Welcome, Dreamers!

By the time I watched Romancing the Stone for the first time (in 1987, three years after its American release), I already knew who Robert Zemeckis was thanks to the international explosion he triggered with Back to the Future—the cinematic miracle that generated shockwaves reaching all the way to the fortunate few owners of VCRs in the communist Russia. Such as myself. Yet…

You see… (and trust me: it’s nearly impossible for me to write these words as I hate everything about any and all infringements of personal liberties) …there are some minuscule benefits in isolation behind—the already thinning at the time, but still pretty solid—iron curtain. There is no exposure to the Hollywood promotional machine. None whatsoever. Even in such a cultural center as was my home city—the old Russian capital Saint Petersburg, then Leningrad.

There were no billboards, no TV ad spots, no pages taken in glossy publications (not even any glossy publications per se…). Thus, every VHS my ex-husband was able to obtain through his connections was a virgin experience. More so for him than for me, as it was his job to prescreen them.

I was too busy working on my PhD in Economics and taking care of our 2-year-old daughter to commit time to something below the par… Yes, even then, in my twenties, I was already very much an eclectic I am today: capable to peacefully reconcile my snooty cinematic intellectualism—largely molded by Tarkovsky, Fellini, Fassbinder, etc.—with the appreciation of pure unadulterated fun. Still, the value and quality had to be there…

So, when he popped the cassette in and the opening scenes came on… With that barely dressed heroine, and the exaggerated overacting… And (oh, God!) the voiceover of that cringey narrative… Which three minutes in declares, “But if there was one law of the West, bastards have brothers…” Well, in complete bewilderment, I turned to my ex-husband, “What is this?” (As in: Why the hell did you sit me down for this?) But I guess he knew me pretty well back then, because he smiled, “Just wait…”

And at four minutes sharp, the vision of that fancifully wild West dissipated into its source—letters being struck onto a page by the typewriter’s keys under the fingers of a writer who has conceived the eternal love between her Angelina and her Jessie… And everything fell into place: ROMANCING… As in conceiving a love story… And believing it… And falling in love with it…

The movie turned out to be a lot of fun… Full of cliches, of course, and improbable twists and turns; and the hot and sexy Body Heat star inconceivably playing a mousy character… Still, I found it very enjoyable… Two years later, when we finally escaped the communists and found our political refuge in New York, it was one of the first movies I acquired for my home collection…

It’s that Romancing hook, you see… The creation of a dream and the possibility of living it… Whether intentionally or not, the filmmakers impregnated this movie with a singular pearl of truth about the transcending powers of romantic fantasies. (And let’s be honest here: essentially they are all fantasies, even the ones that pretend to be utterly realistic and especially those that take place in real life.)

I mean, in the heart of Columbian wilderness of narcotics and military juntas, the heroine saves herself and her very own, newly found “beloved Jessie” from an imminent death at the hands of the mean drug runners simply because she IS Joan Wilder—a successful romance novelist, whose series is beloved even there. Her Angelina makes the local drug lord “hungry”, as he puts it…

This beguiling potential of imaginative romantic storytelling… At its best it can get so intoxicating that it alters the reality itself by changing our perspective, making us believe, raising our expectations… Trouncing everything—life’s circumstances, social status, age and its gaps, every obstacle imaginable…

It’s intriguing, isn’t it? I’ve been pondering over the mechanics of this allure for some time… Now, I am ready to share my reflections with the audience, which is hopefully as fascinated as I am with the principles that affect how creators interpret the matters of the heart…

The Beatles were right, you know: after it’s all been said and done, written, filmed, or sung, all we truly need is love… And if, for whatever reasons, we end up settling for far less and sometimes even for the worst – our minds still yearn for the romantic ideals… Please, never give up on pursuing them and keep dreaming about them!