Introduction
Good relationships between a woman and a man are difficult to preserve. Real-life is not a fairy-tale where couples live happily ‘till the death separates them.’ One has to make a lot of effort and be patient to create a happy family getting through all difficulties together. There are a lot of family movies that show family values on the screen. The Story of Us is one such movie that is better to watch together with the whole family.
This movie is a good example of the relationship between a man and a woman. The main characters are Ben and Katie Jordan who are the spouses. Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer play these parts. This happy couple having lived together for 15 years, experiences some difficulties in their relationships. They cannot understand the paradox of life when the qualities that they were attracted by before became the reason for the distance between the two of them. Katie Jordan who fell in love with Ben’s playfulness, unpredictability, and imagination gets disappointed and becomes to judge his childish naivety. There are a lot of factors that make people different. They are not only traits that influence the life of two people but their education or religious beliefs. Although the designer and the writer seem to have a lot of common things together Katie and Ben have different values in their lives as has been found out later. Ben remains a romantic person, he still believes in happy endings. Katie compares Ben’s philosophy with a children’s book. Sometimes people are too different to live together. They may fascinate each other spending some time together but living together is too difficult for them. The person may be loved by another one when he/she occupies some of his/her private space but the attitude to the person may be changed completely if he/she occupies all this space while living together. When Ben and Katie were not a married couple, she was fascinated by his romanticism, but she got bored and understood she underestimated it when they got married. The Jordans found the temporary separation as a solution to this problem. They decided to live apart while their children, Josh and Erin were spending their time at the summer camp. What was the real reason for their separation? Did they fall out of love with each other?
Procreation and recreation
Family needs a lot of effort to be kept together. It is necessary to make concessions in an everyday life and sometimes make a martyr of oneself. Although the marriage is based on love and passion, these are not enough to keep a happy family. Respect and support are also very important in the marriage. Although Katie and Ben have chosen separation as the solution to their problem, they think about their children and try to keep the family together to make them happy. There is the belief that procreation unites the couple; couples who have children are more likely to live together despite all difficulties and disagreements than those who do not have children. Procreation is a worthy cause for recreation. When there are no children in the family it seems that nothing connects you with the beloved person. In The Story of Us Katie and Ben try to maintain the façade of a happy family for their children sending them to the summer camp while they understand what goes wrong in their family. They need some rest from each other. It seems for them that living apart is the only solution to their problem.
Ben and Katie can both be different. They try to show everyone that they are a happy family; when they are alone, they quarrel with each other all the time they are together. More than that, they have their private selves that are concealed from the outer world. They have to use pretense to separate their children from the real problems of their family (Levy, 1999).
This story demonstrates that the marriage consists not only of happy times but of challenging problems, day-to-day grind, boring routine, and other momentous events that cool off feelings and passion (Levy, 1999). It is necessary to add firewood to light the previous feelings. Sometimes married couples achieve the recreation of their relationships and sometimes there is not a happy end to their fascinating story of love.
Conclusion
The Story of Us touches upon the range of debatable questions concerning marriage. This movie presents the everyday life of the couple who has lived for 15 years with problems and quarrels. This couple having realized that there is something wrong with their relationship, decides to live apart. It is difficult to find the reason for such separation after 15 years of living together. Maybe they have made a mistake to get married or they have never loved each other. There is no couple that does not face such problems but the desire to keep the family leads to recreation.
Reference
Levy, E. (1999). The Story of Us. Web.