Healing a Heart Through Cinema
- Matthew Colandrea
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
In the winter of 2025, I had my world upended in a single day when my first girlfriend dumped me. In the week that followed, I couldn’t escape the nagging thoughts of wondering where things went wrong, missing my ex, and wondering if Jeff Buckley was telling the truth that “it’s never over.” That same week, I begrudgingly took time away from my moping to see a play for a class. What I ended up with was the first two hours of peace I had all week, the first two hours where I detached from the messiness of my life and felt myself relax. Now, I do not have the money to do a Broadway tour, but I am a card-carrying AMC A-List member, popcorn pass included. So, after losing myself in someone else’s story on a stage, I decided I would go to the movies for the same reason. I began a journey of losing myself within film, and then learning about love to pick back up the pieces of my heart.
The first step in moving on was simple: forget, forget, forget. Look, it is important to process your emotions and sit with the hurt, but sometimes it is also important to go watch the Predator learn to be one with the environment, then slaughter some humans. I went to feel-good movies like Rental Family, dramedies like Bugonia, and even stomached a romance with Hamnet because it was just that good. The only thing I saw in the first month where I felt my mind wander was Wicked: For Good, a poor follow up to the previous Wicked with a convoluted story, bland songs, and generally washed out visuals. Movie theatres became even more of a sacred space for me than before; where I forgot my heartbreak, the impending doom of finals, and did not obsessively check for a text from my ex which would never come. I allowed myself to feel the grief over the end of my first love outside the auditoriums, but once the lights went down, I took a break. By my birthday in mid-December, I was not even going to the movies to forget, as the breakup had reignited my love of film to the point that I spent half my birthday experiencing an insane double feature: Avatar: Fire and Ash directly into Marty Supreme. By the time I left the theatre, my eyes hurt, but my friend and I took a walk, chatting about how much we loved the movies and the things in Marty Supreme that made us anxious. Two guys wandering the city talking about what they loved in a film, and a little bit closer to each other because of it.
After a month of trying to avoid movies related to love, aside from Hamnet, I was sitting in my room over break and felt a strange urge to watch the greatest horror movie ever made, La La Land. Before I even knew what love felt like, the movie had made me cry, and there was a high chance of it tearing my heart in two again. However, I bought it and decided to subject myself to the journey. To be honest, I sobbed as Mia and Sebastian danced from deeply in love, to having to go their separate ways. Then, the epilogue breaks your heart again as it shows that they could have worked out in another world and had a wonderful life together if one of them did not follow their dream. In the final shots, they share their knowing smiles, confirming that they still valued the time they had together, how it changed them, and did still love each other. I sat there wiping salty, stinging tears off my face, but, at the same time, I felt more at peace with my breakup. I had not magically moved on by seeing something which reinforced that no love is ever wasted, but I started to listen to the main theme when I felt hurt to remind myself that it is okay to have loved someone and not have it work out.
A little while later, I decided to reopen my wounds and went down a rabbit hole of many breakup movies. While seeming counterintuitive to moving on, I had a lot of unresolved feelings about my breakup, and a lot to learn about love and how things end for couples. Even if I ended up getting mixed messages. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Crazy, Stupid Love, and Is This Thing On? all featured couples who, after breaking up, found their way back to each other. This was very confusing for the still-torn-up me, but I noticed a theme with these movies: the couples mutually recommitted to each other because they knew they had not been fully trying to be there for each other, or misunderstood the relationship. In the right relationship, both people will decide to work, grow, and recommit to the other. However, this is not every relationship, and if one person does not love the other anymore, the relationship cannot work, as seen in (500) Days of Summer, Blue Valentine, and Marriage Story. In this group of movies, the relationships are painted as having been good and passionate at some point, but destined to eventually fail. Whether it is because of the person not being “the one,” a build up of resentment over the years, or unhealthy habits collapsing into a final break, all of these movies show that while love can feel like flying at some point, it can also feel like crashing. In particular, (500) Days of Summer highlighted how Tom’s expectations of getting back together with his ex were foolish, as there were fundamental incompatibilities and differing expectations from the beginning that broke the relationship. Even if I preferred the idea that my ex and I could find our way back to each other, this set was more useful in accepting that things were over and learning how to move forward with our relationship, now relegated to memories and photos.
Now, did any of these fit my situation exactly? Of course not. They are stories made by other artists that were never going to perfectly fit my personal life. However, bits and pieces of each helped me understand my relationship, why things went wrong, and how to accept that it ended and move forward with my life. They also helped me feel less alone, whether it was seeing a decade long marriage fall apart or watching a break up after a short relationship feel like the end of the world, until their world starts turning again. I saw through their stories how love is messy, imperfect, and can cause a lot of pain, but is also beautiful while it lasts.
I went to the movies for escape, dimming out the rest of my life, but I also found solace within the experiences of the people who worked on these films about heartbreak, and they helped me understand different perspectives and aspects of love. I’m truthfully grateful for how the breakup thrust me back into cinema and watching so many films, to the point I saw all the Best Picture Nominees before they were announced. While it is stereotypical to rediscover hobbies after a breakup, my hobby helped me learn about myself and love.
On Valentine’s Day this year, I found myself alone. Shocking, I know. With most of my friends on romantic adventures, I decided to do something for myself. I took the one train down to 66th street, walked to my favorite place, ordered a large popcorn, and nestled into a seat for a movie I had not even seen the trailer for. It was another wonderful evening in one of my favorite places, and I’ll keep coming back over and over again.
Matthew Colandrea is a freshman at Columbia College studying Theatre. He loves comics, film, and music.