Review: Me Before You (Movie)
After having binged season after season of Game of Thrones, seeing Emilia Clarke in her natural hair color instead of a silver wig was a nice breath of fresh air, despite the fact that from her too-dark brows in Game of Thrones you would know immediately that it wasn’t her natural color.
I had seen a trailer for this 7.4/10 IMDb rated movie on Facebook a while ago and added it to my Save list, promising that I would watch it later, but it got buried in mountains of videos of food and cats and was long forgotten. It was not until months later when I finally decided that I had the patience to sit through a romance movie in one go, and I sat in bed with a bag of popcorn and Netflix open.
At the beginning of the movie, it starts out like many other love stories. The main characters meet, they hate each other, they spend time together, and eventually the bright quirky one makes the other open up and start to see life in a different light. But the dark turn of this movie is when Emilia Clarke’s character, Louisa finds out that Sam Claflin’s quadriplegic character, Will is to fly to Dignitas, a Swiss non-profit organization that provides help for assisted suicide.
Though the movie is somewhat light-hearted and still romantic, the writers have done a reasonably good job in hiding the fact that it is sending a message to the audience saying that if someone is disabled, they are better off dead. It has fans from all over the world swooning at how “cute” the couple is, and how they are “goals”. The fact of the matter is that they are, in a way, glorifying assisted suicide and how there is no longer hope for someone once they are disabled. Thoughts like this remained in my head throughout the movie, and I have to admit that it was difficult to concentrate on it when I had this floating around in my head.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, actor Zack Weinstein said that ‘The message of this movie is that it’s better for this person to die in order to be of service to her than for him to live’. Weinstein, the Criminal Mindsand Glee actor, was involved in a boating accident when he was nineteen, suffering from a spinal cord injury, and is now in a power wheelchair. Actor Grant Albrecht adds that ‘to romanticize cowardice is indeed perpetuating a stereotype for the sake of forsaking actual people with disabilities who are struggling to maintain their sanity and livelihood and aren’t given opportunities in Hollywood’.
Later on, the ‘Me Before You’ author Jojo Moyes responded by saying that Will’s decision remained unedited in the movie because they had wanted to stay true to the character. Despite the decision not necessarily being the right one, it was the kind of extreme decision that Will, as a character, would have made. Moyes added that the movie was about the impact on the people around someone who would make such an extreme decision, and that it was a brave choice, putting the subject on the table for discussion.
I agree with this point, as it is crucial for us at this time and age to be able to openly discuss such controversial topics openly; but as we have already observed so far, it could easily go both ways. However, if I were to review the movie in itself without peeling off all the layers and dwelling on the dark aspects of it, I’d say that it had everything people look for in romance movies. It was funny because of the characters — Will, who was quirky and smart, and Louisa was very lovable because of her radiant personality. Seeing their relationship develop was very enjoyable and I definitely cried into my popcorn during the sad scenes.
Overall, I’d give this movie a 6 out of 10. I’d give it a higher rating because of how much I enjoyed it, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but take the other aspects of the movie into consideration.
