Modern Romance

365 Films

Entry #61

Modern Romance (1981)

Directed by Albert Brooks

A lot of romantic comedies open up the story of the central romance to include numerous instances of complicated farcical elements to make their films more broadly appealing.  That is not to be taken in a derisive context; a lot of classic and amazing films have been made utilizing this technique.  It is the rare beast, on the other hand, where the central romance is dissected and analyzed with excruciating detail yet still retaining the perspective to remain funny and insightful.  Modern Romance is exactly that kind of film.  Albert Brooks and Kathryn Harrold play the couple in question that fight, break up, reconcile, and fight again on a seemingly endless continual loop.  The first thirty minutes of the film consist solely of Brooks, post break-up number one, wandering around his apartment in a quaalude induced state of melancholic euphoria.  He can’t understand why anybody would leave him considering the amazing record collection he possesses yet that is exactly the situation in which he finds himself.  After a night of this kind of half-assed soul searching he makes a pledge with himself to turn everything around and become a completely new man.  He vows to rid himself of all thoughts of his ex and move on to bigger and greener pastures.  It should be obvious by now that none of these promises will retain their solidity and he will eventually wind up buying apology presents in order to win back the love of his life.  The film presents their subsequent reconciliations as akin to the process by which an addict slowly comes to their moment of epiphany.  The only difference here is that the moment never comes and these two remain stuck in this snake eating its tail cycle.  Another interesting twist of the genre is the fact that the filmmakers craft the lead character’s job as central to understanding the actions of the character.  Brooks’ Robert Cole is a film editor, a job whose very nature consists of endlessly watching and re-watching footage in order to parse some form of larger meaning from it.  An editor may also tweak and alter said footage in order to extract even different interpretations from the presentation.  There is a scene late in the film that examines the Foley dubbing process for a science fiction film with such detail that I first wondered why the scene was in there in the first place.  It then occurred to me exactly why it is there. Thinking back to the first time Brooks and Harrold reconcile and she says to him in a moment of post-coital honesty, “You think this is a movie romance.”  Albert Brooks is a vision of masculinity driven not by the impulse to seek the love of another, but rather the validation of his own self-worth.  His jaw-dropping lack of empathy and self-awareness produces a lot of cringe worthy moments but at the same time indicates a type of neediness that very few actors are brave enough to portray on screen.  Robert Cole lives his life by endlessly revising and analyzing his actions so much so that the end of the film reduces him to voyeuristically staring at his girlfriend while she makes a harmless phone call in a pay-phone across the street from the cabin where he has secured a weekend getaway.  Free from all the distractions of the modern world, he still can’t help but refuse to participate in his own life.  He instead sits back and watches, creating his own version of the movie in his head and not at all realizing how utterly creepy and menacing he looks from the outside.