Copyright © 2020 Maddy Hamey-Thomas I was first introduced to Melvin, the neighbourhood misanthrope of As Good as It Gets, as a child. Possibly because the narrative that ‘people can change’ is a perennially heart-warming one and a particularly good lesson for kids. As one such narrative, we discover through the course of the film that Melvin can indeed develop feelings, romantic and otherwise, despite his almost super-power level abilities to hurt, to smart, to really cut to the deep vein of our Achille’s heel.
On re-watching the movie, I first had to confront Melvin’s stark bigotry: only ten minutes in, we hear him scream ‘pansy-ass stool-pusher’ at his neighbour and racially describe another acquaintance in a deep, ‘black’ voice of mocking. Even with my ignorance of prejudice as a provincial child, the wide berth Melvin is given by all other human life would have been clear signal enough of his toxicity. Plus, during the opening credits he chucks a dog down the rubbish chute. Most people fear Melvin, except Carol – his regular waiter – who is markedly resilient to his presence and later, lenient towards his romantic advances.
After Melvin’s previously mentioned, much-maligned neighbour Simon is hospitalised from a brutal home-assault, Melvin is reluctantly made to dog-sit his pet. He begins to develop emotional attachments and despite his often-selfish motivations, there are fleeting expressions of Melvin’s concern for both the ostensibly despised terrier and Simon’s welfare. The film indicates that Melvin’s goodness is buried intact. When Simon returns home, he still needs Melvin’s help and when Melvin doles out a cheque to cover Carol’s sick child’s medical bills, the shadow of obligation falls on charity’s recipients. The impact of Melvin’s good deeds is tempered greatly by the question of who owes who what, and since Melvin is in love with Carol, how entangled she becomes in his ‘generosity’. Despite this, the amour becomes gradually mutual, if confused on her part. Since goodness is squeezed out and offensiveness dulled, he is rewarded with the big ‘rom-com’ kiss.
I haven’t thought seriously about romance in so long that I recently forgot – sacrilege – the difference in meaning between ‘swipe left’ and ‘swipe right’. As Good as It Gets had dating playing on my mind again. If I’m honest, I’ve never knowingly dated such a threat to society as Melvin, but in therapy, I have experimented with tolerating situations that feel risky. I’m admittedly a fearful person but I know that in dating, there is inevitably a ‘danger phase’, whoever you are. So I’ve sat with the fear of having nothing to say – even when that fear dictates that you have nothing to say – and I’ve made myself behavioural rules like, only looking at those texts when the larger part of anxiety has subsided.
One two-month stint of dating had me calling my best friend frequently to tell her about the phenomenal man I’d met, the perfect second date, the new quality of the fucking evening light. This was living. Maybe I also mentioned that I was forgetting to prepare normal meals and during meetups I drank more than I wanted to and ordered soft food that I could digest (did it seem like I was having constant dental work?). But I was too far gone by that point to step back, intoxicated. In time, the exhilaration I felt at the start needed more fuel to sustain it as the weeks rolled by. I couldn’t identify or supply that fuel, and what started as excitement tinged with stress became a nauseous punch to the gut.
When it ended, I felt a brief respite, a calming blankness. Then I experienced one of the most disorientating bouts of anxiety I’d had in years. I remember concentrating on making a bizarre Secret Santa gift for an acquaintance at work that year – it was a cake with the Gilmore Girls hand-painted onto it, if you must know – simply because I was terrified of letting thoughts into my head. I could still remember some of the exquisite side of dating. I wanted somehow to get back to that, but then I felt well again.
From Carol’s perspective, dating Melvin brings her new freedoms and glimpses of flirtatious gratification. She wears a prettily matching outfit of reddish tones to their dinner date, her hair curled, her manner playful. She enjoys Melvin looking at her, enjoys looking at Melvin. When Melvin collects her from propping up the bar, she walks up and down a while – first to collect the scarf she forgot and secondly to lead her too-faithful-minion-of-a drinks waiter, who follows behind, on a merry chase around the other tables. Melvin’s gaze is allowed to linger.
Melvin sees Carol: gorgeous and relaxed.
