I might not be the best person to discuss or contemplate regarding the complexities of love and validation in teenage romance but hey on the flip side, I might be the best person because I also like teenagers. No, I don’t. Most probably. Have faith in me, it’s an order not a request.
Before I deviate from the topic and start talking about how aesthetically pleasing Nazi’s uniforms were (I promise, we won’t go there), let’s fumble back to the question I asked myself earlier – Why Normal People seem different? See, the thing with movies/books as a whole is that they offer escapism in some of the finest manner possible and in doing that, they often blur the reality.
How many of you have curated mindless stories with your crush loving you?
How many of you have thought of saving the school if there was a terrorist attack?
How many of you have sincerely assumed that Bear Grylls did drink his piss?
How many of you actually believed that Salman Khan was a virgin?
The point here I am trying to weave is pretty simple – people love stories and narratives and gossips, in fact, we are nothing but a medium to share them. And when there’s an umpteen lot of narratives to tell with each being told in a similar if not same fashion, there occurs a plausible deniability.
The very idea of love is atrocious but with a positive connotation on the term ‘atrocious’. More than often, people don’t account for the negatives that can happen in their dilly dally delusional dreams, it’s all jolly up and down & left and right.
In all of my time, whatever I have explored, read, watched and tried to understand the idea as well as the action of love has more than often put me in a state of either perpetual contemplation, almost forcing me to introspect my beliefs regarding it and changing those for the better or to disregard it wholly and at times stain the notion/action of love too. Be it Mohabattein, Tamasha, Wuthering Heights, The Fault in Our Stars, Jab We Met, Before Sunrise, Jaani Dushman, My very first love, Kabir Singh, Sanam Re or DDLJ, love for me had translated quite differently over the years, it came in various shapes throughout different mediums but I have never experienced what Normal People was able to provide. Why?
See, romance has quite often been stylised, glamorized and romanticized in several shapes and forms. And if it’s not already apparent, several of us (generally) like the fictional ideas of how much love as a term and a feeling has to offer to people who either long for it or want it. And in all honesty, the whole thing to fall for fleeting and infatuating notions such as ‘the desire to love’ or ‘the hunger for validation’ or ‘increasing my likeability index’ provide its viewers with a surreal sense of escapism; emphasis on the word ‘surreal’. Now, who doesn’t like escapism?
Normal People in every manner possible defy escapism. It hits you like a truck when it sees a toddler roaming on the road, whack-a-mole live adaptation.
It toys with its viewers without patronizing them, it gives them a sense of that transient warmth with the hyper realistic consequences, it portrays the absurd and fragile teenage love which more than often gets lost in the abyss of hopelessness. Normal People draws out a 6 hour long emotional and mind numbing story of Marianne and Connell, focusing entirely on them, their undefinable, mysterious, hideous yet tender, validating, and hopeful love.
Not to mention, the freaking cinematography, the use of delicate close ups and moving behind the character scenes to show how we as viewers are eavesdropping on them the stylistic use of symmetry and wide angle shots. It’s genuinely difficult to show literary emotions via a visual medium; it takes away several prominent elements but the way Alice and Mark (writers) with the help of Lenny and Hettie (directors) imbue it in every scene is nothing short of perfect. In short, it’s one of those shows where you’d rather stay in one place, silently watching the ceiling and contemplating but cry your eyes out.
Or just moisten your face with a shitload of tears.
Or look at this adorable woman.
NOTGAMESANDMOVIES 