Alfie

HJ Links
—Review by Elisabeth Leitch
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

Nearly 40 years ago, after over an hour of broken relationships and hard lessons about life, Michael Caine stared at movie audiences and posed the question: “What’s it all about?� The movie Alfie ended and Joss Stone began to sing the movie’s title track—“What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all about when we sort it out? Are we here to take more than we give?� The credits rolled, the music faded, and the screen went black. Nearly 40 years later, however, the same song that asked Caine’s Alfie what life was all about has begun to play again as a new movie hits screens introducing Alfie to movie audiences for the second time, this time as Jude Law.

While times, men, women, and relationships have changed since 1966, Law’s Alfie follows a very similar storyline to Caine’s. From the moment both Alfies come on screen, both men quickly establish themselves as womanizers, ladies’ men, players, and men with extreme commitment issues. More than just a picture of a man behaving in a way that would hopefully cause most people to cringe, however, both movies look deeper into the dysfunctional relationships Alfie creates for himself and push Alfie to figure out what he is actually missing. Alfie does his best to avoid commitment, love, and dependence of any sort, but, in they end, both Caine and Law’s Alfie unwittingly seem to find themselves missing and desiring those very things they avoided.

Opening with a shot of a superman figurine and Alfie’s morning recitation from his word of the day calendar (this day—“ostentatious�), the movie wastes no time quickly establishing Alfie’s value of the superficial and, even more so, the effort he exerts to keep from becoming committed in any way. In a casual relationship with the married Dorie (Jane Krakowski) at the same time that he has what could be a stable and committed relationship with single mother Julie (Marisa Tomei), Alfie shows a desire to almost destroy anything that even hints at commitment. When he comes home to Julie, Alfie barely does anything to erase suspicions that he is seeing another woman. Replying with a simple “Thanks baby,� to Julie’s “I love you,� Alfie reveals both his avoidance of love and tendency to take and never give. Even in his relationship with Dorie, Alfie is ready to call it off completely as soon as Dorie “wants a little more than [he] can give.�

At the same time that Alfie avoids anything remotely like love, it seems, that even at the beginning of the movie, love is a feeling Alfie possesses. In Caine’s Alfie, Alfie’s relationship with the mother of his child reveals a desire to love through his attachment to his son. When the woman leaves him and marries another man, Alfie displays a sense of loss as he watches the other man take over his role as father. In Law’s Alfie, the sadness that appears on Alfie’s face when he passes Julie and her son playing together after they have broken up reveals a similar attachment to a child who isn’t even his own.

In both movies, however, the majority of Alfie’s deepest realizations occur in connection with his relationship with his friend’s girlfriend. In Caine’s Alfie, Alfie has an affair with the wife of his roommate at a sanitarium. Their affair leads to pregnancy and Alfie arranges for her to have an illegal abortion in his apartment. When he returns after the procedure, he is shocked when he sees the baby that has been aborted as well as the toll that abortion has taken on the woman. Not only making a powerful and controversial statement about abortion and the effect it has on human life, the situation adds to Alfie’s sense that he has once again hurt more than helped as well as missed out on a love relationship he could have had with a child.

While developed in a different manner, the parallel relationship in Law’s Alfie also seems to cause Alfie to contemplate his life the most and feel his deepest sense of loss. The set up for this relationship is a drunken night with his best friend/co-worker’s girlfriend during a temporary split. While Lonette (Nia Long) and Marlon (Omar Epps) quickly reconcile, Lonette soon finds out she is pregnant, goes to a clinic for a legal abortion, and immediately moves away with Marlon. Later, however, Alfie finds out that Lonette did not have the abortion.

Adding this new dimension to that storyline, the whole situation further brings out Alfie’s sense of sadness at hurting a friend and watching someone else raise his child. More than that, however, the relationship between Lonette and Marlon gives one of several examples of what love can really be, a subject that was only briefly explored in Caine’s Alfie. When Alfie goes to visit Lonette and Marlon and sees the baby that is clearly his, he looks at Lonette and half asks/half states: “Marlon stayed?� She replies, “For now,� and although the look that Marlon later gives Alfie clearly embodies deep pain, Marlon’s commitment to Lonette reflects a very un-superficial love that both endures pain and offers forgiveness.

In addition to the example of love shown between Lonette and Marlon, Law’s Alfie brings in two more storylines that further exemplify what love can be/should be. One is the relationship between Alfie’s boss and his wife. While Alfie refers to their constant state of arguing as a good reason why people should never marry, when Mrs. Wing leaves Mr. Wing, Mr. Wing is in tears. As soon as Alfie suggests Mr. Wing write a poem to win her back, Mr. Wing begins the task with all his effort. While love may be difficult at times, for Mr. Wing, it is clearly something worth fighting for.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to Law’s Alfie, however, is an older man named John whom Alfie meets in a bathroom. In the strangely deep conversation between two men who have just met, John tells Alfie about the sudden loss of his wife, how he spent his life putting things off and never realizing what he had, and how, in the end, he just wishes he had more time with her. As he hands Alfie his business card and leaves, he shares with Alfie two pieces of advice—one, find someone to love, and two, live every day of life as if it were your last.

The next meeting between Alfie and John occurs after Alfie visits Marlon and finds himself overcome with grief and without any friends. Once again, John offers a few bits of wisdom. In response to the seeming incomprehensiveness of Marlon’s commitment to stay with Lonette, John once again affirms the power of love saying, “You never know what you will do until you are in love.� When Alfie sadly states that he has really messed things up, John makes no hesitation to agree, but offers hope saying, “The question is—What is going to happen with the rest of your life?�

At the end of Alfie, even after nearly 40 years in which to find a sufficient answer to the questions posed in the original, Law’s Alfie asks the same questions that Caine’s Alfie asked before Law was even born. While the movie could be chalked up to the best “I hate men� break-up movie in a long time, a chick flick to be feared by every man visiting the theater with his wife or girlfriend, a depressing example of too many messed up relationships, or a remake that will never live up to the original—for most people, I believe it can be much more.

While it is not exactly the same as Caine’s Alfie, the elements that Law’s Alfie adds, the changes it makes, and the positive examples it gives create its own appeal apart from its original counterpart or stereotypical labels. Although the movie spends a great deal of time portraying unfulfilling and dysfunctional relationships that fall far short of suggesting any real love, Alfie’s sadness at what he has missed paired with the examples provided by Marlon and Lonette, Mr. Wing, and John suggest that love is something that actually exists and also is not something that should be avoided at all costs.

While Alfie’s question, “What’s it all about?� still hangs in the air at the end of the movie, the answer seems to lie in the love he has seen in others’ lives and the love he feels as though he is missing. It is more than just a forced act, fake words, or grudgingly executed actions. Instead love is something that compels us to put another person first, to allow ourselves to change, to give, to forgive, to protect, to trust, to hope, and to persevere. While the minimal surface-level “love� Alfie pursues in his own life is very often the deepest level of care/concern/intimacy many people are willing to let into their lives, the love that answers Alfie’s question seems to be one that is not afraid to go deeper, risk more, build one another up instead of tearing each other down, and be real.

More than just an abstract concept that we each must figure out own our own, however, this love that asks us to go deeper than surface level is a love that is offered us all every day, ready to help us find a life of true fulfillment, offering forgiveness whenever we mess up, seeking to repair every crack and flaw in our imperfect lives, and simply asking us to trust in that love and share it with those around us.