Most neuroscientists believe that the human brain does not reach full physical maturity until the calendar age of 25. Maturity is defined by a fully developed and functioning pre-frontal cortex. This area of the brain is located below the top of the head and behind the forehead. The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for executive function like long-term planning, execution of concepts, impulse control, rational judgment, and the ability to connect action with consequence.
Neuroscientists also suggest that the experience of falling in love is akin to a mild form of mania or hypomania. The state of mania is associated with risk taking behavior, recklessness, thrill seeking activity, and carelessness. So, that said, young and in love equals stupid and Like Crazy is a movie that proves that point. In fact the plot is really about psychosis rather than romance.
One choice is all it takes to leave a permanent mark on one’s life. Anna, a British exchange student, falls head over heels with Jacob, an American Teaching Assistant at their university in Los Angeles. Anna is in the U.S. on a student visa and must leave the country before it expires upon graduation. Should be simple. Anna is above average in intelligence but the head and the heart end up on a collision course to disaster. The culprit is love.
When Anna and Jacob fall madly in love they are literally intoxicated with their desire. It is in her psychotic state of love that Anna decides to violate her visa and overstay her welcome on American soil just to spend a summer with Jacob. In doing this Anna raises the punishing anger of Homeland Security. The choice for love and a chance to spend a summer together is too compelling to a 21 year old female. Unfortunately the consequences could last for a lifetime when Anna is banned from ever entering the U.S. again. When Anna returns to L.A. after attending a wedding in England she is deported back to London.
Thus begins the odyssey of the impact of that choice. Anna and Jacob yearn to be together. By being unable to have one another full time their affair starts from love and goes into obsession and obligation. Anna builds a life in London working for a magazine. She moves into a yuppie apartment, makes friends, and tries to find a way back to Jacob. The problem is that she is straddling two worlds – the past and the future while she tries to live in the present. Jacob continues with life in L.A. with his own furniture design company. He moves into a loft, makes his own friends, and tries to reunite with Anna.
Between tearful phone calls and text messages, Anna gets a promotion and Jacob meets a new girl he works with named Sam. On his first trip to London after Anna is deported, Jacob realizes that he is no longer part of her life. Love is not enough. People move on but when they refuse to leave the past behind they only hurt themselves.
Anna and Jacob eventually marry but her student visa violation makes it nearly impossible to get a marriage visa. Several years of appeals and trips go by and they are no longer the same people but refuse to accept it. They are more engrossed in the visa issue than their connection but can’t realize it.
Though still married, Anna moves in with Simon and Jacob cohabitates with Sam. This is where the story should have ended but it doesn’t. We have more than one soul mate in life. A first love is only the first of many. Anna and Jacob’s love is dead but the corpse of the relationship is not buried. Instead, it is like an open casket hanging over their lives like a ghost.
Ironically, Simon’s marriage proposal to Anna occurs just before her visa arrives. By now she has a career and life in London but she chooses to go to L.A. with no job and a dead marriage to a husband who is now a stranger. If anything, Anna the adult should have just made an adult choice.
The wise choice would have been to go to America only to be able to visit it again. She could have negotiated a freelance gig with her magazine in London. There are many practical ways she could have managed to be with Simon and work out the business with Jacob. They could have decided to live as roommates, Anna could have stayed long enough to earn her citizenship after all the pleading with immigration, and purchase property in California as an American investment before returning to London and Simon. Jacob only knows the Anna of his youth but Simon knows the Anna of today. Adults choose by calculating the consequences. Kids choose on a whim.
Like Crazy is a cautionary tale. Sometimes the idea of a person or a love relationship is more our object of desire than the real person. An adult brain makes that distinction. A kid cannot. One summer cost Anna her sanity. Like Crazy is not a love story. Rather it is a film of being crazy in love in a psychosis.