PS I love you is a controversial Film. I give it a ten, but

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2008)

I've read perhaps two-dozen reviews on this film. People either like it or they hate it: very few are in the middle.
There are those who have lost mates and those who are going to perhaps and those who have not lost anyone, or have not said they have. There is no clear pattern although I would have to say that those who lost someone had the most decided feelings whichever way they felt about it.
I have lost someone (my first wife). I know that this film avoids the reality of watching someone suffer pain and anger and not being able to do anything about it.
The movie is only 2 hours long, a fact we often forget when watching films. Life can make us live through events that take months or years.
Mourning is not easy. It is full of remembered joy and love, regret, guilt, loneliness, confusion, rage and a whole gamut of ugly and beautiful emotions almost too numerous to list.
One lady I read said she hated the film because she found reminders everywhere: she would be completely unhinged by letters from the grave. I completely respect that point of view, and believe hers was a very real response.
I do not share it. I wish I could send letters the other way. I wish I could tell her how much I miss her. I wish I could say some of the things she deserves to hear that I could not tell her while she lived. I wish I could thank her for the education she gave me just by living with me.
That's what I think this film is about. Gerry (Gerald Butler) loves and is married to Holly (Hillary Swank). The opening scene before the credits shows them having a terrible fight where all their unspoken fundamental differences are shouted at each other. Then the credits. Then a new scene where there is Gerry's wake. Then a series of 10 letters, each one with another request and another part of the plan which he intends to heal her and lead her from mourning to health and perhaps to celebration.
He knows her well. He suggests things that she would not do on her own, but that she needs to do. She needed to clean up the apartment, not because it would give her more room, but because it would give her emotions more space. There's quite a difference. She needs to get out and do things she was not good at (like sing) because singing is the language of the soul, and hers needed awakening. (Don't look for Swank to sing well. She doesn't.) She needed to go to Ireland, because it was not America and she needed to make contact with not only his body and mind, but his very essence.
Slowly she finds her own talents, her own expressions, her own feelings, and her own way of celebrations. Kathy Bates is wonderful as the mother: tough as a steel girder, soft as pliable as paper. The two friends are a delight (although many people who saw this movie did not think so.) The hesitancy on my part only depends on how we can be swallowed not by what is, but what we wish to be true. Remember to read as many reviews as you can. Some people liked it; many did not. I am easily won over because I like Hilary Swank. Even her so/so movies get a good rating from me (like The Freedom Writers.)
I saw this film in the same audience as 6 ten year old girls. I would have thought that this film was totally inappropriate for them. However when it was over, one of them said to one of the others, "I really liked this film. It was so sad. I cried three times. How many times did you cry?"
The sadness struck me as well. I could have answered her question if asked. She would have given it ten out of ten. So would I, but I understand those who would not.