The Last Kiss
I don’t watch a lot of movies – I actually don’t think I’ve even been to a theatre in 2007. Call me a product of the ADD generation, but I don’t like the concept of sitting in one place and focusing my attention on one thing for two hours. I have the habit of renting movies, watching the first half hour, and then returning them (hopefully) before late fees kick in. The Last Kiss was one of those movies – it was rented and returned back when it first came out on DVD.
The O.C.
Much Music starting airing The O.C. last month; despite numerous comparisons to Adam Brody (dorky Jewish guy who’s really into music? Really?), I’d never actually seen an episode. I was out of town last weekend and allowed a lot of time to watch the impeccably-timed OC MARATHON – it’s been incredibly entertaining to finally get caught up on pop culture references from four years ago. The music really WAS good on that show.
Rachel Bilson
Rachel Bilson is in The O.C. Rachel Bilson is also in The Last Kiss. Lunch with a friend, and a conversation about looping, led me back to that Imogen Heap video I love so much. Zach Braff, the the other guy people are constantly comparing me to, hosts that Imogen Heap video where he mentions how Rachel Bilson helped get Hide and Seek into The Last Kiss. Zach Braff is in The Last Kiss. He’s also in Scrubs, which is an AWESOME show, but that’s irrelevant.
The Last Kiss
I spent a lot of this weekend working on a very fun, but very labour-intensive, project and was a little burnt out. The whole Rachel Bilson/Zach Braff/The Last Kiss/The O.C./MMM what you say? thing made me want to rent The Last Kiss again, so a trip to the local video store and a chat with stoner-clerk later, I had it in my hands.
The first time I “watched” The Last Kiss, I shut it off within the first half and hour because the very idea of Rachel Bilson’s character, Kim, ever being interested (in the specific way that she is interested) in Zach Braff’s character, Michael, was absurd. But, mostly likely due to an ever-growing Rachel Bilson fascination, I watched it all the way through this time and, SHOCK and AWE, I found it very touching and enjoyable.
I figured out why Kim would be into Michael – she isn’t real. Not in the context of the movie, but in the context of a holistic reality. She represents the “brunette I won’t ever kiss again” (paraphrasing one of Michael’s speech) – the temptation that everyone, male or female, feels when involved in a relationship. So she’s not ACTUALLY into Michael, she’s just the ever-present variable in all the character’s lives.
Commitment
This is a very conceptual movie which suffers a bit from it’s intense realism: the situations are inherently real, but there is little chance that they would ever happen to the people involved. I definitely didn’t (or didn’t want to) get that concept when I first watched it, but now it’s pretty hard to ignore. The metaphorical situations the characters get involved in create parallels to real-life scenarios that make it difficult to NOT relate. That’s a bit weird though, isn’t it? Creating a movie that requires an abandonment of reality to be understood, but requires that same reality to be appreciated? Maybe I’m looking into it too much, but I really think there’s something special about The Last Kiss that just takes a little bit of effort.
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