45 Years

It all seemed so simple, growing up, you know.

Married couples loved each other. That's why they were married. Their vows functioned like impenetrable devout amorous stainless steel domestically upholding both excellence and virtue as a matter of enviable endurance over the years, level-heads making conscientious decisions to sublimely support one another, dignity through sacrifice, enriching everlasting love.

Due to the sacred nature of the bonds, it never occurred to me that jealousy could dishevel their peaceful harmonies by introducing unforeseen frenetics, tumultuous temptations, to ensure conflict degeneratively materialized, and invasively persisted evermore.

Odd how it's used like a regenerative distraction sometimes, rather than strolls along the beach or a weekend in the Laurentians, bizarre these frenzied fluctuations, confusingly chaotic resuscitative respirations.

Yet Mr. and Mrs. Mercer (Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling) seem to have found a way to amicably co-exist old-school-style for close to a half-century in Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, subtly embracing different modest themes to maturely promote conjugal longevity, striving ever onwards on a path of cherished illuminated merriment, feisty yet docile, an eternal fountain of youth.

But even their upright stability is viscerally challenged after 45 years of sure and steady elasticity, 45 Years calmly and patiently injecting a jealous element and then slowly yet persistently intensifying its disillusionment.

Enough time has passed to theoretically compensate for wild romantic passions that lasciviously took hold 50 years ago, before Kate and Geoff ever met.

The film hauntingly rationalizes these sober emotions to strengthen their consistencies with delicate poignant gravity, the final scene ambiguously clad in brilliance, as you wonder if the moment is ecstatic and/or derelict, a reverberating disorienting dispute.