I think the boy and his schoolmate is the absolute sweetest of the storylines.
The triangle with the best man makes me cry to this day watching the movie, I have twice been succumbed to only being allowed to love from afar and the scene with the “carolers” comes on and I just lose it.
The DVD includes several WONDERFUl bits that didn’t make it into the movie- my favorite one shows how Liam Neeson first bonded with his son (it involves computer porn and a virus that nearly gets Liam in hot water with his father-in-law).
I might have voted for Liam’s sequences anyway, but the outtakes put that sequence over the top.
That’s my favorite, probably just because I like Kiera Knightly. But when you strip it down to its basic elements, it’s about a stalker. It’s the music and the acting that gives it life, not the script.
I’m a little confused by the Harry, Karen, and Mia story. This horrible, horrible man cheated on his wife. Except he didn’t. He refused Mia’s advances at every turn. He finally gave in to her pressuring him for a present. In the end all he did was reluctantly give his secretary a Christmas gift. That’s pretty normal. But he should have given Karen something twice as extravagent.
Was it his father-in-law? I thought it was the vicar.
The Sarah, Karl, & Michael storyline stars Laura Linney, our greatest living actress (and, yes, I’m including Meryl Streep). Obviously it’s the best.
I disagree. The best friend in the Keira Knightly storyline is doing his level best NOT to stalk her. I don’t think he intentionally focused on her in all the wedding footage he shot, for instance; it happened because he hadn’t admitted to himself that he was in love with her and only truly realized it when he started editing. And he doesn’t delude himself that she will return his affections. In fact, he doesn’t even want her to (for certain values of the word “want”), because her doing so would mean either that they had betrayed his best friend, or that something bad had happened to his friend.
One of my favourite movies!
Emma Thompson’s great, but I have to go with Jamie and Aurelia. I’m a sucker for intercultural relationships.
Apart from that, I completely agree with Love Rhombus. I particularly hate the carol scene. WTF with the shriveled-up dead guy on the “even when you look like this” card?
Great username/thread combo, by the way.
OK, I can see your point. That’s a much better spin on it.
What I like about that storyline is that we can really feel his anguish.
My real answer to the OP: I like them all. Each individual story is sort of lacking in substance, but the entire work hangs together beautifully, and the sound track really ties it all together. I’d like to see the version with the angel scenes restored, but I’m sure they were cut for a reason.
It’s been a while since I saw it- you may be right. Either way, I thought it was a great scene (“I’ll give you a hundred pounds if you just say ‘yes’ to everything!”)
Harry, Karen and Mia - mostly because Alan Rickman is my all time favorite actor and secondly because he does the right thing.
I’m not so sure he did the right thing. I don’t mean staying with Emma Thompson’s character wasn’t the right thing, by the way; I’m just not convinced he didn’t cheat.
No way Harry did the right thing!:eek: We’re not shown how far it went, but at the very least, he allowed himself to cheat on his wife emotionally by getting his secretary a meaningful, romantic gift. Personally, I think it went further than that, even–no way Mia didn’t give him some sexy time in return for the necklace. But even if it hadn’t happened yet, it was definitely heading that way, and I think he would have gone through with it if he hadn’t been caught by his wife.
This is one of my favorite movies ever, and it’s probably easier to say which storyline I like the least. I’m not crazy about the Harry/Karen/Mia line but I like something about all the rest.
That being said, my absolute favorite is Jamie/Aurelia… cuz it’s Colin Firth… ::fans self::
I liked the Harry/Karen/Mia storyline because of the acting and because it wasn’t as schmoopy as the other stories. It showed the complexities of a relationship after the euphoric falling-in-love stage.
There’s a scene in which Mia sits down at her dressing table and puts on the necklace while watching herself in the mirror. Meanwhile, we see the messy bed in the background. I took that to mean that this scene followed them having sex.
But that scene appears to be (IIRC), at around the same time/day that the whole Nativity play was going on, where we have seen Harry and Karen in what appeared to be a busy day with the family. Or at least, my impression was that the scenes before and after Mia established that Harry had been around his family, not her.
I took it that the necklace was the only thing she got from him, and he didn’t go further.
Really? I took it to mean that she was left with nothing but the necklace.
It’s a testament to this great film that there can still be all of these interpretations all these years later.
I thought it was ambiguous, but I too thought that she had an empty life with nothing but souvenirs. Maybe that was all she wanted.
Jamie and Aurelia without a doubt.
The long shot that he took: he sensed she liked him but really had no idea; despite this, the effort he put into communicating with her, with such a long timescale; the crazy spontaneous action he took to find her. I love it!
I am not ashamed to admit that I always get something in my eye during the scene in the restaurant. None of the other scenes do that for me.
And even though she’s playing opposite Colin Firth, Lucia Moniz is not drop-dead beautiful. She’s a realistically gorgeous girl, not an ethereally stunning Kiera Knightley. I like the storyline more because of that.
(Doesn’t hurt that I’m aspiring to write, and my girlfriend’s one of those dark-eyed continental types with a dad who owns a restaurant.)
And it was amusing how they communicated the exact same lines to each other – but with vastly different spins.
I’m dropping in to say how happy I am that there are so many men participating in this thread. This is one of my favorite movies, and I hate the fact that it gets dismissed contemptuously as a ‘chick-flick’ or a good ‘date movie.’
Exactly this. There wasn’t a relationship in the movie that wasn’t enjoyable in some way, but this one resonates with us late middle-aged single folks.
BUt I also agree with just about everything Skald said in post #25, except that even Laura Linney wasn’t quite enough to displace Billy Mack for me. Quite. So close, though.