For most of my life, there have been few things that I’ve been as interested in as media studies. This isn’t so much the chance to drop dozens of pop culture references into a work to be trendy. If I’m being honest, that’s actually a bit lazy. What I mean is that I explore how the media we consume shapes our personal identities. I believe that no reference will be dated so long as it ties to character. After all, nobody bats an eye at Homer when he wrote “The Odyssey” as this great fan fiction to Greek mythology. It’s all about intent, and I personally believe that a song or a film has this strange unifying power to connect and isolate, speaking to something deeply rooted in our soul. I’ve tried to capture it in my fiction, and I can only hope it resonates with those reading my work.
That is why I’m very sensitive about music in film. While I’m no scholar, I’ve grown to appreciate how a score can alter one’s mood, or how a perfectly timed pop song can make something comic or tragic. Again, it’s all about perspective and I cringe a bit when I notice a creator using something too familiar. To me, the beauty of media is that you can create your own world, setting up your own soundtrack to play whatever you want. Unless it’s expressive to character, I don’t know why you’d choose something that everyone else does. I want something that enhances my experience. Say what you will about his actual films, but it’s what makes John Hughes’ aesthetic timeless, able to conjure up a memory just by hearing Simple Minds or The Psychedelic Furs.
This may be why I still feel deeply moved to my core by Disobedience (2018). It is true that the story is phenomenal and full of symbolism (I’ll get to that), but for me everything that’s brilliant can be found in its soundtrack decisions. Seeing as it’s a story centering around the Orthodox Jewish culture, it’s interesting to find The Cure as the outlier. This is the one escape from the synagogue, of people discussing traditional texts. Everything about listening to “Love Song” in this is secular, itself a disobedience even if there’s not a single blasphemous thing said in the song.
But, more importantly, the song is thematically resonant to everything that’s important to the film. This is the type of needle drop that I’ve been personally chasing my whole writing career. It’s the way that the song can remain the same, but the characters change, our perspectives change. So much about the story is different from the first time that it’s played, and by the end it gave me chills. Even further, my thoughts unraveled over the next 12 hours about how the song, and the story, has so much more going on than I had ever given it credit for.
Plain and simple, I always saw “Love Song” as a romantic one. It could be because I wasn’t even a teenager when I first heard it. I wasn’t concerned about whether my family loved me, or if society loved what I had to say. Love was something you had with a significant other that you met and grew with. They had a whole genre called love stories, and never did that involve someone who didn’t fit the “boy/girl meets boy/girl” premise.
But director Sebastián Lelio clearly has an insight that I’ve missed for 20 years now. It forced me to pull out “Disintegration” and look at this song closer. While I had always seen it as a bit vague on purpose, I still thought it conveyed love perfectly. How could it not with lines like this, which summarize Disobedience on a haunting level:
Whenever I’m alone with youYou make me feel like I am home again
It doesn’t get clearer than that. Home is a place of comfort, and Disobedience understands the search for comfort very well. Going in, I understood it mostly to be a lesbian forbidden love story. Having seen other queer love stories like Call Me By Your Name (2017) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), I guess that I assumed that this would be a more centralized story, where we get to see this relationship evolve behind closed doors. We don’t get too much insight into the supporting characters, save for when they provide helpful plot details. I assumed Disobedience was strictly about Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams.
You wouldn’t be wrong, but you’re definitely not right. To give a brief set-up, Weisz is returning home to mourn the passing of her father. As she performs the process of letting go, she asks herself if her relationship with him is in a good place. She feels some guilt for their past, and it’s something that she grapples with for the whole journey. During one of these events, she meets McAdams, whom she hasn’t seen since childhood yet remembers having deep desires for. She is married to Alessandro Nivola, and it’s not nearly as fulfilling as one could hope. It exists, a family is on the way, but what is it all for?
At the start of the story, everyone is hidden even from each other. Lelio fills the frame with these small ways that alter the perspective of these characters, unable to see one’s true self. At different points characters hide underneath wigs, find comfort behind distorted glass, or even these walls that hide from the rest of the world. Considering the sexual politics around Orthodoxy lean conservative, it’s also hiding the love between Weisz and McAdams from their own beliefs, constantly being questioned as to whether this disobedience is worth it.
The more that I think about “Love Song” in this context, the more that I realize how it’s one of the best song cues I’ve ever heard in film. Not since Career Girls (1997) has The Cure been used as effectively as the first major scene between our love interests. Weisz slowly turns up the radio. She nods along as he sings those lyrics. It’s the first break from the tradition, and even then it’s something so universal. Who doesn’t want love? She feels it in her body as she stares at McAdams, slowly realizing what’s going on. “Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am home again.” The text couldn’t be more obvious, and it’s the best way to depict this unspoken desire, the way that it differentiates from the world they live in. Also, the calm opening builds with their passion, slowly becoming more recognizable as he sings in almost a whisper.
