides me what I think I need to grow and I'm overall happy with how things are. I'm comfortable in it, and couldn't see myself being anywhere else. So yeah, I guess I was meant to be here.

As for love... Well, I'm keeping the faith. Hahaha. Malay mo diba. No, really, love is where people most rely on fate. I guess because it's too abstract a concept. There's no one specific solid feeling of love unlike anger or hunger or sleepiness. I mean, guys, tightening of the chest could also mean you're having a heart attack. It skipping a beat could mean something else than being smitten. So I guess we really don't have anything to hold on to when it comes to love. It isn't always so clear. How do you know if it's only infatuation or something well beyond that, right? That's why we more or less just leave it up to fate. And time. It's the only way of "experimenting" and getting evidence.

As for me? Well, for the sake of Valentines' Day, I'm gonna make an optimistic albeit vague statement: I still believe.

No, this is not about a specific person. Ayun wala na talaga hahaha and ayoko na. I thought about what I really wanted and there's no match whatsoever and I value myself and my happiness in that aspect too much to settle for anything less.

Although I think Jon Avila and I are meant to be together. Hahaha. I can state viable reasons. But not now.