Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
Written & Directed by Anthony Minghella

Last week more sad news arrived and I found myself wondering why my favorite artists are all leaving the earth. Its hard to lose people you love. And even though I did not know David Bowie, or Alan Rickman, I did love what they gave to the world. I may not have loved them in that one-on-one sort of way, but their art touched me, and that I did love.

Alan Rickman was one of my favorite actors. He played deliciously devious villains, complex anti-heroes, and classic characters of literature. He also played Jamie, one of my best loved characters from one of my favorite films, Truly Madly Deeply. This movie came to my mind earlier this week, after the news of Bowie, and then hit me again this morning when I heard about Rickman.

Truly Madly Deeply is about grief, about loss, about love, and about letting go. It starts in the not letting go place, with Nina grieving the love of her life, Jamie, after his death and finding herself unable to go on. She unravels in front of us, crying in the most raw and real way I have ever seen in on-screen.

One day Nina comes home and finds Jamie in her flat. At first she is joyous, even if she questions what she sees, and feels. There is relief there, love, and she basks in this secret she has in her home, her love, returned. But things evolve, some funny (love when Jamie brings his deceased pals to come over to Nina’s to watch movies), some uneasy, and a shift between living and dead starts to occur. Nina is pulled into the land of the living, into the sun, into a desire to go on. Now it is Jamie that has to let go, something that Nina couldn’t do before.

The ending is beautiful, heartbreaking, yet hopeful. It speaks to the experience of grief and loss in such a deep way, one that resonated in a very personal way to me.

It will forever be my favorite Alan Rickman film.

“Satisfied?”