What we talk about when we talk about love
(Delayed) thoughts on Materialists, the discourse surrounding it, and also on love in general
It’s really hard to talk about love without sounding trite.
I finally watched Materialists, and I think I have more thoughts about the discourse surrounding the movie than the movie itself.
Was this movie as good as Past Lives? No. But I still had a lot of fun watching it. And it is still proof of the fact that, when Celine Song is firing on all cylinders (Celinders?) ((No.)), she is so damn good at showcasing the nuance inherent to loving and being loved — and how that experience will always be inextricable from regret, or our fear of it.
She understands how the desire to be known and the need to be secure can often feel diametrically opposed — and she uses her art to show what that tension looks like in practice, without needing to create contrived or ridiculous scenarios in order to do so. Her characters feel grounded in reality in a way I really appreciate — and that feels free from a lot of the traditional romance-in-media conventions I take issue with1.
Lucy (who I will probably sometimes accidentally refer to as Dakota Johnson), the main character in Materialists, is a professional matchmaker who we are told is very good at her job. She builds matrices and vetting systems to help her clients (all referred to in FirstName LastInitial format) find “the one.”
I’m not going to provide commentary on how this calculated approach to finding a partner spotlights the far-reaching impacts of swipe culture (is that a thing or did I just make it up), or on the sexual assault plotline, or on Pedro Pascal’s legs2.
But I do want to talk about love, and the way we talk about it, and this movie’s take on it.
Do actual cynics exist or are they the real unicorns?
Our protagonist, Lucy, would probably call herself a cynic. Or perhaps she’d opt for the term “realist.” Either way, she tells her clients she believes a great match is out there, and that they will marry the loves of their lives — but then we see her having negative, borderline-nihilistic conversations with coworkers and taking an extremely pragmatic take on love.
But LOL. Lucy’s cynicism is so thinly-veiled I find it hard to believe that she’s convincing anyone, let alone herself3.
She acts like she’s being hopeful on behalf of her clients, or for their sakes — but at her center, there is a hopeless romantic who has been forced to exist within the bounds of A Society, and is struggling to reconcile 1) her desire to have someone deeply know and love her with 2) her desire to be secure, and ultimately 3) her fear of being rejected for the worst parts of her.
At one point in the movie, Lucy is having a hard time due to a situation that has unfolded at work, and John (her broke ex, played by Chris Evans4) notices, asking her what’s wrong. She tells him she’s worried she’s not good at her job anymore, and he — attempting to comfort her — tells her she’s too hard on herself, that she’s not building bombs, it’s “just dating.” His attempt at comforting her instead pisses her off — and Lucy storms out after laying into John for minimizing her job and treating dating like it’s “girl shit.”
But the irony is that Lucy’s ~whole thing~ is doing exactly that. She views her own desire for something deeper than a simple series of checked boxes as impractical and trite. She resents John for calling dating unserious because it mirrors how she views her own longing: embarrassing, trivial, and maybe even inherently unsafe.
Lucy’s so-called “cynicism” is actually just a fear response to the dissolution of her parents’ marriage and an act of self-protection (and self-deception). Her way of coping with her confusion about her own seemingly conflicting desires (i.e. Does she want to be rich or does she want to be loved? Can those two things happen simultaneously? Is it selfish to want both?) is to strip love of its mystery and reduce it to a series of boxes to be checked. But she doesn’t really believe in that system, either, when it comes down to it.
Her narration at the wedding she and John crash reveals a lot. She doesn’t doubt the fact that the couple loves each other right now — she just can see, too clearly, how easily that love can dry up.
“One day for no reason in particular, you two will start to hate each other. You’ll resent each other. Take each other for granted. Stop having sex. Manage to make a couple of kids. Get sick of each other. One of you will cheat. You’ll fight. Not in front of the kids, but then in front of the kids. Then you file for divorce. And then you fight about who gets what. Until it's all over.”
