1778 Stories Of Me And My Wife - True Love Is Beyond Words.

(2011) ★★★☆☆

Without the unexpected ending, this film could be like just a cup of tasteless water to me. The story is told in a very slow pace and an undramatic way. The characters are pretty dull. Their performances are by no means impressive. The images are vivid but not so imaginative. Nonetheless, if you can stick till it ends, you’ll be amazed to find that it’s after all not so bad, and your patience is so worth it.

A man, a science fictionist, decides to write a short story every day to make his wife laugh after learning that she’s dying of cancer, because he’s told by the doctor that laughter can improve his wife’s immune system so that she may be able to live longer than probably just a year. He keeps writing funny stories and his wife seems to have recovered during their journey to Hokkaido for a big tree under the deep blue sky. But turns out it’s nothing but a lie. She herself knows right from the moment her husband decides to write her a story every day, that she’s going to die no matter what.

One story a day… it takes the husband almost 5 years to finish 1778 stories. Meaning his wife lives almost 4 years longer than the doctor initially predicts. Stories told are all quite science fictional. There’re intriguing ones about dreams and reality, parallel universe, alien invasion, robotic fights, and cosmic adventures that are merely the reflections of his states of mind.

One of the stories is about a robot that can answer whatever question people ask. A kid asks, what is there beyond the edge of the Universe? The robot says, there’s nothing. Our Universe is just like a baseball being played by the aliens. Another kid asks, why is the sky blue? It replies, it’s because there’s a big blue ocean outside of our sky. Its gravity gets weak somewhere sometimes, and that’s why we have rain. Now we have a scientific explanation for why the sky is blue, but is it really blue? What’s blue? Is it blue to other beings? Which perception is true? Theirs or ours? Alright, we may still insist that the sky is blue, but can we be sure about the first question? Of course we can’t. We can’t be sure about almost everything in life except the fact that we’re all going to die sooner or later.

Like I said, the ending, the last, 1778^th story the husband wants his wife to read in other words, is so much of a surprise. It’ll wrench your heart to see the husband’s tears down on his cheeks while he’s finishing it off, and you’ll believe that true love’s indeed beyond words.