S3E14: "So if you really love Christmas..." 2003's 'Love Actually' as a primary source
Twenty years later, what can this modern Christmas standard tell us about its era?
For many of us this time of year means queuing up a different Christmas movie for each night between Thanksgiving and December 25th. From this podcast’s point of view, each and every one of these holiday films acts as a document of its respective era, the same as any other primary source.
Love Actually turned 20 last month and has been included on my household’s must-view list for the past two decades. It holds a special place for my wife and I because we saw it in the theater during our very first Christmas season as a couple. I couldn’t think of a better person to help me break down this modern holiday classic as a document of 2003 than her.
I wish I had thought to make cue cards to communicate to my wife, Erin the Tie Dye Libraryn how much I appreciate her insights. Part of the reason I started this podcast in the first place is because she and I have had conversations about media like this as one of the main fixtures of our relationship since it began. I can even recall the drive back to Oswego from the Carousel Mall in Syracuse, New York where we saw Love Actually and our discussion of its high and lows. She has long been the yin to my yang in so many capacities, but especially in conversations like this.
If there is such a thing as a sweeping romantic comedy epic it is Love Actually. It was this feature of the movie that simultaneously attracted audiences and repelled critics. Trying to do too much, especially in a normal comedy film length, is the main criticism, but fans of the film have long felt that Love Actually meets its ambitious storytelling at just the right point.
The first few years of the 21st Century was the time to try new things with media of all sorts, including rom-coms. The genre had become rather stale throughout the 90s but Love Actually writer/director Richard Curtis had already demonstrated what could be done within the romantic comedies as early as 1994 with Four Weddings and a Funeral, making him the right person to give a ten-intertwined-storyline picture at the right time for fresh-starts, the early 2000s.
Love, Actually is all around and Everything is a Primary Source.