Fifty Shades of Grey

Photo by : Eren Belle Asentista

After months of anticipation and having read the first book of the trilogy, I finally managed to see this film with my best friend since 4th grade; who was also the one who inspired me to read the books. While it i felt occasionally awkward and I laughed a lot, and sometimes asked myself ”What in the hell?”, but even so I enjoyed it.This story has cause a lot of controversy and some people have done crazy things in order to attempt to recreate some of the scenes, including an incident where a guy tied up and raped a girl along with many people claiming it to be a story about abuse. Which all leads me to think the world is full of impressionable idiots. As far as I know the whole concept of dominant and submissive includes consent and safety words in case things get too rough, so to the people that want to recreate it I say: Fine do what you want, but don’t force it on anyone and don’t harm anyone for your own pleasure while they suffer for it. Also about the story of abuse theory, in a way it’s a yes and no situation (from my point of you and please respect this), mostly no. First let me explain the story :

A 21-year old English literature student named Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) goes interview  27-year old entrepreneur Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for Washington State University’s newspaper, after her roommate and best friend Kate is too sick to go. While trying to interview him, Christian then starts to ask her about herself since he finds talking about him uninteresting, hints of attraction are seen but Anna just tries to deny this. He later appears at the hardware store she works at, catching her by surprise, and she asks him if she could take a picture for the University newspaper article and he agrees. After the picture they go out to eat breakfast, but Christian tries to warn her to stay away from him. One night Ana drunk dials him and he comes to her aid before her friend Jose (the guy who took the photos for the article) tries to take advantage of her. Later on they become much closer, he takes her on a helicopter ride to his apartment, sends her first edition book copies, sends her a new laptop, and she starts to learn more about him. She learns he is a sexual dominant and that he wants her to be his submissive by signing a contract with him, which she really doesn’t sign anything but either way decides to follow through with whatever Christian says; including ”correcting the problem” which was her being a virgin, sleeping in a separate room from him on the weekends. She learns the he doesn’t like to be touched, he became the way he was because of one of his adoptive mother’s friends, he isn’t a romantic guy he just likes sex. Even so Anna begins to fall in love with him and even though Christian tries to be romantic he doesn’t succeed because it’s not what he’s used to. In the end they go their separate ways after Christian showing Anna how he would punish her for breaking any of his rules, she become upset and leaves concluding he’s not the man for her.

I feel my expectations for this movie were a little too high, not saying the movie was terrible because it really wasn’t, but as a friend said ”Sometimes when you read the book and then see a movie about it you except every little thing from the book to appear and when they don’t you become disappointed”; which is very true. I felt they fast-forwarded through so much of the book there were moments I felt slightly lost or just said ”Wait, were at this part already? That was fast”, they should’ve included a bit more but I understand that there are parts that must be taken out (including the famous tampon scene from the book). I loved the music they used, a lot of the songs are on my phone and they truly fit the movie, because when you open your mind a bit some of these songs are really good for the bedroom like ”Earned It” by The Weeknd and ”Haunted by Beyoncé, and then there comes my personal favorite musician and idol Ellie Goulding with ”Love Me Like You Do” which manages to express Ana’s thoughts about how she feels towards Christian, it’s my favorite song (when it came up during the movie I sang it out loud happily). The photography was very nice, especially in the scene where he is playing the piano and she walks towards him wrapped u in the bedsheets with the Seattle scenery behind them, just amazingly breathtaking. Yet I still wish we could’ve seen something of her ”inner goddess”, cause that’s what made the story comical in a sense. Also I don’t feel some of the casting was that good, I expected better actors for Jose and Christian’s siblings (I mean really? his brother looked like total idiot and Rita Ora just wasn’t what I had expect, I honestly thought the blonde haired girl with pigtails was supposed to be his sister).

The story may have the exterior of an abusive relationship and ”Oh this is only sexy because he’s a millionaire but he’d be creepy if he lived in a trailer like in a Criminal minds episode” , but that’s not really the case. This story isn’t about abuse at all, it’s more like a modern day Beauty and the Beast when you really think about it. I’m not saying what Christian did was right but at the same time I understand that he had a rough start in life and the dominant/submissive world was the only one he knew and he did love Ana, yet he was afraid of falling in love (which he was) because he felt he wasn’t worthy of being loved and he did try to warn her about how he really was yet she insisted because she started to care for him. So really depends on how you see it, really. I respect whoever hates the books or they think it’s badly written and the movie was a waste of money cause all they wanted was to see Jamie Dornan in his full naked glory. There’s just more to the story than just sex that people don’t see and they like to criticize, in a way it shows what love is for people who really don’t have a lot of experience with love or sex and how sometimes we fall too hard for people that make us do things we never thought we could do. Even though they hurt us we still love them and it takes a lot to let them go or say no. We’ve all been in Ana’s shoes at some point, unexperienced and with this pink and perfect notion of what love is , later learning that it’s not perfect and more complicated than we know.

I rate this movie 3.8 out of 5 grey ties