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Loving and Being Loved: Lars and the Real Girl

Thank you for watching Lars and the Real Girl: Loving and Being Loved!

I’m a bit nervous to make my first movie review, my channel has been mostly about games and while that’s what I’m most interested in writing about, I still want to take a moment here and there and recognize the impact of film on us.

This movie is a perfect lesson plan to show us the trials and adventure of learning to love ourselves – most importantly, that the walls between us and self-love are fabricated by rules and expectations we impose on ourselves. Lars learns that he innately deserves love not only from himself but he also deserves the love others offer him. This movie isn’t the story about a strange man and his delusion, it’s the story about the arduous work that goes into developing the confidence and energy to love and be loved.

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Sources:

Although this is one of my only videos without citations I was deeply inspired by the research into Media Psychology and Identification/Social Cognitive Theory – the theory that proposes we can learn from others (even fictional mediated others like Lars) about how to approach and overcome our own life struggles. I was also inspired by the works of Alain de Botton concerning the skills of loving others and oneself.

Subtitles:

[Music]

my channel is focused mainly on video

games so far

but movies and films can offer a lot too

i’ve always known i had to make a video

about lars and the real girl

it’s one of my favorites the main

character lars

is one of the few movie protagonists

i’ve seen with mental health struggles

who’s portrayed with respect

and compassion this movie confronts

stigma surrounding mental health and

therapy

and delivers an overwhelmingly kind

message about the power of friendship

the importance of compassion and the

incredible adventure of learning how to

love oneself

although some audience members might sit

down for this movie ready to heckle lars

casting him and people with similar

struggles in far-off

out-groups what they’re treated to

instead is a story that

applies to everyone and a few lessons we

all need

including how to accept love we don’t

think we deserve

this is a story about a painfully shy

young man named lars

and his love for a sex doll named bianca

we watch as the sympathetic lars

develops a delusion

that the sex doll he ordered online is

actually a young missionary who is

taking a sabbatical to travel around the

world

starting with his sleepy little

wisconsin town

this situation terrifies his family but

he’s overjoyed by the companionship of

someone

safe and perfectly accepting like bianca

bianca is imbued with a gentle and

loving nature which delights lars

inspiring him to shed some shyness and

dive into his first committed

relationship with her

the backdrop of this story is the comedy

and drama of his family and community

scrambling to understand

and quote fix what’s going on in lars’s

head

along the way people see new sides of

lars of themselves

and learn the importance of bianca’s

presence

this movie offers us not only a deeply

compassionate portrait of mental illness

and loneliness

it also invites us to consider in what

ways we are like lars

when have we felt similarly lonely when

have we stubbornly denied ourselves

access to love tenderness or physical

affection

we spend much of the 106 minute run time

observing lars and his relationship with

bianca and how he grows from it

like the characters that surround lars

along the way we begin to understand the

significance of bianca

and while watching him and bianca we

might find ourselves meditating on the

nature of relationships

particularly our own we might think

about our experiences

about the loneliness and love that we’ve

known we might recognize what love does

to lars

around bianca the anxiety that kept lars

frozen and hidden at home begins to melt

away

in bianca he finds a sorely needed

compassionate and loving ear

she’s willing to listen to him talk

about himself his family his

interests and his feelings although

bianca isn’t real

lars grants himself permission through

her love for him

to celebrate himself lovingly he speaks

more openly to others about himself when

bianca is near

he visits personally significant places

to more deeply reminisce about his

difficult childhood

and he feels that his presence at

parties or gatherings

is justified and wanted he begins to

love himself

to forgive himself for his

eccentricities and even put in the hard

work of battling his social anxiety

before bianca he felt safe alone and

comfortable with the pain of loneliness

he didn’t try to reach out to others and

any help offered to him seemed like it

was a burden

a false hope that he could deserve

affection when he was sure he didn’t

but after meeting bianca he lets himself

consider

that he might be worth the time and love

of others all of this

is accomplished without bianca needing

to be real

through lars we can better see how many

of our emotional walls

in love and self-love are as imaginary

