In a guest post for JOE, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Rees Brennan writes about that most divisive of Christmas movies, Love Actually, and how it makes us realise that love really is all around.That time of year has come again. This is when we hang up lights and tinsel, rhyme unlikely words with holly, and most importantly… ’tis the season to re-watch Love Actually.
Today, I want to talk about a specific scene in Love Actually, or rather the scenes that bookend the movie: the airport scenes. In the monologue at the beginning, we have no idea who the bloke talking about Heathrow Airport is, or at least we don’t know that the Four Weddings and A Funeral bloke is now supposed to be Britain’s Prime Minister.
In Love Actually, Liam Neeson’s wife is dead and he’s bringing up a son who was biologically hers and isn’t biologically his, and Liam Neeson encourages the kid to perform a musical number and woo his first love. It isn’t a story about the son’s teen romance, or Liam Neeson’s anaemic encounter with Claudia Schiffer. It’s about Liam Neeson’s love for his son, and the support and the choice that makes up a family.
The holidays are a time when we buy and receive presents, travel to visit loved ones or realise we can’t be with them this year. For some, it can be a difficult or a lonely time, for many it’s a time in which we have to make compromises as well as sacrifices for love. When I was sick, my brother would bring me wheatgerm because he loved me and wanted me to get better.
Here’s the thing. She came down every week to eat bad Chinese food with a dazed skeletal being who kept toppling over. She did catch me. My seven American writer friends who crossed the ocean to see me when I was sick caught me. My mother who held me when the top of my hair came off, making me look like a monk with a tonsure gone to seed, caught me. My sister who flew back from South America caught me. My friends who threw a beach party for me when I went into remission caught me.