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This is a film about a boy who falls in love with a girl, and a culture that falls in love with a drug industry. The result is a captivating film that says a lot about human misery and happiness and how to best induce one but not the other.
As the film opens we meet our protagonist, Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal). Jamie is clearly talented but just aimless enough that all that talent might be squandered. He's as charming a guy as there is, and not in that manipulative way where you're expecting a shoe to drop from somewhere, at some point. No, he's affable and sweet in a way that says, "Liking me will be easy, and that's all I need from you."
At the start, his charm has him winning over customers left and right in a mom & pop electronics store; but his charm also has him messing around with his boss's girl. We begin to see the short-term nature of his success, as the precarious situation predictably explodes. Consequently, Jamie finds himself entering the morally loose but lucrative world of psychotropic medications as a Pfizer sales rep.
While making his sales rounds he soon stumbles upon and becomes infatuated with an equally charming, somewhat more guarded version of himself named Maggie (Anne Hathaway), who also happens to be suffering from early onset Parkinson's, a rare, chronic and debilitating disease. The stage is set for romance or at the least the pursuit of one. Maggie has built towering psychological walls to keep genuine connection and commitment as far removed from her life as possible. Fortunately for Jamie he has spent years focused on little else then how to infiltrate such relational blockades (albeit for temporary sexual gratification more than anything else).
I'd like to highlight two points in particular about this film, one having to do with effectively connecting with other people (how to make friends and keep them) and another relating to the construction of a truly happy life (how to make the only life one has more fulfilling).
Interpersonal effectiveness
To be over-simplistic for a moment, there are basically two levels of connection, superficial and deep, that can be attained in the interpersonal world. Each relational type requires a different skill set. Right away, it's abundantly clear that Jamie can successfully attain superficial relationships. Although the skill set for quick and easy connections is laid out fairly explicitly in our cultural zeitgeist I'll list them anyway - attractiveness, non-verbal communication congruent with mood, literacy in reading social cues, and proclivity for positive emotion. Perhaps I'll translate that a bit before moving on. What I mean to say is that Jamie is the type of guy who is easy to look at, automatically does things like maintain eye contact and smiles when it's appropriate to smile (i.e. in response to a joke or the smile of another). He's also much more prone to experience and express excitement or glee rather than sadness and anger, and he's the kind of guy who intuits personal boundaries and doesn't lean in too far to shake your hand. In other words, he's likable, like I said at the start.
Right off the bat these interpersonal skills help Jamie in his interactions with Maggie, because sex (with as little talking as possible) seems to be her primary goal. And, indeed, sex and nudity is a rather prominent theme in the first half of the film. However, what separates "Love and other drugs" from the pack is that there is an ulterior, high-minded agenda underlying the seemingly pornographic proclivities. There is a lot of physical exposure early on but as Jamie and Maggie's relationship evolves from a booty call into an unflinchingly honest and complicated long-term, adult relationship, excessive emotional exposure replaces the images of breasts and butts. It slowly dawns on Jamie that he is, in fact, utterly in love with a woman who is fairly guarded very high maintenance.
The movie sugarcoats Jamie's psychological evolution from care-free bachelor to self-sacrificing partner, but the take-home message is that he has committed himself to pursuing relational depth. He is ill-equipped for this emotional journey, however, as he has no practice in such pursuits and, and must scale a fairly high relational wall within Maggie's psyche. But Jamie is a quick study. He intuitively begins to foster the skill set needed for this second type of connection. The survival skills for such emotional travail are, among other qualities, empathy, active listening, clarification of values and reprioritization of goals.
Meaning, Jamie realizes that living with Maggie will be difficult, challenging and, at times, distressing. Her incurable condition and subsequent (and understandable) proneness to hopelessness and depression must be fully embraced and mirrored back to Maggie, fore unless she becomes convinced that Jamie ‘gets it' she will never fully commit. To this end, he has to literally track her down but she eventually gets it. Also, in order for relational success to unfold, Jamie must figure out a way to address the unspoken emotional balance. Maggie needs extra care - in a dynamic that should be equal, she's relegated to role of patient and him as provider. She resents this (as many of us might), and her resentment manifests in drinking binges and temper tantrums unconsciously designed to push Jamie away. Through active listening Jamie comes to read between the lines of Maggie's anguished cries and disparaging comments and notes the inner fear and pain that is infinitely easier to sympathize with and problems solve (i.e. instead of storming out, Jamie stays and hugs). As Jamie continues to take a long, hard look at what his life currently is, and where he wants it to go he decides that becoming Maggie's eternal partner is more important to him than anything else. Interestingly, with Maggie's cheerleading ways, Jamie ends up switching careers from drug sales rep to doctor because he finally believes in himself enough to make such a professional leap.
The road to happiness
Sophisticated movies often discuss lessons for healthy living, because the characters and their adversities are grounded in reality and adaptive action. The how-to for living a truly happy life becomes a subtle but clear theme. The backdrop of "Love and other drugs" is, quite clearly, the explosion of the pharmaceuticals industry. There is a misnomer in our culture that short-term, easy fixes like drugs for mood (i.e. Prozac) or enhancement (i.e. Viagra) are efficient pathways to happiness. Not so. For instance, anti-depressants do not make you happy. They turn down the ‘intensity' volume of negative emotional states like sadness so that you can maintain the motivation and wherewithal to do the things that actually reduce depression - cultivating and engaging in activities that make you feel pleasure, meaning and mastery. Further, the literature on factors of sustained happiness has more to do with long-term, social-oriented processes like relationships.
Yes, being productive at work, and enjoying a certain degree of financial stability are important buffers to chronic, overwhelming stress, but it's more abstract things like a sense of belonging, feelings of confidence toward self, and optimism toward future that underlie true fulfillment, and research shows that one of the surest and quickest routes to such a desirable end is relationships. Not surprisingly, having a partner to walk through life with has been associated with better mental health (i.e. living a less anxious life) and physical health (i.e. living a longer life).
Jamie begins the film in superficial mode, as he drifts through jobs and sexual partners without a long-term game plan or sense of purpose. Although he's not particularly unhappy, he's not happy. In the end, he's still our lovable Jamie but he's now in ‘deep' mode with a life plan geared toward genuine long-term commitments and, in turn, true happiness.
As I've alluded to throughout the post, "Love and other drugs" is a very high quality romance comedy. This film is ambitious. Beyond looking good and moving at a crisp pace (top notch acting and smooth editing), the story is complex (you can't easily tell where it's going), the character development is rich (we attach to memorable and distinct figures) and the dialogue is sharp (what they say to each other is entertaining yet feels unrehearsed). So, for some short-term, fleeing pleasure that will not build sustained happiness go see "Love and other drugs."
