Everyone who has been through a break up knows that it’s pure shit. It’s shit², shit MAX, iShit.
For the weeks, months, and maybe years after your break up you’ll become a fully paid up resident of heartbreak hotel, where instead of a continental breakfast and mint on your pillow you get an all you can eat buffet of self-loathing and despair, and a mint on your pillow (it is 4* after all).
Even if you end the relationship on your terms knowing it’s ‘the best thing for everyone’ (i.e. you), doubt will still creep in over time. On those long winter nights you’ll lie there in your cold single bed, staring up at your cheap light fittings thinking, ‘what if I can never get it back? What if I can never trick/persuade/force anyone to love/kiss/fuck me, EVER AGAIN?’ I’m not going to lie to you, you are going to suffer – you’ll be more miserable than a member of the XX at a funeral – but you need not suffer alone. There are people to help you through this.
No, not your friends. Those fair-weather jerks stopped hanging out with you when you kept saying you were ‘too sad to face leaving the house’ and then stopped washing your clothes (and then your body). I’m talking about real companions who will be there for you no matter what and who are never more than the press of a remote away. I’m talking about Vince Vaughn, Woody Allen, and Ellen Page – your silver screen buddies. They know what you need, they don’t judge, and they’re hear to help you through this tough time.
But it’s more complicated than all that. You can’t just watch any film, you need some expert direction. So, equipped with a fully stocked pharmacy of class-A films I have put together a course of medicated viewing designed to ease and eventually cure your heartache. And if you think I’m getting a bit ahead of myself by calling myself and ‘expert’ and throwing in all these medical metaphors then hang on because there is actual psychological method to this whole thing. Observe.
In 1969 the Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published a book titled, On Death and Dying. In this work she laid out her eponymous Kübler-Ross model, now more commonly known as the five stages of grief; a sort of psychological road map to loss, created to describe and understand the emotional state of people dealing with grief. Using this framework I have constructed a list of suggested viewing, designed to match and sooth your emotional state; helping you to cope better with the fact that you’re all alone and the only person in this world who loves you is your mum, and that’s not the same.
Now, without further ado, the doctor is in and treatment can begin.
1. Denial
“This can’t be happening, not to me.”
The first reaction to loss is to look the situation up and down, take it all in, and then completely deny anything bad is happening. Aren’t we humans great! Our brain cushions the blow of the emotional trauma by flicking an imaginary switch from ‘reality’ to ‘make believe’, helping us deal with the pain by creating a convenient emotional blind spot. It’s absurd but also completely normal and you’ll have gone through this too if you’ve lost someone you loved.
‘It’ll be ok if I give her some space’. ‘He’ll come back to me, he just needs time to think.’ ‘But we’re better than this, we’ll pull through’ – so goes the mantra of denial. So what is my film prescription for this malady?
Well in this state I think the best thing to do is play along with the delusion, not try and shatter it before you are ready. Denial is part of the process, so embrace it.
With this in mind, I am suggesting a soppy love story set in a mythical realm, where happy endings are the norm and true love is the answer to every question. I’m talking more specifically about Rob Reiner’s 1987 classic The Princess Bride.
Anyone with a heart, broken or otherwise, will love this film, and if you’re not into ‘kissing movies’ then watch it for Andre The Giant, Peter Cook, and one of the best lines in cinema; ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die’.
Alternative Medicine – Any Hayao Miyazaki animation would do a similar job. Go for Howls Moving Castle or Laputa Castle In The Sky.
2. Anger
“Who is to blame?”
Your dreamy denial bubble has burst with a sudden pop and now and it’s time to start playing the blame game because this whole mess is someones fault and it sure as hell isn’t yours. Plus, you could really do with shouting at someone. Yes, a good old shout will make you feel much better.
The thing to do here is embrace your anger, again it’s part of the “process”. A horrific, misogynistic, slasher film would be the most obvious choice, something like The Last House On The Left (the 1972 version naturally). But how much is too much? Is snuff off the table? No! Of course not you deviant. I know you’re hurtin’ but keep it legal.
If you’re not so much into guts and gore The Coen’s Blood Simple would be a good way to go. Seeing a bitter husband plan murderous revenge upon his ex-wife and lover sounds very cathartic for a person in your state. If it were me however, I would go for an old personal favourite American Psycho. Not only can you see Christan Bale lose his shit and go on an unhinged ultra-violence rampage, but you can imagine your ex’s face on the hooker he nails with the chainsaw. Nice.
Alternative medicine: For the girls I suggest Hard Candy, especially the torture scene when Ellen Page lops off the guys sausage.
3. Bargaining
“I’ll do anything to have you back“
Now your anger has faded and crumbled away like Weetabix left too long in milk, and now all your left with is this brown gloopy mush (your soul) and the feeling that you just want things back to the way they were.
