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Time is a big theme in \u201cThe Last Five Years.\u201d The original stage production shows a large clock on the set. It\u2019s shown in \u201cThe Schmuel Song,\u201d symbolized by Jamie\u2019s story and the watch he gives her. Throughout the musical, Jamie can only think of the present moment while Cathy can only think of the future. It\u2019s ironic, then, of how they remember things: Jamie starts in the past, while Cathy starts in the present and in between we see how their perceptions and treatment of time affected their relationship.<\/p>\n
The two of them start out wanting to move on from their pasts. A common misconception in relationships is that once we found \u201cthe one,\u201d we can finally put the past behind us. Or, swinging in the other extreme, the past keeps us from ever finding someone who can accept us. Both misconceptions can be seen in \u201cShiksa Goddess\u201d and \u201cI Can Do Better than That.\u201d Jamie wants to date anyone who isn\u2019t Jewish and Cathy wants a life that\u2019s more exciting than the sleepy suburban town she grew up in. Both of them are running away from their pasts, but the insecurities they had in the past are still there with them.<\/p>\n
The two of them only bring up the past when they fight as seen in \u201cSee I\u2019m Smiling\u201d and \u201cIf I Didn\u2019t Believe In You.\u201d This is another relationship problem. \u201cLove keeps no record of wrongs\u201d says 1 Corinthians 13:6. Once Jamie becomes a bestselling writer, the two of them have fights about constantly going to parties and Cathy being constantly left out. As Leah pointed out in a previous post, Jamie doesn\u2019t offer the emotional support that Cathy wants, but neither of them are helping things by holding grudges and being impatient with each other.<\/p>\n
Speaking of impatience, Jamie and Cathy both have major impatience issues. (Yes, this is the pot calling the kettle black. I know impatience issues when I see \u2018em.) Jamie is partially impatient towards Cathy, wanting her to be as successful with her acting as he is with his writing. He also hates not having any room to breathe in his relationship. (\u201cAll that I ask for is one little corner\/One private room in the back of my heart\/Tell her I found one\/She sends out battalions to take it and blow it apart.\u201d) This stems from the misconception that relationships have to be all-consuming. Cathy wants all of Jamie and Jamie wants to lose himself in somebody. The problem is that neither of them took any sort of time to sort things out.<\/p>\n
This leads into the major problem of the relationship. The relationship moves way<\/i> too fast. They sleep together very<\/i> early in their relationship, possibly on their first date. They move in together after dating less than a year. They marry a year later at most. Their marriage falls apart just as quickly, with Jamie having a wandering eye almost as soon as the honeymoon ends and Cathy being physically apart from him, living in Ohio. The two of them are never seen taking things slow. When you\u2019re young, time seems like nothing and yet it\u2019s everything. We want perfection and we want it now and the biggest misconception that many people (including Cathy and Jamie) fall for is that time has no factor when it comes to relationships.<\/p>\n
In reality, the best relationships are best described the way Hazel Grace Lancaster described the way she fell in love with Augustus Waters. \u201cI fell in love the way you fall asleep, very slowly and then all at once.\u201d Love happens a little more slowly. Granted, Hazel Grace and Augustus also took their relationship really quickly, but I give them a pass for 2 reasons: 1) they\u2019re teenagers, 2) both of them are recovering cancer patients and have a limited number of days. Point is that, when it comes to love, one needs a lot of three things: Faith in God, patience with your significant other, and a lot<\/i> of time.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019d add that we get much more of a sense of the kind of future that Jamie and Cathy each want for themselves than the future they envision together. \u00a0Their individual desires aren\u2019t necessarily incompatible, but we hear more about their desires to succeed in their careers than we do about what they intend to be to each other. \u00a0We hear a couple negative definitions, when Jamie or Cathy describes the kind of future they\u2019re trying to\u00a0<\/em>avoid, but one of the only references to their projected life together (\u201cI want to be your wife \/ I want to bear your child\u201d in \u201cThe Next Ten Minutes\u201d) isn\u2019t really referred to again, possibly because children were a part of the marriage that was scheduled for the general future, requiring no action or preparation in the present.<\/em><\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget,\u00a0<\/em>The Last 5 Years\u00a0is available to rent or stream<\/em><\/a>, so you, too, can enjoy it and then send me a guest post. \u00a0My previous posts on the movie are\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cAsking a Lover for Too Limited Support\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Ellery Weil also contributed a guest post: \u201cThe Story of Shmuel and Tailoring Support\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and I wrote a follow up: \u201cCan\u2019t I Love You Into Being Happy?\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monique Ocampo recently joined the Patheos Catholic channel and is also a big fan of\u00a0The Last 5 Years. \u00a0In the guest post below, she discusses what she learned from Cathy and Jamie\u2019s relationship. \u00a0 Time is a big theme in \u201cThe Last Five Years.\u201d The original stage production shows a large clock on the set. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":11229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations"],"yoast_head":"\n