Frankly speaking, I was rather reluctant to watch this movie at first… I never read the novel before as I thought that it would be a weepy sentimental reading..and I avoided watching it for the same reason: I clearly did not want to waste my money for then wasting my tears after it!
But, really, the tears (and the money of course) worth spending! The movie is indeed sentimental, but it’s hilarious as well. It’s the only movie I’ve ever watch where I could shed tears and laugh at the same time. It’s an awkwardly charming movie!
In this movie, you will meet the most perfectly matched couple ever – although they didn’t look so at the first time. Holly Kennedy, starred by Hillary Swank, was a beautiful smart late 20s woman married to the passionate impetuous Irishman, Gerry (whose name was quantly spelled “”Jerry” and who, of course, had a very cute Irish accent!). As other normal couples, they normally sweated petty stuffs like money, ambition in life, and even whose turn to turn off the light today!
But then, as life went sadly ironic to those two (those who lived their life to the fullest, like Gerry, often had to die first), and Gerry passed away because of brain cancer, Holly missed him desperately. In her complete feeling of loss, she locked herself in her apartment…in order to avoid someone telling her the truth that her husband was no longer with her. She lived her voidness by hallucinating sleeping in Gerry’s hug like always every night, wearing his shirts, and even refusing to take shower, simply because she didn’t want to forget his body scent on hers.
But Holly was just not ready when she got a surprise present on her birthday, a few weeks after the funeral. A birthday cake and a recording with a letter from Gerry. And that letter was followed by many letters after. Each of them, as promised, came to her in an unexpected way every month simply to cheer her up. Each of them was filled by instructions that Holly must obey no matter what. And each of them was ended by a sentence: ps, i love u.
With those letters, Gerry unselfishly taught her to, just like him before, live her life passionately! To chase her dreams in life and to be understanding when her best friends’ lives seemed in their fullest bloom while hers’ not.
With those letters as well, he unselfishly taught her to always remember him, but at the same time realizing that he was only a short chapter in her long to go life.
And at the same time, assuring her that no matter what, he still loved her…
Clearly, in the end, the movie provided a logical answer of how those letters came to Holly.
But what impressed me most was of how loving Gerry was in his last minutes of life. Instead of grieving how God was so unfair to him and how frightening death was, he was afraid of how Holly could continue her life without him.
That is what true love is for me.
