Committed (April, 25)

"I've read somewhere, the reason most relationships break down is that each partner is waiting for the other to fix it. But if you want somebody to stand by you always, you have to be willing to do the same for them, even when they're acting like an idiot."

Awlfull poster... And it is a Weisntein production!

That's the idea of commitment for Joline, an endearing young woman that dedicates herself beautifully to everything she does and loves. Including her idiot of a husband, a guy that is to comfortable to throw on her all the blame of his mediocre mind and soul. It is such an ordinary trait in relationships, we risk not even be aware of it anymore. Joline knows what she has on her hands, but prefer to pretend she doesn't (another ordinary action on a relationship),  and so she moves earth and sky to fulfill what she considers as her responsibility in Committed (2010).

I just love this movie. I saw it for the first time on TV in the early '2000s, and could connect to it immediately. Now that my heart and mind are far from that troubled days of trying to achieve the impossible regarding someone else, this movie still makes sense, from a more distant point of view. I love those characters, all of them really committed to life in different ways. It is not by chance they met each other, in the universe's odd and amazing ways of putting the right people together in fundamental times of life. They're crazy,  weird, too much sometimes, lovely, attentive as only committed people are able to be.

"You never know how your fate is gonna come back to you. It could be something completely ridiculous, maybe that's the whole point. So stop asking whether deserves your fate or not, and do it for its own sake. I mean, who it's really for anyway, them or you?"

I realized on this film how commitment has many different meanings in English. One of its meanings lead to the other, when the we take the bond too seriously, going beyond all reason. That's an important point in Committed. Those characters seem so nonsense, specially Joline, but she is admirable actually. Her heart is bigger than the whole world, but she is no fool. She tries to do what she thinks is right, taking big leaps of faith that sometimes throws her on the rock bottom. Other times her faith is rewarded in small or big doses. She is convinced then about her way of taking life. I can connect with that for sure. 

"How do you know when you've gone to far? There could be some very solid clues, but you could be too busy digging safety cradles on the dirt, and those clues passed you right by."

The cast here is peculiar. Heather Graham has an odd career, and I love many of her underrated movies, as Hope Springs and Committed. Luke Wilson, Casey Affleck are so young, specially the last one (almost a kid). Goran Visnijic I love in this movie, he's is incredibly weird (Where has he been, by the way?). Patricia Velasquez I hadn't met before, and she is so natural and endearing as Carmen. But the real surprise here is Mark Ruffalo in a mad role - I wasn't a fan at the time I saw this movie at first, and being one now I was amazed when I saw him so young in such a bizarre role. 

I was happy for reaching this movie again, something I was planning to do for a time now. I'll probably repeat the dose in a near future, after seeing how, despite its different meaning for me nowadays, this movie still makes a lot of sense, reminding me of the things I'm able to compromise and those of which I don't give up, for their role in defining who I am. 

"I'm still a committed person, I found that I have an act for it. Some people just do, and if they didn't take things to certain extremes, how would they ever know for sure? How they would ever know what they're made of? Where they stand?  How they know where anybody else stands? It'd be a history."

Committed. Directed and written by Lisa Krueger. Cast: Heather Graham, Luke
Wilson, Goran Visnjic. USA, Dolby Digital, Color, 98 min.

PS: My persistence with the many quotes from Committed in this post is a way to follow Joline's journey through her own beliefs: since the first, when she's still pretending her idiotic husband has some value, until the last, when she becomes aware of herself for her own sake (the journey of a whole life).  In here, it is kind of random... I assure you it made more sense in the context of this lovely story.