Please, don’t see,
Just a girl caught up in dreams and fantasies
Please, see me
Reaching out for someone I can’t see

Don’t you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow
Yesterday I saw a lion kiss a deer
Turn the page, maybe we’ll find a brand new ending
Where we’re dancing in our tears

I thought I saw you out there crying
I thought I heard you call my name
I thought I heard you out there crying
We’re just the same

And God
Tell us the reason youth is wasted on the young
It’s hunting season and this lamb is on the run
We’re searching for meaning
But are we all lost stars
Trying to light up the dark?

Are we all lost stars
Trying to light up the dark?

Words from the Keira Knightly, Mark Ruffalo starrer movie Begin Again.  I fell in love with the song, not the finished version sung by Adam Levine, but the raw purity of the one sung by Keira. Soaked in it for years before giving in to watching the movie. My love for Keira Knightly and the recently discovered crush on Mark Ruffalo drew me in.

The movie flows through your soul, touching chords of the heart, waking up emotions you didn’t know of till now. That tinge of hurt when you see a supremely talented music producer throwing away his life, his family, just because he is unable to find the music, the voice that he is looking for. In the quiet tears of Greta is every girl who has been so deeply in love, that grieving in any way less dignified, feels like a betrayal of the love that once was, the one that will always be.

There is the tenacity of Steve playing his music all by himself on the road, with no audience at all, you admire him, guiltily pity him, you are in awe of him when you see no sign of jealousy on discovering about Dave’s success, and then you want to hug him for being the friend that all of us deserve.

We see parents going through a full circle of underestimating their own child only to discover how talented she is. The real world conversation between Greta, Saul and the table full of executives, is so true, it’s scary.

“But it’s our song, why do you care what other’s think about it”, Greta’s words – a life lesson we all need to live by. As Dan realises that contrary to his belief, he doesn’t need a state of drunken intoxication to create music, we face the delusions we all fool ourselves with. 

In the coming together of a bunch of talented artists, building what they love, turning adversities into advantage, we taste freedom, we feel wings that we never knew we had, and realise how stupid we were to be scared of falling down, when we all can fly at our own will, if we were to listen to our hearts, and not the stories in our head, weighing us down.

The backdrop of this story are the streets of New York, alive, irrespective of the time of the day, a city with as many faces as its people, a city that lets you dream, imagine, a city that’s limitless. I vicariously lived my bucket list of visiting the Times Square wide eyed, open mouthed, through Dan and Greta’s eyes, they sitting on the stairs, happy, so in the scene, still untouched, unperturbed. It’s love in its utmost purity – Dan and Greta walking around the streets of NY discovering each other through their playlists. Love that doesn’t ask, doesn’t expect, doesn’t demand, love that just is.

Limited by the constraints of world, the cinema comes to a close on screen – an end that is unpredictable, unfinished and utterly beautiful. An end that leads our imagination to new beginnings, new stories, new tracks, an end that is not an end, but a nudge to Begin Again!

p.s. I consciously turned the question in the song to a statement, for I’ve always believed that we are all lost stars

On Amazon Prime

and on Netflix