I went to see Definitely, Maybe last night and it was quite a story. One slice of the story line intrigued me most. In a roundabout way, by my talking about this story line, I'll be giving away part of the movie, so consider this a spoiler alert. The story line that intrigued me follows the relationship between Will and April--two friends who often wanted more from their relationship, but the timing never seemed to be right. Early on in their friendship, Will sees that April has several dozen copies of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in her living room and he asks her about it.
She tells him that when she was little, her father gave her a copy of the book with a beautiful inscription to her, but that somehow the book had gotten lost in the shuffle of life, and she's been looking for it ever since in used bookstores. She tells him that she has developed a thing for inscribed copies of this book, even though the inscriptions aren't to her. So, every time she finds an inscribed copy of the book, she buys it. I'm guessing that by purchasing inscribed copies of the book, she feels just a little closer to her now deceased father, even though she can't find the copy he gave her.
After much time has passed, Will walks by a used book store and sees an old copy of the book displayed in the window. He walks in, opens the cover, and it is the one. He buys it and heads to April's place to give it to her, but he finds out that she is with another man, and it's more than he can take, so he buries the book in his own stuff at home and it sits there for several years. Eventually he finds it and returns it to her. It's such a tender moment when she gingerly opens the book to see her father's handwriting. Unfortunately, the scene ends horribly because Will tells her that he's had it for years but just couldn't seem to give it to her.
They don't see each other for a long while after that, but when he finally gets up the nerve to see her again, he tells her that the reason he didn't give it to her before was because it was all that he had left of her. I love what he said to her. It was perfect. The funny thing is, I'm a Christian and things aren't supposed to mean that much to me. But I still thought that what Will said to April was perfect. Things like inscribed books from loved ones may indeed be temporal, but they are also tangible pieces of love, and that can never be a bad thing.
