Being in bonded Love is a kind of intense addiction that manifests a deep yearning in your core pervading every moment of your existence with a sublime, ethereal bliss when together and an equally painful, breathless imbalance with reality when apart.
"Like Crazy" is one such story of the emotional journeys of two bonded souls learning to deal with their vulnerable hearts against the roughness of reality. Jacob and Anna are LA University students who meet in a class. There is instant chemistry between Jacob(played by Anton Yelchin,the funny accented Mr.Chekov in Star Trek) and Ana(delightfully potrayed by Felicity Jones) as she submits her paper in his car windowshield with a note that she is not crazy. They meet over coffee where the reticent Jacob and the quirky British born Ana exchange sweet nothings.
Falling in lust is commonplace. Falling in needy love is even more predictable. What's rare is falling into an experience of earthy naturalness that sneaks under your skin like sunlight,spreading all over you,filling your abysmal depths with oneness,imprinting that feeling in your DNA, making you realize that this is Loving like crazy! Ana and Jacob get to that place slowly as Ana shares her first writings, Jacob builds a chair inscripting "Like Crazy" and they spend days in bed over the summer. As Ana's visa expires, the impending seperation scares them. In a moment of fear of seperation, she decides to extend her stay violating her visa terms which proves detrimental. Ana is stopped from entering to US when she returns back from UK and is deported.
Sometimes when you find someone that shakes your being, your initial reaction is to reject it. You do your best to get away from it as you are scared about your ability to handle that loss. As Ana and Jacob realize that it is hard being seperated, they decide to move on with their lives. Jacob finds Sam in his office while Ana dates her neighbour Simon. The bond that exists inside though is hard to rip it out. Both of them realize that out of sight is not out of mind. Drake Doremus brings out that subtle loneliness even though Jacob is surrounded by many people. Jacob gives in and calls Ana in London as they both run out of breaths seeing their inevitableness to be together. Jacob moves to London and they get married hoping their Visa issues will get resolved in six months.
Reality strikes the couple as their visa application goes in limbo. In the emotional battlefield of "together and not together", they succumb to the scars of loss and decide to seperate. Jacob gets back with Sam while Ana gets back with Simon. The compromises they make for convenience covers the wounds of their bonded souls. The movie ends on a whimper than a bang. Ana and Jacob do get together and you hope they can heal together.
Drake Doremus literally followed the characters with his handheld for this movie that gives an intimate uncinematic evolution of these protagonists. There is no set pieces that collide together in a climatic act 1,2 and 3. There is no big manipulating background score trying to accentuate the mood. Instead, it's all real and quiet, very much like the characters. Infact Anton and Felicity wrote most of their dialogues.
I am not too crazy about "Like Crazy" but i like it for it's courage to explore the concept of pain of seperatedness and in that respect, it achieves it's goal more or less.
As Ana says,"the wholeness was rather a luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half. I didn't know, don't know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me."!
You will find your gory bits somewhere in it's ninety minutes!
