Pretend That You Love Me
By Trevor Denning (@BookstoreThor)
Selling a lie is hard work.
Which isn’t to say that it can’t be done successfully on a large scale, since the media does it every day and has been for years. But the truth of the matter is that the truth will stand on its own. In order to get the masses to embrace the lie the media conmen seed their ideology into our stories at every opportunity.
They distract us with what they want us to see. They fill in the gaps with the things we’d never otherwise accept. They sew division to reap… what?
Turn on anything new right now and you’ll hear that everyone is either a victim or a perpetrator. You’re either suffering the effects of racism and hate, or you are the hateful racist. You’re either dying from the illness, or unknowingly spreading it. Rational people turn off the latest installment of the serialized crime show where all the actors are hiding behind surgical masks, look in the mirror or out the window, and say, “I don’t know about that.”
They want us so focused on the “systemic” that we lose sight of the “universal.”
Pretend That You Love Me isn’t just the title of Joel Haver’s no-budget movie. It’s a cry for help. It’s a command to the audience. It’s an acknowledgment of a universal desire to, if nothing else, feel loved. While the production is spartan, the YouTube movie has over 325k views and 26k users have bothered to give it a thumbs up. Less than 200 have clicked thumbs down. Haver obviously did something right.
The fact that you aren’t reading about him in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter is only further proof.
Shot almost entirely in static wide shots, watching Love Me is voyeuristic and raw. We never get an honest closeup. There are no POV shots allowing us to see things through a character’s eyes. We’re introduced to this world that wants our approval yet holds us at a distance. There are moments when the framing is painfully beautiful, which makes us all the more aware how alone we are. We share this experience with no one.
The protagonist, Joel (Joel Haver), is an awkward guy fearlessly looking for love. He invites a series of attractive women over to his apartment for first dates which aren’t much more than a glass of water, a card trick, and a record on the turntable. How did he find them? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We’re watching through the webcam. Do they even know we’re there?
Whatever judgements we held against Joel start to slip away, and like the women he pursues we start to feel some affection for this dork. He may not be winning at life, but he’s trying. It gradually comes to light that while he’s looking for a relationship and trying to make a movie, his dad is dying and Joel also has health issues of his own. We aren’t thinking so much about production quality now. We’re invested in the life of this poor guy. If we haven’t been Joel ourselves, we’ve probably felt concern for someone like him. Even at arm’s length, he’s relatable.
A little more than halfway through the film takes a sudden shift that dramatically changes our perspective on everything that came before. It’s not a cheat. It’s a moment of clarity when we didn’t even know our narrative lens was tinted. We feel for Joel in ways we never could have expected.
At the end of the day, art has nothing to sell and doesn’t drive us apart. Real art brings us together and helps us feel something outside of ourselves. Can a no-budget YouTube movie be real art? Apparently so.
