This article was published in the Chic Daily Magazine.
Netflix advertised a new Sam Levinson film, “Malcolm & Marie,” as “not a love story,” but “a story of love” in January 2021. This black-and-white noir about the complications of two people with history both individually and interconnecting has stuck with me for the last year.
I like to think that sometimes, when a planted flower has been growing in the same spot for so long, gardeners will just leave it there because the roots are so deep and entangled underground that ripping it up would be too much work, too painful. This is how I viewed Malcolm and Marie’s relationship within the film. The dialogue between the two characters over the course of the movie shows how messy love can be and how perception, self-worth, empathy and communication are so important. Malcolm and Marie’s love for each other is not the least bit romanticized, but the love is still there regardless of the arguments and trauma they inevitably inflict on each other.
Even in the trailer for the film, Malcolm (John David Washington) tells Marie (Zendaya), “You are by far the most excruciating, difficult, stubbornly obnoxious woman I've ever met in my entire life. I fucking love you,” further showing this distorted idea of love and the difficulties that carries for the two characters.
The story follows the couple after Malcolm’s movie premiere night and the endless arguments that unfold after Malcolm forgot to thank Marie at the premiere. Their night at home begins with petty arguments about gratitude and recognition, which turn into and shed light on the cracked roots of their relationship and the internal battles they both fight.
Love can be defined in endless ways, and can be shown in even more ways, whether it is interpreted as good or bad.
For some, love is simple. Isaiah Figueroa defines love as lighting a blunt, while Michael Mejia perceives love as a life that is sweeter together. Women like Micah Rind describe love as, “comfortable silence” while Chloe Wells sees it as “caring so much about someone, you’d do anything for them and accept them for who they are.”
One definition that sticks out is when Jacky Ortiz said, “Love to me is looking at a person and finding absolute safety and comfort in their presence. When I love someone, I find myself smiling and being filled with absolute warmth and a million colors.”
In “Malcolm & Marie,” their love, put simply, doesn’t reflect any of these typical loving traits or definitions. They don't accept each other for who they are or find comfort in the silence. Their silent moments in the film are tense, their insecurities overbear any type of acceptance for the other person. Ortiz’s definition of love, emphasizing safety, juxtaposes perfectly with the scene where Marie is holding a knife in her hand, crying, maniacally laughing, monologuing and asking Malcolm where the pills are. Despite how insane their night is of arguing, this is all just a part of love to some people.
Many men, such as Jake Gutierrez, believe “good love is hard” as well as Lance Harris stating, “If love was easy then it wouldn’t be worth fighting/sacrificing for.” Others, like Martin Simon, mention that, “love should come natural.”
This is not to say that the people who believe love is worth fighting for believe that being put through toxic situations is OK for the sake of love or “fighting for love.” But it is to say that love is different for every single person.
It is put best and most applicable to Malcolm and Marie when Rind states, “Love isn’t hard, it’s the ownership, jealousy and deceit that make the situation hard.”
Malcolm and Marie love each other. However, over the course of the film, it goes to show that their love is not healthy for one another; they both have things they need to work on within themselves in order to ever be able to love each other in a way that’s beneficial.
Marie sees her contribution to their relationship as outstanding Malcolm’s and feels she’s taken advantage of. She thinks that he is selfish, doesn’t care and acts out in multiple ways through the film including yelling, crying and manipulation. Marie tells him, “Malcolm, I feel like once you know someone is there for you and once you know they love you, you never actually think of them again.” Malcolm is just as manipulative and narcissistic, telling Marie things like, “You’re so fucking solipsistic that you see yourself in everything, even in things you had nothing to do with.”
Overall, Zendaya explained the story of these two people who experience life together best when she told The New York Times, “None of us who made the movie think that they’re, like, in a healthy relationship, you know what I mean? I think it was to explore those insecurities and those dark things about ourselves that I think sometimes relationships can bring out of us.”
Sometimes, the love and connection that binds two people together isn’t always good for each other, but it’s important to recognize the difference between “tough love'' and an unhealthy relationship.
“There isn’t a specific message. It’s more of a piece to open up a dialogue. You’re the fly on the wall. You’re watching the codependency, the narcissism, the ups and downs of something that has a lot of toxicity in it. It’s triggering for different people in different ways because they find themselves connected to different parts of the characters,” Zendaya said in an interview with The New York Times. “If there’s anything to take away from it, it’s this idea of gratitude [for] people in our lives who make it possible to do what we do. For any young person going through any kind of relationship and something like toxicity or whatever the case may be, I think a huge thing is understanding your worth.”
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