As I said in the previous post, what made me want to write about Brigadoon was this AV Club post on 28 creepy romantic movies. Like most lists of this sort, it’s a mixed bag ranging from the genuinely creepy (stalking, while I may accept it as romantic in a movie, is still stalking) to ones I think are more a matter of personal taste (he professed his love too soon in the relationship!—I’m aware stalker/abusers get possessive fast, but I still don’t think love-at-first-sight movies are automatically creepy) to the definitely personal taste.
To wit, Kate and Leopold is creepy because Meg Ryan gives up her friends and all the comforts of the 21st century (including human rights) so she can live with Hugh Jackman in the 19th (for obvious reasons I find the article’s claim that love across time is “bizarre” kind of funny. Right now it seems normal). Possibly a bad decision on her part, and definitely not to everyone’s taste; the author of the women’s history Bachelor Girls says in the book that the teens she took to the movie were unanimous in thinking Meg Ryan should have taken the promotion and held off on romance until she could find a modern-day boyfriend. But that said, even though I have my own problems with the film, “creepy” is a strain. And while it’s true the film slides over any classism or sexism Ryan might face, it doesn’t nostalgize the past either—she’s going back for love, not because the past was better (as my previous post noted, that’s more than can be said of Brigadoon)
Of course, I’m biased. I left my closest friends and my job to move up here with TYG. I had no idea I’d be able to support myself freelancing; I wasn’t sure I’d find a job I liked. Sure, a thousand miles or so is a gap that can be bridged, but I also know air force spouses who came here from Japan, Australia, Thailand, Spain or American spouses who wind up living all over the Third World. True, going across time is a much more drastic step, but it’s within the parameters of what I think of as a grand romantic gesture (at least in fiction). Like love at first sight. Or David Niven and Kim Hunter being willing to die for each other in 1946’s Stairway to Heaven (all rights to image with current holder).
As I mentioned several years ago (wow, I’ve been doing this blog a while) fictional love is tricky precisely what’s sexy or seductive or creepy varies so much from generation to generation and person to person, even more so than most matters of fictional taste. As Siskel and Ebert pointed out, if I like the movie, if the romance works, I don’t feel the need to look at it with an objective eye. Sure, maybe in real life the couple wouldn’t last, but if they can make believe in the chemistry, I’ll accept that they’ll somehow succeed, even if it takes Tolkien’s eucatastrophe.
Brigadoon is everything AV Club objects to in its column, but amplified. Kelly falls for Cyd Charisse’s Fiona after one day with her. His decision is irrevocable, because leaving Brigadoon will destroy it. And the film does indeed suggest that living in a 1700s Scots village is a vast improvement over New York.
I like the musical; I was really in the mood for something glossy and glamorous when I watched it, and you can always count on MGM for that. And Kelly and Charisse, dancing, can totally put over the romance. Even so, I don’t completely buy the ending … but I think I buy it enough.
