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I rarely watch movies. It is the ironic by-product of completing a film degree. After spending two years of my life locked away in the dark watching other peoples artistic achievements, the joy of cinematic escapism became redundant and I decided that I could no longer waste my time watching other peoples lives unless they were, well, real people. Occasionally, however, a film comes out that sparks my interest and I forget about my illogical protest, get over myself and just watch the darn thing. Any cartoon, for example, gets my price of admission and a large popcorn treat. Zac Efron is, lets just say, a silver screen genius. And I could watch Michael Cera read the phonebook and still laugh until a little pee came out. I was warned off seeing “Paper Heart”, a quirky mocumentary about my favorite topic, because, apparently, it was boring. Finally, during a rare moment of sobriety, I sat down to see if everyone else was right and if “Paper Heart” could warm mine.

Everyone has an opinion on what Love is. Aristotle, for example, said “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,” which in a strong field of brilliance, is perhaps the stupidest thing he ever uttered. Love is, really, the only thing every human being on the planet is searching for, like we are all Dorothy and Love is the wizard, and even if we deny it or think we have found it, the glimmer of hope that love, will in fact, conquer all is a motivation better than money, fame or the chance to see Efron naked. While, as a population, we seem to do more in the name of hate, Love is always on our minds and, occasionally, in our hearts.

Before putting “Paper Heart” on for my entertainment, I spent almost an hour talking to my ex-boyfriend, an ironic coincidence considering he is the only person I have ever been in love with. We have frequent conversations about eternal topics such as love, during all of which I am completely honest, as he has seen me at my worst so there are no longer secrets. We talked about his latest affection, to which he explained, “I have to stop having sex with people. They fall in love with me.”
“I did not fall in love with you through sex,” I assured[?] him. “I fell in love with you when I could not have you any more. You got under my skin that way.”
“Damn it.”
With this in mind, I sat down to watch Michael Cera, essentially, read from the phone book. “Paper Heart”, in all of its unique propositional glory, was kind of boring from the first frame and didn’t remotely rival the real life conversation I had had just hours before hand. None of the characters were overly endearing and, so, I started to wonder why I had taken time out of my own quest for love to watch someone else give me such a flimsy look into an achingly deep topic. I went to sleep dreaming about love, so I suppose the film left a positive after taste, but when I woke up in the middle of the night from building a soapbox derby car with Elvis, which wasted what I was expecting, I wondered if maybe my concept of love was the thing truly warped.

Stubborn by nature, I did not want to concede that “Paper Heart” was bad and only a film good on paper. As with anything I am determined to be right about, like love in general, even, I wracked my brain until I could understand why the story was told in such a way. It was different to Hollywood’s usual display of love, romance and affection, hideously incorrect accounts of something really real which we all accept. I started to think that, maybe, the secret brilliance to “Paper Heart” was not Michael Cera but the fact that its monotone bland boringness was the true message of love that no one wants to admit to. Nothing really happened in it. There were no firework moments. No waves rolling onto sand to the beat of our hearts. Other films, the horrible ones starring Jennifer Aniston, make a lot of money because they turn Love into something tangible, give it a set of rules and raise expectation into mythical proportions. “Paper Heart” featured completely mindless and awkward conversation in restaurants. My ex-boyfriend and I weren’t always so witty and honest with each other. When we were in love, there was a lot of mindless and awkward conversation in restaurants.

I recently had an epiphany about why I remain fond of ex-boyfriends, with zero animosity no matter how many other people they were sleeping with throughout the duration of our relationship. How they became punchlines instead of people I want to punch, so to speak. My attitude towards love has never had grand expectations or mythical connotations. Rather, it is the simplicity of the feeling, the silent euphoria, that has always been the exciting plot line, and so the fall from grace once I realize that it was unrequited is quite short. This, paired with the fact that I am so uncommitted to commitment that I cannot even see out the duration of a cell phone contract. A flaw that has expensive and frustrating consequences. It is an insight, almost, into my future divorces. On the condition that I marry someone with equal stupidity as the retarded monkeys who failed the McDonald’s interview so had to go work with cell phones. “Paper Heart”, in its supposed boringness, captured what Love actually is in the most witty and honest of ways.

Love may be something we never know the meaning of, even after we have seen the movie or had it in real life. But seeing such a simple depiction of it made me think that, if we take away all of the fear and complication, it may actually be the simplest story of all. Maybe love is boring. But, maybe, that is the dark beauty of the whole concept. Something so mundane, it settles us from the unexpected chaos and fireworks and unpredictableness of life. Something that, on paper, you don’t need to be a genius to understand. So to speak.