Romeo and Juliet, An Affair to Remember and Moulin Rouge

The path of true love never did run smooth. Three such love stories from our time are ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘An Affair to Remember’ and the recent movie ‘Moulin Rouge’. These great well-known stories depict the path of true love littered with tragedy, other people trying to sabotage love and other disasters befalling the star-struck lovers. Nothing in love goes smoothly all the time, there are always hiccups along the way. This is the key factor that makes these stories and other great love stories, so popular and unforgettable. A story about true love is never complete without tragedy and troubles dogging the lovers’ every step.

In the story ‘Romeo and Juliet’, two powerful families have feuded for generations. Romeo from one family falls in love with Juliet from the opposing family. Romeo and Juliet arrange secret meetings and then decide to get married. Wrongful accusations, misunderstandings and plots going awry plague the pair. The story ends with the very last misunderstanding where Romeo, believing Juliet to be dead when really sleeping, kills himself. Juliet wakens and seeing her lover dead, takes her own life.

This story is one of the greatest love stories of all time. There would not be too many people who have not heard of it. The story would not be as popular if Romeo and Juliet met, their families made up, they married and lived happily ever after. We love the tragic element of this story. It makes us cry, it makes us feel deep emotions, it stirs up feelings like no other love story. The path of this true love is not smooth, but the path with its roughness and obstacles, seems to be the best way of showing the nobility and strength of true love.

In the story ‘An Affair to Remember’, of the late fifties, two people meet on a cruise and fall in love. They decide to meet at the Empire State building in six months when they will both be free to pursue a life together. On that day the man, Nickie waits atop the Empire State building. Terry, the woman is rushing to get there but in her haste of looking up at the building is tragically run over and becomes a paraplegic. The man thinks that she does not love him so he becomes depressed and starts painting pictures and he paints one of her. She sees this painting and buys it. Then on Christmas Eve he decides to look her up in the phone book and visits her flat. The woman pretends everything is fine and makes small chat but she is sitting on the couch with a blanket over her legs. The man suddenly realises that she is the same woman and looks for the painting and seeing it he notices her wheelchair. They both cry and embrace and the story ends.

This story shows that nothing in the world can stop true love. The loss of the use of a person’s legs, is nothing compared to true love. The tragedy of this path of true love, is heart wrenching. Audiences reach for tissues and cry their souls out. It stirs such great emotion and feeling.

In the story ‘Moulin Rouge’, it is the ‘Bohemian Revolution’ of the 1900’s. A young writer named Christian travels to Paris to search for an exciting story about love. He somehow gets mixed up with a band of performers and accompanies them to the Moulin Rouge where he meets a beautiful courtesan, Satine. Christian and Satine fall in love. A wealthy duke is also in love with Satine and uses blackmail, money and his power to separate the lovers and have Satine all to himself. What is more, Satine is dying from consumption but does not tell Christian. Zidler reasons with Satine and tells her that it is better for her to break Christian’s heart and tell him that she doesn’t love him or the duke will surely kill him. The pair are thrown into turmoil until the very end, when Satine declares to Christian that she does love him. The Duke is killed and Christian and Satine embrace. The tragedy has not ended there though, for Satine dies in Christian’s arms a few moments later. This story showed us that “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return”. This is the quote that was made famous by the movie. Despite the fact that true love’s path is not smooth, it is so valuable that a lover will do anything to hold on to it. Satine was willing to lose Christian in order to save his life because she truly loved him. Christian was willing to die or be penniless as long as he could live with his true love. True love is more valuable than money, it is a thing that people will strive for at all costs. The path of true love is not smooth but is a path well worth travelling upon.

All these stories were made great because of their tragedies. Love would not be what it is if there weren’t any bumps in the road. Love cannot and will not always be smooth because the fact is, life is not perfect and things will always happen to make life more challenging. Audiences and readers want stories about true love. They want to feel the joy and the happiness of having found a true love. We can be taken up into the character’s joyous feelings and their happy world. However, to see the beauty of love, we must appreciate the opposite of love – hate with disaster and trouble. We must see that true love is not easy to get, it is precious. If true love was easy and freely available, then onlookers would not see the beauty of it. We would not think it very special. To see the miracle of true love, we must also just as plainly see the supreme effort it took to obtain it, the opposition to it, the reason lovers’ fight for it and what it cost the lovers to have it. The path is not smooth, and must never be smooth if we are to fully appreciate what true love is.