Crazy Love - 2007

New Zealand International Film Festival


Crazy Love - 2007


One line review: Jaw dropping, decades in the telling, tabloid fodder, love story documentary.



I double dog dare anyone to go to this as a first date movie. Particularly if the guy in this date scenario has a beard, thick glasses and dem crazy crazy eyes. See the picture above for reference. Things here get creepy enough as it is, but that would be icing on the cake.

This documentary certainly starts off like a conventional love story. Linda and Burt are now very much in their golden years, and recount on camera their initial courtship and subsequent relationship. But this is certainly not your grandparents love story. Unless your Grandparents have spent the last 50 years in the tabloids.

Try, well to do boy meets girl. Girl is impressed by his cars, nightclub and aircraft. Girl dumps boy when she discovers boy already has wife and child. Boy obsesses about girl. Boy hires thugs to blind girl when she gets engaged to someone else. Boy goes to jail, becomes prison house lawyer to fellow inmates. On release, boy proposes marriage in TV interview. Blinded girl eventually accepts. And things are just getting warmed up. All manner of craziness ensues.

This has just an amazing series of modern interviews with the couple and their long standing friends, combined with historical material. It is certainly an eye opener into the dating habits of New York in the 50's, if you can cope with geriatrics talking frankly about sex and romance.

Burt comes across at times as a lovable rogue, other times, an out and out psychopath. Linda comes across as pragmatic and strong willed, seemingly reconciled with being married for more than 30 years to the man who maimed her. Clearly they are complex personalities.

You could take half a hour from this documentary and make an super sweet couple in love story (beginning, end, and NONE of the middle). Or you could take a different half hour selection of clips and make a self made man fights corrupt system from within story. Or a look back at half century of fashion, as Linda was quite the clothes horse. Or you could take bits and make a documentary about the changes in tabloid journalism over half a century. The montage of news paper headlines alone is worth the price of admission. You wouldn't believe they were true, accept they are.

The end result manages to be both creepy and endearing all at the same time, and raises all manner of questions, the very least of which is what is the difference between homicidal obsession and life long love?

http://www.crazylovefilm.com/