Wrong on every count.
So big deal love didn't conquer all in their lives and give you the obligatory Hollywood happy ending. You must have really hated Romeo & Juliet and other such tragedies.
"No plausible explanation." You're apparently one of those people who need everything spoon-fed to you on the screen. Richard found a woman who was strong, talented, accomplished, "quick and bright and full of fun" and yet still beautiful, elegant and feminine. Elise met a handsome, well-read, well-spoken man who apparently loved her and respected her and didn't want to change her or control her. The look she gave him while they were on the island implies he was deep in passionate discourse on a subject but wasn't talking down to her, like so many men of that era would have.
He didn't fall in love with a picture. He was interested in it because obviously his subconscious sensed that mysterious smile was at him, and it actually was, as we found out. He was just interested in this amazing woman as he read about her in the library. Even from the outset, he wasn't expecting to meet that her young and beautiful, since he didn't flinch when Arthur said "in her day." His fascination grew later because of everything else he found, from the picture of elderly Elise to Finney's book to the music box to his own signature in an old register. You wouldn't be the least bit intrigued or puzzled by each of those incredible coincidences if they happened to you? I'm sure you would just shrug and walk away if you found out that you could and did time travel and meet a historical figure you admired.
"Waits for him 70 years." I doubt she instantly guessed "he was from the future" when Richard disappeared. She picked up clues over the decades that finally led her to the conclusion only a year before her death in 1972. After all, Finney didn't come up with his time travel method until his Hotel Delvecchio stay in 1971, so his book is no older than that and she couldn't have learned about the method earlier. Why ask Richard out for coffee? To tell him that he's going to defy all known laws of science and travel in time when he's a few years older, without a shred of physical evidence, so he could look at her with pity as if she's a senile old bat? Or worse, to scare him away from that prospect if time could somehow be changed?
"Immediately gives up trying to get back to her." And you know this how? How long did he spend in that bed after returning trying to go back to 1912? How many more attempts did he make before the montage of modern scenes?
"Goes into a teenage tantrum and suicides." There are a lot of better, faster, more efficient, less painful ways of killing yourself than dehydration and starvation if suicide is what you really want. You've obviously never had someone you really, truly loved die - which is essentially what happened to Elise in his modern life - so you don't know how wrenching it really is. I have, and the pain is almost unbearable. The loss of appetite at least for a while, how hard it becomes to sleep, how everything in daily life suddenly doesn't feel important. It's not like just breaking up with a woman, where you know that she's just off to someplace else but maybe one day you might bump into her again.
There's no need for a "Rachmaninoff connection." The Rhapsody was a link between the past and present. The composer is irrelevant. Richard hummed the Rhapsody before Rachmaninoff composed and published it. When Elise first heard it performed, it probably planted the seed in her mind that Richard was from the future. And the Grand Hotel music box playing his favorite piece was another clue for Richard that he and Elise somehow shared a connection. What are the odds that your favorite actor will share the exact same favorite song as you do?
What more did you need to know about Robinson? He was a Svengali-like control freak. That's all. There have been many of those in history. Good writers and directors know what to leave out of a film, and more Robinson was not needed at all. We can guess that his attempts to keep the couple apart and Richard's sudden disappearance created the "something strange about their relationship" that Elise's biographer mentioned. The film isn't about what happens between 1912 and 1980.
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LewGD
10 years ago
@TVholic, brilliant comment. You did literally spoon-feed someone without imagination, which is same as trying to talk with a dead fish. If he doesn't get it, he just doesn't and probably never will.
Few movies reflect reality; mostly they are illusions, which our imagination interpolates in our own reflections, which depends on our personalities, experiences, criteria, etc. Those that don't get it, probably have too simple mental circuitry, need to upgrade CPU, GPU and RAM.
As an older ardent realist with a lot of imagination I loved this movie due to its innocence, magical purity and surreal beauty of love between man and woman, portrayed with amazing electrifying chemistry. However, rampant Homosexualization and other synthetic social "innovations" will soon kill all traces of traditional romantic illusions and cockroach "imagination" might prevail.
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crystldawn (8)
2 years ago
Ugh, comments like yours are absolutely disgusting. 8 years since this comment was made - I sincerely hope that in that time you have overcome your blatant homophobia and realized that people in the LGBTQ+ community are HUMAN and have the same human facility and need for love and companionship as anyone else, and that as they are part of the HUMAN race, inclusion and representation in films is not only a natural expression of that humanity but also a REQUIREMENT for an accurate portrayal of society.
Not everyone is exactly like you - we don't all live the same, believe the same, act the same or love the same, and that is perfectly fine.
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