Of course, it’s easier to understand with Weisz. When she’s introduced, she is taking pictures of a tattooed man. The act itself symbolizes the disobedience of marking one’s body, meaning they can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery (eternal displacement). These small ways establish how Weisz and McAdams feel disconnected from their environment. Along with a lecture about William Shakespeare’s Othello (a forbidden interracial love story), Lelio packs these small discussions of morality clashing with society at every turn.
One of the most admirable things about Disobedience is how even if the romance goes against centuries of teaching, Lelio doesn’t wish to criticize. Nivola serves as the perspective into the church, looking for guidance on how to accept this news. He is a Rabbi and must risk either disowning his wife with terrible consequences, or find some better form of solace. While the pain that lives inside these characters are real, there is something cathartic about the closing stretch where the walls come down, where the wigs fly off and everyone finally becomes honest with themselves. It may be painful, but the sense of repression is worse.
Because the most cathartic scenes in the film are when characters express honesty with each other. This is especially true of Weisz and McAdams, whose relationship is filled with so much tension. They’re overwhelmed with a need to kiss each other, protect themselves and provide a love that has been absent in their lives for presumed decades. That is why every kiss radiates with desire, where the sex scene arrives with so much force that you’re in awe. There is this believability to every moment, where they’re so in love that the intimacy becomes real. The commitment between Weisz and McAdams exists both in presence and in absence. McAdams especially plays vulnerable very well, making her guarded nature around the world (especially as she’s towered by male Orthodox Jews) more powerful. There’s a sense of hiding in a crowd, where even the presence of them feels judgmental.
The final stretch of the film does what the best of forbidden love stories do. After building up this passion, these moments of refuted desire, it begins to realize how hard it is to keep things going. Weisz insists on McAdams escaping with her, but it’s not so easy. There is a safety with Nivola. Even then, she has a powerful revelation when realizing that she feels imprisoned by faith, desiring to raise her child outside of the church, to give her a freedom that she hasn’t had. There’s a sincerity to it that you understand, that even if the lesbian romance is over, there will still be some nasty comments ahead.
That may be why one of the most memorable scenes to not involve the two leads involves Nivola at temple. Like most characters, he begins from behind distorted glass, pacing back and forth. His shape is unclear, and it feels like a look into his soul. As he rounds the corner, he finally looks full. Approaching the podium, he begins a touching speech about learning to let go and forgive. That may be the most beautiful part of this story. It doesn’t seek to condemn anyone, but reflect humanity’s ability to accept freedom as its own form of happiness.
That may be why the story ends not with the incredible farewell scene between Weisz and McAdams, but Weisz moments later at her father’s grave. While it also symbolizes the death of their relationship, the comments she shares to her father are even more touching. It’s a note of forgiveness, of feeling at peace with the past. This is what it means to be in love with someone. You forgive them for who they are, not judging them for any mistakes.
Cue “Love Song.”
It’s one of those moments that overwhelmed me in the moment. Even now I realize another brilliant stroke of this song choice. Whereas the earlier reference was quiet, the second time found it more triumphant. Everything feels much sadder now because this is the other side of love. It’s not just the passion of the moment, but what happens when it passes? As the song succinctly claims over the credits:
However far awayI will always love youHowever long I stayI will always love youWhatever words I sayI will always love you
How does one not feel the weight of those words in context to this story? Again, it’s straightforward to an effective degree. The idea of loving someone far away is what every character will have to do. Lelio’s perfection comes in not making it strictly a lesbian drama. Instead, it’s about Nivola’s struggle with faith and marriage, Weisz’s struggle with her father, and McAdams determining what is best for her future. Everything is a journey of love and embodies how we struggle to do the right thing, even if it comes at great sacrifice.
I understand that Disobedience is so much more than The Cure reference, but it means so much to me to see a song convey so much meaning. On the surface, it’s a secular love song. To go deeper is to see it as the self-expression of Weisz, who even with confidence can’t publicly express herself. All the way down to a metatextual level, the song comes to have so much power in this story, symbolizing the love that every character is dealing with. There is no antagonist in this story, just several difficult decisions to deal with. That is the one side of love that never gets any easier, and I adore how this film conveys that.
On a side note, I’m mad at myself for not seeing this in theaters because I’m sure it would’ve only heightened my emotional attachment to this story. To hear that ending in surround sound might have wrecked me worse than I currently am. This is a masterpiece, and I’m honestly confused why people don’t make a bigger deal about it.
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