Every year sees a few small films come through with little fanfare or publicity that really deserves much more recognition. It’s a bit early to say if ORDINARY LOVE is a hidden gem as I hope my voice is one of many that might propel it to be seen by others. I love ORDINARY LOVE, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that when the year is over it will be one of my favorite movies of 2020.
Tom and Joan are a retired married couple whose love is effortless as they enjoy their daily walks, tea time, and lounging by the television. This routine gets a shakeup when Joan is diagnosed with breast cancer. ORDINARY LOVE is a beautiful insight to the enduring love of marriage through the pains of cancer.
Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville play the adorable and very relatable husband and wife duo. I hope the film picks up enough traction for the two to be remembered come award season. Neeson is pitch perfect as the scared husband who is trying his best to be there for his wife and get the answers they need from the doctors. Manville is heartbreaking as she transforms physically and emotionally through the brutality of cancer.
Obviously, it’s not easy. There is resentment, meanness, and hard feeling on both parts but everything said is understandable in the context of the situation. And none of the harsh words are permanent, both have the understanding that their love will endure and all this pain is strictly because they love each other so much. Not everything is an easy answer, as ORDINARY LOVE walks both sides of a conversation proving there are elements where this is a situation that must be journeyed alone, while also saying that you are never alone when you have a loved one nearby. The answers aren’t easy and in some ways the together and alone juxtaposition are both correct.
2019 saw a critically acclaimed film called MARRIAGE STORY, that was a bleak outlook about the ugliness of divorce when two people are selfish about their needs over their child’s. While I appreciated the brilliant performances, I found it to be completely unrelatable with a clear bias and bitter view from the filmmaker. ORDINARY LOVE is the anit-MARRIAGE STORY, in the sense that it is tender and caring with its love story. I believe ORDINARY LOVE is much more deserving of the accolades as a beautiful telling of the hardships that marriage can go through while continuing that enduring love.
ORDINARY LOVE understands marriage and the difficulties when it is tested through the ugliness of cancer, a terrible thing that I would guess nearly everyone has experienced losing a loved one to. Some closer than others. More than the hardship, ORDINARY LOVE understands the true meaning of love beyond marriage, through the dedication, the pain, the loneliness, the togetherness, and the everlasting. Neither my wife nor myself have cancer, I pray we never do, but ORDINARY LOVE touches that emotional string that finds the thread that all love stories can empathize with.
