On Love, Marriage & Flannel Pajamas...

Does life ultimately teach us that the portrayal of love and marriage in films, is far from accurate? Yes, it does, cruelly so. But finally, we have a film that gives us that long overdue and honest look at relationships. Jeff Lipsky's 'Flannel Pajamas' does not stop at the 'girl meets boy and sparks fly' scenario and actually goes on to explore the uncomfortable albeit real dimensions of a relationship that are so often lost to romance in conventional cinema.

Director Jeff Lipsky sketches some very authentic characters who draw you in immediately and keep you intrigued till the very end. The script is remarkably interesting, considering the wordiness of some of the dialogues. Mr.Lipsky uses prejudice, religion and human flaws to temper and add believability to the romance. Interestingly, he uses as the story's setting, New York city, the birthplace of several Hollywood romantic flicks.

Stuart (Justin Kirk) and Nicole (Julianne Nicholson) meet on a blind date and their relationship follows the gradual culmination into a steady romance and then, of course, into marriage. While portraying a couple that is blissfully oblivious to their evident differences, the director has managed to provoke cynicism in the audience by putting out some very apparent issues that they are ignoring, blinded by emotion, just as we do, when we are the ones in the middle of the emotional circus and friends and loved ones are hollering at us to beware.

Stuart and Nicole have very different careers and temperaments; like all couples they come with their share of baggage. While Nicole is a homely girl whose many associations with friends and family define her, Stuart is a man who wants to protect her, live with her in an insulated world where he can be, in his own words, her 'knight in shining armor'. This works well, until of course, Nicole no longer needs to be saved, especially from the people who she loves to surround herself with.

He dislikes sharing her with her friends and she is bothered by the lack of emotional openness he so valiantly shrouds with voluble and self-descriptive monologues. When they first meet, Stuart is a guy who loves to talk about himself and is happy with his line of work. Nicole on the other hand is at a stage where she is dissatisfied with her present career but has some dreams she wants to pursue. This I found quite interesting. I believe, that as human beings we are not ourselves entirely until we find that niche in life, in term of careers, hobbies, friends, social lives, or anything that influences us fundamentally at a personal and emotional level. If these aspects of our life are still unripe, we change and the people who fell in love with us when we were twenty, are left wondering what the hell happened.

Self-actualization for a man is very different from that for a woman. A woman derives her confidence or self-worth from her accomplishments whereas men, I think, are able to compartmentalize and distinguish between material or personal investments. Hence, it might actually be a good idea, to say the least, for men to find a woman, who has in essence, achieved a majority of what she would like to do with her life.

This film made me think. Does giving a lot of yourself neccessarily ensure the success of the relationship? I also wondered about how people fall into relationships without having solid discussions regarding religion, children, home, lifestyle and careers. Stuart and Nicole display some identifiable reactions to some very probable circumstances. Their intimacy, their flaws and even their beliefs are all ones we can relate to. Watching their relationship metamorphosize through a range of complications such as emotional demands, a suicide in the family, parent's illnesses and a miscarriage even, suddenly brings home the responsibility and depth of marriage.

A friend of mine once commented that couples who meet when they are older, are more likely to have a successful marriage. She rationalized that since they have been alone and independent long enough, they would know what is important to them and hence are likelier to discuss these issues before the 'I Do's'. I wasn't convinced. It could also make them less willing to compromise, I argued. I found myself wondering why it is that we see people go through similar experiences and yet never seem to learn from them.

And then suddenly, it happened. I caught within this film, the cleverly inserted, poignant metaphor for marriage, in a seemingly simple scene. Looking out of a 36th floor window, Nicole's sister comments to Stuart about how beautiful the view of New York city is. "It is a contradiction", he replies, "the view from the 36th floor, versus what it looks like, standing in the middle of the street". This is when I realized that the view from within a relationship is quite different from that on the outside. As bystanders, we can all rationally evaluate other people's decisions and choices. However, once our emotions come into play, our reasoning somehow gets sadly but understably hindered.

I recommend this film for all those who plan to be in relationships that they hope will eventually culminate into marriage, for all those who have a starry-eyed view of love and might be setting themselves up for a rude reality check, for those who think of themselves as pragmatists but have a vulnerability that could steal that solid practicality from right under their rooted feet, for those who have borrowed their ideas of love and marriage from watching movies or their parents' marriages and for those who belong to none of the aforementioned categories but are looking to watch a story about love, that holds true in the real world. Now, that is essentially everybody, isnt it?