Dear oh dear. I feel your pain, and I have the answer, but bare with me as this one might not seem obvious right away.
Yep, I want you to sit down in a dark room on your own and watch Terry Gilliam’s dystopian nightmare, Brazil. Why?
(Anyone who’s not seen this film be warned, there be spoilers ahead)
Well at the center of this film is Sam Lowry, an inconsequential desk clerk who each night dreams of his true love and of freeing her from the crushing drudgery and authoritarian horror of his waking life. Nice imagery, you might think. Well maybe in practice, but I’m not spoiling anything by telling you that like 1984 this tale doesn’t have a happy ending.
So why watch it? Well the reason is this, like Sam in the film you are onto a looser. No matter how hard you try to hold on to the remaining scraps of your relationship, no matter the lengths you are willing to go to, it’s too little too late – you’re fighting a loosing battle. In Brazil, Sam tries to fight against the inevitable; trying to save himself and his love by pleading with the mindless bureaucracy of an unfair state. But pleading with a faceless totalitarian state, or with an ex-girlfriend, is a futile act and all you’re going to do it torture yourself.
It’s face facing time, fact-o-clock. Your relationship is over and the only way it will continue is as a fond memory squirreled away in the depths of your mind. To paraphrase Woody Allen; a relationship is like a shark. It needs to constantly move forward or it dies. And what you have here is a dead shark.
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
4. Depression
“I’m so sad, why should I get out of bed?”
Like bargaining, this is another stage of the process that I think you need to snap out of.
Letting yourself get swept along in a river of depression is the worst thing you can do. Before you know what’s going on you’ll be a long way form where you started, unemployed, slumped in your room in only a dressing gown, covered in crumbs and wet tissues with an opened tin of beans in one hand and a spoon in the other; friendless and alone because they’re all sick of hearing you drone on about how you feel like ‘half a person’ now. It’s pure self-pitying and you need to get over it.
My answer for this is to provide you with the strongest film anti-depressant known to man. I only suggest this for certain special patients who are in really dire situations, such is the strength of this remedy. The recovery rate is 100%.
Needy patient, I prescribe to you 93 minutes of the greatest romantic comedy every made, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. This is a repeat prescription to be taken once daily until all symptoms desist.
But some of you out there may be doubters. ‘This film is about the end of a relationship’, you’ll say, ‘Alvy loses Annie in the end. How is that supposed to help?’
Well, as I’m sure you know, the message of this film is that love is strange and love affairs are often cut short, but as Woody says ‘I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs’.
Alternative Medicine – I’m not expert on rom coms – maybe Love Actually?
5. Acceptance
“It’s going to be okay.”
If you’ve arrived here, well done! Acceptance is the Holy Grail of the grieving process and is not reached by all. For some a break up may be so sudden and unexpected, or the pain so raw, that they never move beyond their anger or denial. So pat yourself on the back because you are the best of the best of the best; relationship Top Gun.
But don’t get cocky Maverick, just because you’ve come to terms with your break up doesn’t mean you’re over it. You’ll still have those shitty moment of self-doubt and upset but they’ll just spread out and decrease in frequency until instead of seeing your ex’s face when you close you’re eyes at night you’ll see an indiscriminate grey blob, or maybe Natalie Portman.
On the face of it, it might seem that this is the easiest stage in the process and maybe instead of sitting inside watching films you should be out at bars trying to charm/sleaze your way into drunk girls. Well you might have a point, but I reckon most of you won’t be swaggering cocks with the ego of Jack Nicholson, so getting back out there might be hard. What you need is a friendly shove in the right direction – a shot in the arm. With that in mind, I suggest you sit yourself down in front of the 1996 film that introduced us to the young Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn – Swingers.
In the film Favreau’s character Mike is struggling to get over his ex of six years who never calls. Accompanied by Vince Vaughn’s charismatic Trent, he trawls the bars of LA for a girl, any girl, but undermines any possible romantic encounter with his neurosis and low self-esteem.
The message is simple, don’t be that guy! As Trent would put it; you’re money baby. You don’t know it but you’re totally money. The babies know you wanna’ party, don’t be ashamed of it, because the beautiful babies respect a guy who is straight up and confident.
Now go get ‘em tiger (that was me, not Trent by the way).
Alternative Medicine – Another tactic would be to boost your confidence by watch films about dweeby loosers trying to get some – you’re much better off than them, right? Go for The 40 Year Old Virgin if you want to go down this route.
That, my friends, is it. 5 stages done and dusted. I hope you’re feeling better and if not at least you got to watch some ace films instead of sitting in a darkened room whimpering.
WORDS: MARK FOUNTAIN
