cinema as literature

I just watched the movie Love, Actually. A marvelous, intricate, genuinely fascinating, and well-written movie. Not at all what I was expecting. I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, I can't describe it to you much further because it's the cinematic version of a literary form called a story cycle. In case you're not familiar with it (likely, unless you're a fellow English major), a story cycle is a series of short stories which are interwoven in some fashion. In this case--in what I consider the best of cases--they come together to tell a larger story, but without ever falling into a single overarcing plot.

So, Love, Actually is stories of love in the lives of over a dozen people. But at the same time, it's the story of something far more basic. I could say, "it's about relationships" or "it's about people," and that would be accurate, but not terribly helpful. So I suppose you'll just have to watch it.

Beats the heck out of moping around the house like I was doing earlier. As usual, I applaud my roommate's choice in cinema.