Her: How, how does it work. How do you do this to someone?
Him: < Shrug >
Her: Not good enough.
Him: I fell in love with her.
Her: Oh, as if you had no choice?

I've seen ads floating around that claim Closer is "finally a love story for adults." That's crap. I couldn't think of a worse way to market this film. I thought it was great, but it's certainly not a love story. This movie is not about love, only about hurt.

The truthes and lies the characters tell each other are not told from a real place, they're told to manipulate, or absolve guilt, or to destroy. There is no real building in this movie, no honesty. It's a tour of the darker sides of our nature. But this darkness isn't the darkness we often see. These characters are not dark because they are evil, they are dark because they are weak and scared. Larry puts it best:

She doesn't want to be happy.
- Everybody wants to be happy.
Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they are depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live.

Oddly enough, I thought the scene in the back room of a strip club was where the characters were most truthful. It was a place where they were intending to tell lies, but instead ended up with the truth. One was purely carnal, which was the overriding nature of his character. The other one trying to be coy, but trapped into the truth.

About halfway through the movie these characters made me think "how can we so brutally deceive the ones we love?" By the end I wasn't thinking about that, because they don't really love eachother. The question stands though. People do brutally deceive the ones they love all the time. How do they do that? Why do we put up with it?

I saw two excellent movies this weekend that were both about the dark parts of humanity, but they couldn't have been more different. Sin City was about dark, carnal, bleak, evil, strong people. Closer was about deceiving, hurtful, manipulative, weak people. Both are portrayed excellently - and it's enough to lose faith in humanity. I think I need to go watch something more uplifting.

At least the movie ends on an artistic note. The final shot of Natalie Portman walking down a busy street is a thing of beauty. The speed, extras, crowd, and music all work together wonderfully.

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