Arriving in limited release this weekend is a film that took the Sundance Film Festival by storm, winning the fest’s top Grand Jury honors while earning a $4 million sale courtesy of Paramount Pictures. Like Crazy has a simple premise: Anton Yelchin and newcomer Felicity Jones play a young couple who dive headfirst into an intense love affair that ultimately spans years and miles. Problems initially arise when she, a British citizen, skips out on her visa and is deported back to the UK. Thus begins the film’s central conflict, which revolves around the trials and tribulations of committing to a long-distance relationship.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel all warm and cuddly inside, but for some of you Like Crazy is the type of film that will hurt and sting, and perhaps be therapeutic in a way as you come to terms with your own past (or current) relationships. If Like Crazy feels personal and intense, it’s because some of it is based on director Drake Doremus’ own romantic experiences. And in order to inject the film with a sense of realness and authenticity, he went so far as to have both Yelchin and Jones live as their characters 24/7, which he says was a key aspect in making the movie."I had never done that before. With all my other films it was come on set, be the character and leave, whereas these kids were asked to live it day in and day out,” he told us recently during a lengthy phone conversation. “The camera was always rolling and moving, and they never knew where it was or what was being recorded, so they always had to be in character for a good amount of the shoot. I think that was a risky proposition because it could exhaust the characters or exhaust the relationship, but they really embraced it and were willing to go with it and experiment. They really poured their hearts into it."
Not only did they live as their characters, but Yelchin and Jones worked off only an outline and not a script, making it so they were in charge of what they said and how they said it, further defining a system Doremus has been perfecting over the course of his four feature films. "I feel like I have very little time on this earth and I want to make the movies I want to make," he told us. "Spending a year, a year and a half making a movie that I’m not passionate about – beyond any kind of financial gain or industry gain – is just not economical; it just doesn’t make any sense for me."
And those films he wants to make will almost always have a romantic quality to them, partly because Doremus is extremely passionate about exploring the relationships we have with people; how they shape us or change us, and guide us toward becoming better, or in some cases, worse. “I think I’m consumed by it in my life, and my work is my life," Doremus explained. “I put a lot of my life into my work, and that’s just how I do it. I’m consumed by the idea of love – having love, losing love, finding love, growing love. These are things that will always be in my films because they consume me every day of my life."
Just as love consumes all of us at some point or another – acting like a drug that makes us say and do things we normally wouldn’t -- Like Crazy will consume you. As I said in my original Sundance review, "Like Crazy is a film about the little moments. The ones we remember when we're saying goodbye, or missing an embrace, or losing something we thought (and maybe wished) we had. It's a film of collected moments; of love, happiness, heartbreak, success and failure. It's a film about how it feels to be in love; how beautiful, intense, addictive and debilitating love can be, but how necessary it is for us to experience as we get older and start sorting out our lives."
See this one if you can, folks.