Lucy doesn’t not believe in love. She just views it as a fleeting thing, something you can have in one moment but that can disappear just as quickly. “It just walks into our lives,” she tells Pedro Pascal (I forget his character’s name and tbh I prefer to just refer to him as Pedro Pascal anyway), which implies that it can just walk right out, too.
So instead, she makes it a non-starter: I’m not good enough for you. You hate me. I’m too selfish to be with you. The math doesn’t add up. Blah blah blah.
I’ll speak from my own experience and say it’s so much easier to pretend to be a cynic than it is to actually be one.
“Broke Boy Propaganda” and the false choice between intimacy and agency
Question: Who do we hate more, a rich man or a poor man?5
I’m kind of surprised that so much of the Materialists criticism I’ve seen has centered around the film being Broke Boy Propaganda (BBP) rather than around the ridiculous final-moments-of-the-film decision to have Lucy consider quitting her job to “marry someone poor.6”
Not to be that guy at a party who takes things overly seriously, but I take issue with this criticism and find it unnecessarily reductive. More than that, it’s an indicator of the fact that we still have specific rules for how we want women to use their agency.
In much of the modern world, marriage is no longer a necessity or a livelihood. It’s not something we’re forced into or something someone else chooses for us. So why are we still operating out of an outdated playbook that says if a woman chooses a partner based on emotional fulfillment rather than economic stability, she must be dumb, naive, delusional, or short-sighted?
Putting feminism aside for a moment (which is very on trend rn) — this mentality is also not very helpful, given how much the gendered professional landscape has shifted. Women are earning degrees at significantly higher rates than men. In cities like New York, college-educated women far outnumber college-educated men — 2 to 1 among singles over 30.
If we’re looking at the math (a la Lucy), there’s a clear trend forming. If women are looking for male partners who are their equals in education, income, and ambition, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so7.
So…does that mean women have to “settle”?
First we have to ask: What does “settling” even mean? I think our definition of this needs a bit more nuance, too.
True agency means having the freedom of choice. And with every door you open, you’re choosing to keep ten others closed, whether you’re conscious of that decision or not.
Maybe in an ideal world you wouldn’t have to choose — you’d be able to construct the perfect partner who was emotionally stimulating and financially impressive and whatever else you want/value. But life is full of tradeoffs; every adult decision is just a question of which ones you’re willing to live with.
The movie circles back, quite often, to the theme of relationships being a proxy for value:
The woman who marries the man because he makes her sister jealous — which makes her feel valuable.
Sophie asking Lucy if she thinks she’s worthless, because why else would she set her up with a horrible man.
John asking Lucy if she thinks he’s worthless, because she keeps using him.
Lucy commenting to Pedro Pascal that he’s investing a lot in her, and him telling her he wouldn’t do so if he didn’t see her value. “I don’t like you because you’re rich,” Lucy says. “Then why do you like me?” Pedro Pascal asks. “Because you make me feel valuable,” Lucy answers.
Pedro Pascal commenting on his leg-lengthening surgery, says “you’re just worth more” when you’re taller, having seen for himself the results and the comparison of the attention and affection he received when he was short versus now.
The question becomes — what is value? Is it subjective? Is it defined by the individual, or by society as a whole? How flexible is value? How susceptible are we, as individuals, to confusing society’s values with our own?
One thing becomes clear: We still believe our worth is defined by who we can attract — and who chooses us (or doesn’t).
But we’re basing these value assessments on out-of-date data.
That’s why I find the idea that Lucy “settled” because she chose intimacy over security to be reductive.
I think you could choose either of these things with good reason, and I think Lucy’s decision to be with John instead of Pedro Pascal makes logical sense based on the data she has available to her.
It was, ironically, still the pragmatic choice — because once Lucy saw herself8 for who she truly was (a romantic) she realized she couldn’t be with someone she didn’t truly love. If she didn’t value romance as much as she seems to, she would’ve been able to stay with PP without it being “settling.” It’s only because she values what she has with John that she can’t “settle” for something different.
That value assessment will be different for each of us and based on our own respective levels of self awareness, our values, where we fall on the spectrum of pragmatism vs. romanticism, and our circumstances9.
