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This will just take a couple minutes of your time. Not of theirs. November, December, a couple of months, months of the couples in the sub-continent. This weekend, a few of my friends are getting married. A couple. Of couples. Twice coupled, ‘fastened together’ (Latin: co-apere), together respectively, one to one other. But together, the four of them, the same weekend. And, all joining the together of times and human history – accepting, in the madness of a couple statements, uttered in a couple of seconds, to be quickly fastened to a series of bindings, a history of togethers: the lineage of marriages, origins of all lineages. Accepting, deciding, promising to, forever, slowly, patiently, keep fastening their eyes on one another, but also to fasten care upon the loved one for the decades, and not too fast, not just for a couple of months or years. A couple of ‘yes’, said in a couple of languages just two days, and one thousand kilometers away from each other. Two couples showing the feat of coming-together – two two-s becoming one, but also two becoming-one-s, one in the bright halls of Kathmandu’s Hindu elite, the other in the anti-climactic secular offices of South Delhi’s mixed marriage court – two becoming-ones looking all but the same, yet, both equally just one thing: marriage. Two couples of friends are getting married this weekend.
Marriage – here is one possible path for the ‘beyond the kiss‘. Unavowed and informal bachelor party, last night, as I went with T, one of the four aforementioned protagonists, affirm-actors, to the city’s entertainment quarter for one last provocation, one last involuntary warning: David Fincher’s latest. The director of Seven and ten other films gave no quarter to my partner. Creatively delusional, awe-inspiringly manipulative Amy Dunne announces it harsh and sharp:
“I will practice believing my husband loves me…
but I could be wrong.”
No place for adjurations, no patience for impatience: Amy spots the infinite horizon of a future of performance – “I will practice believing…“ |
No place for adjurations, no patience for impatience: Amy spots the infinite horizon of a future of performance – “I will practice believing…” One marriage, a change of two identities for a couple of persons, of personas, of “characters in a play”. The affirmation of marriage, the “yes” of the act, raising the curtains, or, as the French says, “marking the three blows” (of the brigadier) opening any play. Gone Girl is clearly a playful movie, and a movie on the play. “Give me a minute – I can’t really make sense of it right now,” says T as the credits start tumbling. “It was one long and twisted play, what sense is there to find?” I respond. Fincher takes two and three quarters of another hour to achieve thriller, comedy and simply, mind-jumbling out of a story of cheating, manipulation, faked and real marital violence, murder and lies. By the end, the couple has stopped copulating, but Amy holds Nick through one ultimate trick, the eternal copula: pregnancy. After it all, public and media shame, threats, accusations, hate is all that he can possibly feel for her. But, on this last shot, his eyes say something else. By then, love has shifted gears: the play of love has swallowed and spat them out both equally, but in the process, it found its final, eternal metamorphosis: the love of the play.
Image courtesy: 90percenttrue
Originally published on LILA Parapluie