Carol meets his gaze: pleasure in seeing and being seen. But a gruff refusal to dance, a comment about her ‘house dress’ and a bizarre admission of using Carol for conversion therapy for Simon later, and things soon fall apart. Later, they resume. It’s indicative of the way dating often goes, although here magnified by the blatant unacceptability of Melvin’s ‘views’ and for being a master of ‘the neg’. Flaws in the other person are identified, assessed, we often decide there’s enough there to continue, even when those flaws hurt us.
Still it’s true that the electric combination typical of dating – pre-conceived fashion, admiration in consensual voyeurism – cannot be overexaggerated. All couples remember the early days of dressing like feasts for each other’s eyes: letting the visual say things we’re too scared to voice, dressed up in our hopes. I remember many date outfits long past the event. The attempt at seduction is addictive. I often wish I could feel that sparkly connection to my clothes when I’m not dating, but it’s something different when it’s me and him and only the clothes we’re wearing in between.
Carol yearns for that chemistry too. In a remarkable scene she shares with her mother, she struggles to explain how unmoored she feels now that her child’s health is secure, because without that anxiety she has a void. This sequence does an amazing job of suggesting the painful tumult of romantic loneliness at the same time as it entirely minimises its profoundness as a problem (which I think is apt – ‘it’s everything and nothing’ can address a wealth of romantic angst). Helen Hunt’s performance here is by turns wordless, mumbling, miming, explosive – all shot through with frustration – and entirely moving. But with this much-needed space newly in her life, must she dwell on it morosely? Thankfully, at this point her mother just wants to take her out.
Bewildered and distraught on considering the absence of romantic love. Throughout As Good as It Gets, I sense the risk that runs alongside romance but simultaneously, the film makes me feel, well… gooey. I forget to take my notes, swooning as the camera slow-zooms in to Carol witnessing Melvin’s tender side. I hear the 3-note ascending refrain that returns every time that Melvin surprises her: suggestive of intimacy, a release of pent-up feeling, the sweet forgiveness that comes when you’re weary of being on guard. My heart lifts. She’s dating a semi-reformed fascist, for God’s sake, but it doesn’t always feel risky – like presumably dating a fascist would be – to watch. Instead its soothing, transformative, elative, like I imagine love could be. But Carol herself voices a personal cost to this relationship, when she tells Melvin: ‘I don’t think I wanna know you anymore. All you do is make me feel bad about myself.’ This burden of watchfulness, wariness, is unequal and does not find a parallel in Melvin.
There is another, safer but no less enriching, type of love in the film: when Simon and Carol meet. Both are vulnerable – Simon is physically frail and emotionally distraught throughout from the attack; Carol is financially tried, terrified for her kid and lonely – but they care for and about each other’s stories. On the group’s central road trip, Carol is so fed up with Melvin that she bunks with Simon. She gives her roommate new confidence as a painter and Carol is given touch and attention in return. The one lights up the other. Melvin is furious that they hit it off. His outburst – ‘Did you have sex with her?!’ – is met with Carol’s delighted response – ‘No. We did better than sex. We held each other!’
The morning after ‘the night before’: Simon and Carol are visibly good for one another. It’s not 1997, but we still fall under the spell of the prevailing story of love, whose tunnel vision holds powerful sway. Sometimes I talk about the guys I like or the dates I’ve had with the knowledge of the pure entertainment value it has as social currency, but not from a true desire to divulge. I’m aware that stories without romantic love feel dull to some. Yet I feel a strong urge to find new ways to talk about, even invest in, what I uncomplicatedly enjoy, even if I don’t yet understand where it will take me. Relationships with nature, with art, my friends, family, work, absurdist humour, dancing, aloneness or even… that person I half-fancy in an undefinable way but mostly just want to talk to without it going anywhere. Not as a means to an end, but for its own sake and its own story.
Carol is torn apart by her lack of romance and it makes perfect sense for her to search for it. But how can this feel like an affirmative choice, when she must bear so much risk alone? Where is the hope for a real selection of decisions at our disposal, if we rarely get to think about the parameters of other options? I love As Good as It Gets, it deserves the Oscars it won for Best Actor and Actress – I have rarely seen such earnestly captivating performances of imperfect people living imperfect lives (let’s not forget Carol is intolerant too: she sees Melvin’s OCD as a quirk). But it’s not so much the ‘relationship compromise’ of the film’s title that disturbs me, but the idea that we should tolerate risk at all – sometimes unseen or belated – costs. One being, the other love stories out there all the time, unexplored.