Terms, conditions, and stockings
We’ve (I’ve) talked a lot about the subjectivity surrounding certain terminology — “value,” “settling,” “chemistry,” etc.
These things are difficult to define and usually look different for everyone, yet we treat them as if they’re objective — even without being able to actually articulate what they are. They’re the types of things that when you feel them, you just feel them. Which makes them hard to explain, articulate, and compare.
This same level of subjectivity comes into play when we talk about love in general10. You know when it’s there or when it isn’t in a way that feels more instinctual than logical. The same way you know if you like mangoes or don’t; you experience it and then know, without thinking, what is true.
I know I love my husband. But if you asked me to explain the reasons why I love my husband, or how I know I love him, it would end up sounding so surface-level or trite you’d likely walk away depressed and wondering if I even love him at all. “He’s funny. I think he’s hot. We have fun together. He challenges me.” All of these things are true, but they’re not the capital-A Answer for “why” I love him. Because I just do.
Nisbett and Wilson's 1977 study on introspective confabulation (which is very fun to say btw — few things roll off the tongue like introspective confabulation. Seriously, just say it right now, out loud) comes to mind. This experiment has become a cornerstone in social psychology — because it demonstrated how people often don’t know the true causes of their behavior, but will confidently provide explanations anyway.
In the experiment, participants were shown four pairs of nylon stockings and asked to choose which pair was the best quality. The catch? Each of the four pairs were exactly the same. Despite this fact, participants tended to prefer the pair on the rightmost side. The fact that they picked the stockings to the right wasn’t the surprising part — in fact, Nisbett and Wilson were expecting this, because of a known cognitive bias known as the “position effect,” which basically says that people often show a preference to items presented later in a sequence.
The most interesting part of this experiment was the fact that, when asked why they chose that particular pair, participants provided a litany of reasons — inclusive of texture, color, elasticity, and beyond — none of which could actually explain the preference, since the stockings were, again, ALL IDENTICAL.
What does this study have to do with love, and Materialists, or anything else? It shows that humans are often unaware of the true factors influencing their decisions — but when asked to explain, they will generate plausible (but inaccurate or incomplete) justifications.
When Lucy asks John how he could still love her in spite of her flaws, he doesn’t have a good answer — certainly not one that will satisfy her or make her believe she deserves it. He just does, “simple as that.” In spite of just as much as because of. And largely for reasons and factors completely outside of his control.
“I’m not asking for a miracle,” Lucy’s client, Sophie, says. “I just want to love someone. Someone who can’t help but love me back.”
Laundry, taxes, and the meme-ification of marriage
This movie brought up bigger questions for me about our relationship with cynicism, our expectations for romantic partnership, and how the media we consume interacts with these two things.
For most of modern history, media representation of marriage has been steeped in a level of cynicism — or has treated it like a punchline. The best love stories end before a marriage begins11. Once two people who love each other get married, the “ball and chain” jokes begin, the characters flatten out into the sitcom tropes of the bumbling husband and the overbearing wife, and “real life” begins.
We don’t know how to talk about marriage. We’re told it’s “hard work” and also that it should feel easy. We’re told we shouldn’t want it and also that we can’t survive without it. We’re told that it will strip us of our agency and also that it will complete us. It's practical but it’s romantic. It’s a thing you do out of deep love for another person but it’s also the thing that will lead to you resenting them in the future.
It’s a business decision, “but love has to be on the table,” Lucy says to Pedro Pascal. But what does that even mean?
Materialists, in many ways, reminded me of Evelyn and Waymond’s arc in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
In the movie’s main timeline, Evelyn resents her husband Waymond’s lack of ambition and projects her disappointment with her own life onto him. She thinks that if she were richer, she’d be happier (and maybe that’s true!). But in an alternate timeline where they’re both rich but not together (and not totally fulfilled/happy), Cool Waymond says that, in another life, he would’ve loved just doing laundry and taxes with Evelyn.
