The Last Five Years

Jaime’s decided it’s his right to decide.

C. Duhnne
C. Duhnne
Jul 29, 2017 · 3 min read

So, I understand that it’s been a few years since the film version of the musical’s been out, but holy mind blown, I don’t think I’ve ever seen love explained so neatly before. Love, especially adult love, is hard.

And no, I didn’t mean it as an euphemism for sex. Let’s be honest, sex is easy. It’s the emotions and settling down with someone that’s messy and hard.

I really wasn’t expecting to like The Last Five Years that much. It’s a pretty kitschy concept (TO ME) to do parallel timelines, chronicling one from beginning to end, and the other, from ending to beginning.

Kitschy to me, mostly because it felt very gender-typed, because Cathy (the female lead)’s perspective is in reverse chronological order, so we see that she’s trying so hard, she’s putting so much effort in, and she’s getting nothing back in return, but she’s still in love with him, and that’s an idea that women, in particular, have always been brought up with. That love is this thing that never dies, and I love you, I’ll just keep finding a way to make it work.

Whereas, Jaime (the male lead)’s perspective, is in chronological order. So we see him falling in love with Cathy, and he’s so in love, things are moving too fast, they get married, but suddenly, plot twist. It’s over? It’s gotten real, and so… There’s nothing left to do. It really highlighted how men, traditionally, are thought of to be good at compartmentalizing, and retracting. Final decisions are that, final.

So yes, it felt very gender-typed to me, but it also worked out really well. My opinion definitely changed as the movie progressed, and I began to see it as two separate human beings, and two separate human reactions, and that’s all this is. A relationship between two people.

The first time we see Cathy, she’s in shock. There’s something so genuinely heartbreaking from the moment she belts, “Jaime is over & Jaime is gone, Jaime’s decided it’s time to move on”, that will remind you of every single moment in your life when you’ve questioned, “why not me? Why was I not good enough? Why wasn’t I worth fighting for?”

As the storyline develops, and you get more and more intertwined in their lives, you fall in love with the giddy abandon that Jaime does, and he’s a writer (of course he is!) and feels everything so poetically, and it’s hard not to sympathize with Jaime, because he feels what all of us, at one point in any relationship feels, which is, “I think I could be in love with someone like you”, and he does try. He does try.

They both do.

That’s the crux of it.
The understanding that love isn’t just falling for someone. Love goes beyond the giddy and the happily ever after. The Last Five Years explores that. It reminds you that everybody starts out in the same space, and it’s this incredibly happy place where you both want the same things, where “all you can say, all you can feel, was wrapped up inside that one perfect kiss.”

It’s nuanced and tragic because Life is nuanced and tragic. It is, at times, desperately lonely, and at others, hauntingly happy. It is rose tinted glasses and heavy duty realism. It is a reminder and a foreshadowing and it is both cynical and romantic, but ultimately, honest.

This might be the first, real, honest Love story ever written.

Because it’s not about love.

It’s about the human beings involved, and how they react, and interact, and move through Life.

In the end, you realize, this isn’t a love story at all. Not one bit.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

C. Duhnne

Written by

C. Duhnne

Just expanding my universe.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

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