I don’t have the luxury of watching much cinema, but occasionally I’ll let myself veg in front of the television and undergo a sort of brain-drain. Tonight I found myself watching bits of Hancock, the story of a superhero who got lost along the way. Of course, that is the simplified version of it.
What I find most alluring about this film, despite it’s box office antics, is the idea that even super humans can become degenerates–it’s not exclusive to us mortals.
And then there is the story of that Great Love, the one that is so powerful it destroys everything you knew about yourself. You become vulnerable and confused; pulled between two sides, one of greatness and one of mediocrity. You can’t decide which is better because they’re both speaking to what you’ve got going on inside you.
Then there’s a line in the film which reminds me of someone–someone who once told me his mother said, “You can’t save anyone.” (Or something to that degree.) In the film, when Hancock is laying in bed, wounded from guns shots and Mary begins to tell him the history of their 3,000 year love affair. She recounts that Hancock was made to save people more than the rest of them and that he was a true hero. The insurance of the Gods so to speak. And I got to thinking about my friend, who thinks that he can’t save anyone when he’s probably the only person who has the strength to.
You see, I think that people are paired for reasons that aren’t always clear at first. You meet someone and there is a strange connection, something you can’t quite put your finger on only having just met; those are really the people you’re fated to be near. A friend of mine once said that “people really do find their perfect match.” And I believe that. Even if it doesn’t seem like the pairing you had in mind when you started looking for your Great Love. Sometimes it really just is a hero and a villain, a saint and a sinner, or maybe a little girl who needed someone to help save her from drowning…
…the same someone whose mother told him he couldn’t…so he didn’t.
