Love is an eternal theme, but also a theme that can easily be vulgarized and generalized. This old film from the 70’s is like a yellowed old story turned page by page and unfolded. It is a story about winter, which begins and ends in winter, outside the empty skating rink.Like the name of the film, the hero and heroine Oliver (Oliver) and Jennifer (Jennifer) meet and fall in love is more ordinary and simple. Just a fight in the library, it will be two people who do not know each other’s lives tightly bound together. The next shot, two people will be in a cafe ambiguously drinking coffee, the pace is fast to catch people off guard. Perhaps love does not need too many reasons and padding, only for that rendezvous when the light is put on each other. University is a temporary shelter from harsh realities. In the top-level ivory tower of Harvard University, they, like all couples in love, have beautiful dreams, about love, about ideals, about the future. I love the part where they are running and playing in the snow. In that bright snow, their unspoiled, unbound souls poetically inhabited.
Jennifer is not a stunning-looking girl, but articulate, quick-witted, understanding, full of energy. Not every Cinderella can enter the prince’s castle as she wishes, even if the prince is willing. Oliver’s parents, who are sitting on millions of dollars, do not approve of the marriage between Oliver and Jennifer, whose family only runs a small cookie business. Oliver chose love and tied the knot with his lover, a simple wedding ceremony but carried a deep love: “I give you a love far more precious than money, and give myself to you in the presence of vows and the law”.
Even though she is not accepted by Oliver’s family, Jennifer has been trying to ease Oliver’s strained relationship with his father and let them know that they love each other in their hearts. The choice to forgive because of love is the most moving thing about Jennifer. The most impressive thing is that after she and Oliver disagreed over Oliver’s father, Oliver found her outside his home with tear-stained face, sitting and waiting for him. That was the first time she said to him, “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” (Because they knew each other started with good intentions, and because they loved each other so much, they chose to forgive.
Their married life was strained, hard but full of happiness. He even had to sell Christmas trees and endure a thousand selective customers for a meager tip like a handout. But all this did not destroy his happiness, and after work he sat silently in a corner of the church, watching with warmth and love as she taught the children to sing, just as he watched her play the piano for the first time at a school concert, full of admiration and affection.
She had always supported him, whether it was his hockey game in school or his ambition to get a master’s degree in law school. His efforts did not disappoint her support either. He ran happily to her in the audience with the scholarship, and she clutched the check that looked like a piece of paper, but carried so much meaning.
Just as they were getting out of their straits and on the right track, the disease caught up with her. His tears, his reluctance, his pain, his helplessness. There is nothing sadder than that the person who fights with you cannot accompany you to enjoy the fruits of victory. The castle of love he built with her is crumbling little by little.
In front of the disease, people are as powerless as the leaves on the tree at the mercy of the autumn wind. For her, he borrowed money from his father, who had cut off contact with him. He wants to give her the best, he wants to delay her death. When I saw the hero and heroine telling each other their feelings in front of the hospital bed, tears kept flowing down. The phrase “until death do us part” is fully interpreted here. Love cannot cross death, but death can test love.
“Love means you never have to say you’re sorry. You never stole my dreams of Paris and music, they just didn’t matter as much as you did after I met you.” If Jennifer had a choice in life, she would still choose to be with Oliver, for better or for worse.
The movie can have a meaningful ending, but life has to go on. The reality is that Oliver will remarry, find a lady of the right family, with a lovely child that Jennifer could not wait for, and continue their own bright future life, in time and life’s wasted, in the siege of marriage, reminiscing about the lost passion and love …… just, and this movie no longer have a relationship. The midnight dream, the bright snow, he and Jennifer running, playing, laughing so happy.
