Closer (2004)
Possibly a movie review, and a very raw insight into my brain
I watched Closer (2004) recently and it’s been sitting in my head in a way I didn’t expect.
It’s been more than a day and I keep coming back to it at random moments. Not in an “I loved this movie” way, but in a “why is this still bothering me” way.
It’s one of those films people love recommending when they talk about grey areas in love. When they say things like “relationships are complicated” or “infidelity isn’t always black and white.”
And yes, the film absolutely lives in that space.
But what surprised me more is how current it feels. For something that came out two decades ago, it could’ve easily been set today. The dynamics. The language. The emotional patterns. Nothing about it feels dated.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. Not the way I imagined love would feel when I was younger.
Which probably means that love, for me, has been a lot of things it shouldn’t have been.
It’s been jealousy.
It’s been control.
It’s been codependency.
It’s been temporary comfort. A safe space. Predictability when everything else in my life felt unstable.
Sometimes it felt like safety. But only partially. And never consistently.
I have a fairly dysregulated nervous system. And a lot of my “love” has really just been my body trying to calm itself down through another person.
Closer walks you through the lives of four people. And the strange thing is, you don’t fully hate any of them.
They’re all flawed. Some more unlikeable than others. But there’s something recognisable in all of them. At multiple points in the film, it felt like someone was narrating thoughts I’ve had but never quite said out loud.
Dan calls it love.
Anna calls it confusion.
Larry calls it truth.
Alice calls it honesty.
Actual companionship is probably all of those things at once.
But so many relationships think just one is enough.
What Closer really does is strip everything down to a deeply buried human flaw most people live their entire lives without naming.
We want to be loved without being fully accountable for the harm our desire causes.
We want freedom without fallout.
Honesty without consequence.
Intensity without responsibility.
So delusion becomes easy.
Avoiding accountability becomes easy.
Manipulation becomes easy.
Gaslighting becomes the easiest thing in the world.
Most of us are just running away from ourselves. And that’s exactly what we project onto our partners, again and again, until we feel a little more secure in our own state of being.
This movie came out 21 years ago. And I keep wondering whether humans have actually evolved in how we approach relationships at all.
It feels like we’ve just become more self-aware. We have better language now. A term for everything. A diagnosis for every pattern.
But fundamentally? Morally?
We’re still pretty corrupt. Often more than we’re willing to admit.
Closer doesn’t give you answers. It doesn’t tell you who to root for. It just hands you a mirror and lets you sit with it.
Which is probably why it’s still so uncomfortable.
Anyway.
Unreal cast. Obviously.