My Favorite Movie is Objectively Terrible

It has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes. It stars Anne Hathaway sporting the least-believable northern English accent. My roommate who “loves terrible movies” won’t even watch it with me. But the first time my best friend Bronwen showed it to me, snuggled up in my parent’s basement in the marshy anxiety of post-college life, I felt something shift. And at least once a year, when life gets dark—I move across the country, my dear friend and roommate moves away, there’s a global pandemic—I find myself curled up in my bed, crying and laughing at this awful, predictable, brilliant narrative of the deep pain and joy of life. (Also, I would be lying if I said my aesthetic wasn't based on Anne Hathaway's character's curly bangs and Docs.)

The movie, One Day, follows twenty-three years in the lives of best friends Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, dropping in on them the same day every year—July 15^th—from their college graduation in 1988 to “present day” 2011. Romantic tension builds throughout the movie, through their missteps and miscommunications, predictably culminating with their happy decision to be together on a Parisian bridge (in 2003). Ok, pretty standard. (You’ve Got Mail did it better and in half the time!)

And yet—I find something new every time. Without spoiling too much (since I know you’re all going to want to watch it now), here are my cumulative take-aways:

1. Life is long. Yeah, yeah, not hard to convey in a movie that takes over 20 years. But I cannot stress how important that message has been to me. There’s a line that Dexter says to Emma (in 1991, when she's working a dead end job - see the amazing quote below): “Everyone’s lost at 25.” I have felt so deeply lost these last five years. So totally unsure if the choices I am making are good and often making myself miserable by second-guessing. The narratives I see from the people around me, especially in grad school, feel like, “yeah, I know what I want and I’m going for it.” I’m still not sure I made the “right” choices. But Emma and Dex give me a narrative: it’s ok to be lost and to muddle, not just to think you’re doing bad, but to actually do bad. There is hope and goodness beyond.

Emma's somewhat problematic, but funny, take on British-Mexican food - she says this all in about 5 seconds to a flummoxed customer.

2. People change. This follows pretty closely from #1, but there is profound redemption in this movie, especially for Dexter. He is selfish, he makes some terrible decisions that hurt the people closest to him. Meanwhile Emma is too besotted with him to live her own life. But they both change. Not for each other, but because of their experiences, because they get to a point where they want to. When I feel despair about my own faults or worry about the decisions of people I love, it’s good to remember that life is long and nothing is for sure. People don’t always change, but they can. I can.

3. Goodness takes time & effort. At one point, Emma is in despair about her life and calls Dex on the phone:

“London’s swallowed me up. I wanted to make a difference, but no one even knows I’m here.”

He replies, “Nothing truly good was ever easy.”

“Who said that?” Emma asks.

“You did!”

“I did? Well that’s annoying.”

Not the first to say it, but this is the line that echoes in my head.

4. All we have is today. This is probably the cheesy-one-line-takeaway of the movie. Hence the title and a loaded quote at the end when Emma says, “Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ve had today.” But for an anxious brain like mine, this is so important. There is literally nothing I can do to prevent the calamities of tomorrow that I don’t know about yet. All I can do is to the best I can with what I know right now and celebrate the todays that I get.

(Thanks Liz for letting me live my dream and hike here.)

5. Some sadnesses we can control; some we can’t. This is the newest takeaway for me, fresh from my COVID-sponsored One Day watch party. In the movie, as in life, there are some heartaches because of their choices (but it’s ok, life is long, people change). But then there are some that just happen, because, life. Just when things are good and redemption arcs have been fulfilled, bad things happen. These are the sadnesses that make our days precious (and anxious); the ones that we are facing right now. There are some things about this situation we can change (#flattenthecurve) and there are some things we can’t. For those ones, we cry, we feel grateful that “we’ve had today” and we live our lives “as if [our lost loved ones] were still here.” For me, there is peace in that. To paraphrase The Good Place (another fave, but with higher ratings): because they’re going to die, humans are a little bit sad all the time, and that’s what gives life meaning.

Ok, so these takeaways are pretty standard Pinterest inspiration. But set them to the movie’s soundtrack (Rachel Portman is a god), add in the lovely UK setting and give me a narrative that will tell me I can make stupid mistakes, royally screw up my life and lose the people I love, and I’ll still be ok? It’s cheesy, it’s terrible, but honey, I am sold.

That’s my hot take. As Emma would say, “Ok, there you go. Lucky you.”