I recently went to this summer’s blockbuster romance movie, Me Before You. Being the reader I am, I naturally read the book before the movie, and was pleased to discover the producers successfully followed the plot and preserved the essence of the message the author was trying to convey. However, as the credits began to roll and I desperately shuffled through my purse for a tissue (or two), the thought struck me: “Why did I object myself to this emotional torture not once, but twice?”
Yes, the movie has a traumatic ending, and yes, I did know what I was getting myself into, but I was actually surprised to discover that I left the theatre with a much different feeling than I had upon finishing the book. When I turned the last page of Me Before You while lying in bed at 2:00 AM, it took everything in me not to throw the book across the room in anger as I sobbed at the loss of a life with so much potential. I was bitter at the book for allowing suicide. However, the movie left me feeling not angry, but reflective and pensive, with a question at the forefront of my mind:
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The movie is called Me Before You, but who exactly is this referring to? Will before Lou? Or Lou before Will?
Assuming you have either read the book or watched the movie, I think you can agree with me that everything about this story can be interpreted loosely. Me Before You could be a heart wrenching story or bittersweet story, a story of generosity or a story of selfishness, a story of life or a story of death, or a story about Will or a story about Lou. It all depends on your perspective.
After briefly looking into a summary of the movie: a young woman (Lou) desperately takes the job of providing care and companionship to a quadriplegic man (Will), the title Me Before You seems to obviously refer to Lou putting Will before herself. Lou puts more effort than required of her into her job of providing care for Will from the beginning, and goes out of her way to cheer him up even when he is ornery. Once she realizes that Will’s life is on the timer, she begins to put even more dedication into her job. Lou researches activities best suited for a quadriplegic and spends extra time working her job to change Will’s perspective on life by convincing him that his life is worth living.
During the six months Lou takes care of Will, she loses her boyfriend of six years, her mother’s respect, time she could have spent with her family, and has her heart broken in the process. It’s obvious that Lou puts Will before herself in almost every aspect of her life.
However, I personally believe the title refers to Will putting Lou before himself. Although some would argue that Will’s decision to end his life was selfish, I actually see it as the exact opposite. Will ended his life, in a sense, to give Lou the life she never would have had without him. Now I’m not at all saying I agree with Will’s choice, but I do completely understand it. Will lived a robust life full of excitement and adventure, and after his injury, everything that was once “normal” about his existence was taken away. He spent two years depressed and lonely until one day, a pretty, lively young lady shows up and is tasked with providing him company. Naturally, the two fall for each other (this is a romance, after all) and suddenly, Will realizes that the person in the world who brings him the most joy also is the person who painfully reminds him most of what he cannot have. If he truly wants to give Lou the life he believes she deserves, he knows he cannot be him. They say that love is sacrifice, and Will learns this in the harshest of circumstances.
Lou would have happily lived her life with Will, and Will knew it, too...but he didn’t want to tie her down. I believe Louisa was Will’s last project: he wanted to give the woman he loved a life full of possibility. In Will’s eyes, his final choice was not one of selfish ambition, but rather, one of pure love. By sealing his fate, he sealed Lou’s future.
Yes, obviously I wanted Will to live. I wanted him and Lou to live happily ever after, and Lou to help Will work through his issues, and I wanted to see them live a life together. But this isn’t that type of story. Me Before You displays the power of sacrifice, and how drastically a life can be changed when one puts someone before himself. If Will had never met Lou, he would not have had a reason worth dying for, but more importantly, if Lou had never met Will, she would have never had a reason worth living for.