as bianca is

although we might feel justified in

denying ourselves kind words or

compassionate understandings

this movie challenges us to break our

own rules and allow ourselves to

appreciate ourselves

there might be a concern that a movie

like this trivializes the realities of

people who struggle

with social anxiety or delusions but

something i love about this movie is how

full lars feels as a character

it’s made clear to us that beyond the

mental health struggles we watch him

battle he’s a very intelligent deeply

loving and very insightful person

he understands people very well and

picks up on small emotional cues and

others immediately

something he must have learned as a

survival skill when he was a child

he is not a writer’s puppet for silly

shenanigans he feels real and relatable

making him a perfect role model for

others who can find a little bit of

themselves in him

an absolutely touching realization that

we learn about lars doing one of his

many therapy sessions

is that physical contact with another

person brings him an almost

unbearable pain we also learn about his

cold childhood with his father

lars suffered as a child his father

neglected him in key emotional ways

because

lars’s birth resulted in his mother’s

death

lars was alone with a father who

withheld love affection and attention

until lars believed he didn’t deserve

those things and even developed a pain

condition that kept him from wanting or

enjoying touch

and keeping him from getting any hopeful

ideas that someday he could be allowed

to want

affection there is so much subtlety in

the writing for this film

re-watching it i’ve noticed that lars is

never far from the baby blanket made by

his mother

which might serve as a symbol to him

that someone once loved him

he uses it as a scarf or a blanket and

to protect those he loves from the cold

and the arrival of bianca seemed to have

been triggered by his anxiety around the

pregnancy of his brother’s wife which

must have reminded him about the loss of

his mother

although we may not have similar traumas

we may understand on a deeply personal

level what it feels like to be neglected

unloved or to run from affection this is

why lars’s eventual triumph over his

emotional walls

his hard work over several months to

learn to accept touch

and joy from relationships can feel so

inspirational to us

we like lars have identified ways in

which we cause pain to ourselves or

withhold what we need from ourselves

and we also want to fight those hurtful

misunderstandings

mars has the opportunity to start a real

relationship with someone

from the very beginning of the film but

avoids it like the plague

this is more normal than we think

however this is something that’s not

widely discussed in society

after all having a significant other is

seen as a trophy to prove our social

prowess or our normalcy

not being in a relationship can feel

scary we don’t like feeling alone and

worse

being seen as alone for all the

attention and idolization we give

romantic love in our stories

we don’t talk about how scary it is to

actually step into a committed

relationship

lars relationship with bianca is a

manifestation of this poignant fear

it can be very reassuring to see a

character who is as scared of love as we

were

or are it’s also encouraging to see him

overcome that fear just enough to want

to take a chance on someone he can’t

control

we might need this movie when we feel

like we’ve been a little too hard on

ourselves and need to contemplate our

strangeness

in a compassionate way lars no matter

how strange he is remains a lovable

person throughout the film who we

genuinely

care for and wish the best for by

exercising compassion for lars at his

strangest

we can gain some practice exercising

compassion for ourselves at our

strangest

we might need this movie to gain some

encouragement to love ourselves despite

our quirks

this film turns the usual formula on its

head although it ends with the hopeful

note that lars feels strong enough to

start a relationship with a woman he

really likes

the cure for lars’s shyness wasn’t a

kiss at the end of the movie

it was only because of his hard work

throughout the film that he could open

this new chapter of his life

romance doesn’t solve our problems we

can’t replace self-love with the love of

another

instead like lars we must all embark on

the hard work of learning to open our

hearts to others affection with the

confidence that we deserve their love

and to be strong enough to offer

our energy patience and care in return

loving others and being loved are skills

if we could develop a curriculum of

movies to help teach us or remind us

about important life lessons

lars and the real girl would belong

neatly in a lesson plan about the

scariest and most mysterious skills we

all struggle to learn how to love

and how to be loved thank you so much

for watching

if you’d like to see more videos about

mental health games and movies

please go ahead and subscribe if you

have any suggestions for other movies or

games to cover

please let me know in the comments below

and as always happy watching