Love Streams (1984): How Cassavetes Captures The Messiness of Internal Life

Before I had even finished John Cassavetes’ Love Streams (1984) I had already attempted to define it, or at least pin down the reason for its praise. My in-the-moment analysis was as follows: no doubt, I am watching a film made-up of memorable pieces, intimate and bizarre human moments made real by charismatic performances from Gena Rowlands and Cassavetes himself, both of whom play equally broken people; however, these pieces belong to a messy whole, an overly-personal and convoluted directorial vision that is unsympathetic to the needs and desires of the viewer. The pace seemed slow, the plot meandering, and the artistic motivation egoic. Particularly infuriating, I thought, were the many half-conversations Cassavetes sets up regarding the nature of creativity, love, and life, which scream for profound insights from the film’s unconventional characters, but consistently fizzle out just as they are getting going.

In short, Love Streams is an arduous viewing experience. While I was in the midst of watching the film, I determined that to be its clearest downfall. Now, however, a few days after viewing it, I believe its arduousness is exactly what makes it so successful and I recoil from my initial analysis. Love Streams is challenging not for the reasons I initially criticized, nor because of its superficial elements e.g. its lengthy runtime (though I’d argue it would benefit from another edit or two). It is a difficult film due to its utter refusal to play into audience expectations, and by that same token, thanks to Cassavetes’s complete disinterest in moralizing his characters despite their obvious faults.

 Cassavetes plays Robert, a semi-famous erotic novelist residing in L.A. Robert drinks too much and routinely stays out late, obsessively chasing down any and every thrill that passes him by. His sister Sarah, played by Rowlands, is mentally unwell and in the middle of a bad divorce that has separated her from her daughter. Everything about Love Streams feels familiar, or at least it baits us into believing so. At first, it appears to be a gritty black-comedy about the dangers of a life of excess in the hills of Hollywood. The film’s intertwining plotline begs for these two characters to collide in some dramatic and revolutionary way. Its art-house aesthetic and Godard-like subject matter produce the feeling that a cathartic philosophical dialogue is endlessly right around the corner. The main character himself – a hardnosed and self-destructive alcoholic writer who is obsessed with women – is so archetypal and clichéd that we assume we can predict his every move following the film’s opening sequence.

Nonetheless, the satisfaction of seeing these things unfold is withheld at every turn. Cassavetes operates here with expert restraint. In the case of Robert, the film does circle around his excessive and irresponsible behaviour, sure, but it doesn’t comment on it. Cassavetes and Rowlands do meet, but it only gives way to an immediate and unsensational recognition of their love for one another as brother and sister. Not much really develops from their reunion as the characters continue their self-destructive behaviours only now each other’s occasional company, where they repeatedly drink and almost discuss topics that we, the audience, long to call the ‘themes’ of Love Streams (e.g. love, creativity, sex, parenthood, etc.).

 The most notable scene derived from their coming together is one in which Sarah (Rowlands) buys a variety of farm animals as a gift to her brother, so that he has a “living thing that he could love”. Rowlands showing up to her disgruntled brother’s house with a taxi full of animals reads like slapstick comedy. But the scene is dragged out for so long and delivered with such a shrewd anxiety that it ends up more a bizarre spectacle of desperation than a cheap comedic moment played for laughs. This scene also characterizes the strange and subtle surrealism embedded in Love Streams; an undertone formed from inconsistent acting styles, abrupt and intrusive dream sequences, tight close-ups, hazy colour palettes, and a breaking of continuity editing. The film’s surreal quality builds so gradually that I repeatedly found myself asking: was this movie this weird twenty minutes ago?

 But again, even these stylistic choices probe us to chase down meaning and signification that simply isn’t there. The subtle surreal elements in the film do appear to be representative of the psychic life of the characters in some way or another, but the manner in which Cassavetes goes about deploying them are so nonchalant, so not didactic, so without thought – and I say that not as a criticism – that you are required to sit tight and experience the film’s absurdities free from attachment. In this sense, it’s comparable to how we experience the many irrational feelings and abstract thoughts that float through our minds every day, to which we also rightfully afford little attention.

Again, what I first thought I was witnessing when watching Love Streams was a lack of discipline on the part of Cassavetes as a director; an abandonment of concept for the fulfillment of some purely self-indulgent aim. However, what I realized after I’d given the film time to linger was the exact opposite. Love Streams is a film clearly constructed by an adamant and disciplined devotee of a personal philosophy of defiance. On its surface, the film may seem loose and breezy, but at its core I now see a deep restraint. The defining feature of the film is its refusal to give us what we want, to do the expected, draw conclusions, to moralize. It doesn’t even self-reflect or theorize in ways common to other art-house classics with a similar aesthetic feel, namely, those belonging to the French New Wave; it’s anti-intellectual through-and-through. Naturally, it’s for these very reasons that Love Streams comes closer than other films to capturing the complexity of human experience and all its inherent messiness.

 “I hate entertainment” Cassavetes once said. It appears then that he is a man of principal, as I wouldn’t call Love Streams an entertaining film per se. Thought-provoking, maybe. One thing that is definitely clear, however, is that above all else, the film is about people and much like the rest of Cassavetes’ oeuvre it relies on real emotion and intuition to guide its story, the results of which are far from perfect; but we shouldn’t expect or want them to be perfect either, as it’s the film’s lack of polish and general erraticism that work to mirror actual internal life. Love Streams is all feeling, less thought, which is precisely the reason it’s worth your time.