Is that what settling is (or isn’t) about? Making peace with all the other ways your life could’ve turned out — and realizing that you probably wouldn’t be much happier in most of them? Maybe there are a few outlier timelines where you truly get everything you want with no tradeoffs, but most versions of your life fall within the standard deviation of satisfaction: different flavors of laundry and taxes, different shades of joy and disappointment. Is it just a matter of finding the beauty in what’s in front of you and trying to avoid bitterness, resentment, and other forms of emotional poison12?
In conclusion, Haddaway
We still, collectively, have not been able to decide what “love” really is — especially persistent, committed love — and therefore we will constantly be unsatisfied by the way it is portrayed in media. Either too trite or too dramatic, too cynical or too naive, too pragmatic or too romantic. Is love a binary? Is there an ON/OFF switch? Is it a feeling or a choice? Something we have control over or something we’re subjected to?
Until we know for sure, I’ll respect and appreciate any piece of art — imperfect and flawed as it may be — that bravely attempts to consider a new angle as we all persist in the Sisyphean task of answering Haddaway's 1993 question.
That being said, I felt like Materialists missed the mark in this area at times. Pretty much every single conversation between Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal in this movie felt like it was happening on another planet. Maybe I just don't interact with rich people enough to understand that this is what it is like to dialogue with them? But I was left wondering how seriously/literally I was supposed to take any of their interactions. The most "real" moment of the film, to me, was the conversation between DJ and Chris Evans in the bar, in which he is trying to comfort her and ends up pissing her off instead. I'll get into that more later, but that moment, to me, is Celine doing what she does best. OKAY, moving on.
Pretty much everything there is to be said about those things has already been said. This movie came out months ago and I am behind the discourse eight-ball.
I’m not trying to be mean-spirited. I, too, have a very thin “I’m soooOOOooOOOooooOOooo cyncial” layer surrounding my soft, nougat-y center.
In possibly his greatest role yet? I am by no means a Chris stan (I usually find him to be mediocre at best) and understand some of the division around this casting choice (and the belief that the original casting of Jeremy Allen White would’ve been better/more believable), but I honestly am happy Chris got the chance to do this role and believe he brought an earnestness to it that I can’t imagine coming from JAW. But maybe that’s just me!!!!!!!!!
Would the film have been received better if Lucy had decided to forgo her connection with John in order to end up with a leg-lengthened Private Equity magnate? Is there any universe in which Lucy makes a choice between these two men and isn't judged/condemned for it?
Why the HELL would she quit her job without having a backup plan??? Is it the result of her frustration with Adore’s mishandling of the SA situation? If so, what better way to fix the system than from the inside, as the one in charge? Was the moral of the story supposed to be that matchmaking is inherently bad and therefore, in order for Lucy to be evolved, she would need to quit? Also, in Lucy’s decision to choose a partner based on romance instead of practicality, it doesn’t mean she has to ditch practicality all together — because the answer to cynicism is not blind optimism and impulsivity!!!!!! My question to Celine Song, here, is: Why did you seemingly toss away your trademark nuance in the last thirty seconds of this film??????????????
Source: The Atlantic, “The Problem of Finding a Marriageable Man,” by Jerusalem Demsas — I first heard about this research on her Good on Paper podcast, in which she interviews Benny Goldman, one of the researchers behind the study “Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates.”
And Pedro Pascal’s leg scars
This one (circumstances) is the tough one, because it's the one we have the least control over. Most of us will not find ourselves in a situation in which a rich Pedro Pascal and a poor Chris Evans are both interested in marrying us.
This is far from a novel concept, but I’m getting over my need to be unique!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is part of what I love/respect most about the brave decision to make Before Midnight, aka the greatest ending to the greatest trilogy ever. Also LOL now that I think about it I’m remembering that Chris Evans starred in, like, a knockoff version of Before Sunrise once.
I have no idea! I’m asking these questions, not claiming to know the answers. Very unhelpful of me, I know. I also acknowledge that, as a happily married woman, I am maybe an annoying voice to have in this discourse. I consider it a matter of pure luck that I, like Lucy, am a romantic-who-wished-she-was-a-pragmatist but who ended up with someone who she truly loves anyway.