Movie Review 8 - Love Happens

"Love Happens" tells a story of a widower, Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart), who found himself as a motivational speaker and a writer of a book that talked about dealing with the loss of a loved one. His manager, Lane (Dan Fogler), set his next seminar in Seattle, a place where he had been avoiding to go since his wife died in a car crash. One of the reasons why he hesitated was that his wife's family lived there, and bumping into his late wife's father could be something that he wasn't sure he'd be able to do. However, out of all the reluctance, he met a florist Eloise (Jennifer Aniston), whose meeting with for the first and second time were a bit of a disaster. But warming up to him, Eloise started to get to know Burke, but she knew there was something that he hid deep in his heart.

Burke kept telling his audience that the only reason why they couldn't seem to move on was because they stopped dealing with the loss. So, he encouraged them to face the fear that resulted from the death. Feeling touched by his performance, Eloise, however, learnt that Burke didn't follow his own advice, he didn't deal with the death of his own wife when she found out that Burke didn't go to the funeral. Eloise felt that she had to do something, so while Burke became a mentor to his audience, she became a mentor to him. And the first step was that to release a parrot that Burke's wife made him promise if anything should happen to her. But the effort by Eloise wasn't taken well by Burke.

Burke finally couldn't take it anymore, and he decided that he had to tell his audience the truth. He told the world everything that happened in the car accident, but one thing he omitted from the knowledge of the audience. It was that he was the one who drove the car, and he blamed himself all this while for his wife's death. Revealing this secret to the world was Burke's important coping process so he finally could let his wife go this time.

In psychological literature, there is a model of grief introduced by Kubler-Ross, that contained five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Kubler-Ross said that these stages occurred to people who are diagnosed with uncurable disease and will face death very soon, but later this model was applied to losing a job or a marriage, or even losing a loved one. Denial is when the individual does not accept that the destiny has called, and when he can't deny anymore, he feels rage, or anger. Then, he tries to bargain with destiny, but usually bargaining does not work out, so he feels depressed.

You see, all these stages might come off naturally in a person's process of dealing with grief, but one tricky thing to do is to accept the destiny. Kubler-Ross said that these stages might not be in order, but it seems like Burke's block-stone to acceptance is his anger. All this while, he couldn't keep away from the idea that he killed his wife, so because of that, he cut ties from anything that reminded him of his wife; her family, her friends, her stuffs in the house, etc. This caused his late wife's father to be angry at him, because all the father wanted to do was to mourn with him but he couldn't find Burke.

Acceptance might be very tricky, so a lot of us are stuck at a stage prior to acceptance. Perhaps mostly because we feel like there must be something to do to correct the situation (bargaining), or that it's easier to not face the destiny (denial). But we have to keep in mind that we can't never move forward until we accept. A guy in Burke's audience whose son was killed when falling off the scaffold couldn't go on being a contractor, or Burke himself couldn't open himself up for a new possible romance because he kept feeling hung up on his guilt upon his wife's death. The fear is the huge impediment in the process of accepting. Therefore, it is a good idea to face rather to escape, and soon you'll find an easy way to see things in a whole new perspective.