
Never before in the history of motion pictures has more been said about love without a single character doing a damn thing about it. Oh yes, they pine. And yearn. And complain. Loudly. Hell, they even deny it exists. Still, most common of all, they demand that others declare it. Under duress, if necessary. On at least six dozen occasions, a character (usually a woman) would ask, teeth bared: “Do you love me?” Sure, once or twice, another character (usually a man) had the decency to utter a simple no, but more often than not, they used the query as a springboard for expansive philosophical ruminations that cover the better part of an evening. Whether eating, lounging, or squatting in the grass, it all comes back to blasting, gouging, and setting aflame the very thing that has just taken two hours of our lives. No matter, she’ll surely ask again tomorrow.
For the two love affairs on display, it is telling that at no point is anyone happy. Or relaxed. Or anything other than spitting mad that they appear to be forced to engage in these couplings against their will. It’s as if God took four pitiful humans out of his toy box, set them down in the English countryside, and watched them tear each other apart. All in the name of amour, of course. Maybe it was God’s way of proving at long last – mostly to himself – that the very concept was flawed, and he needed one last reassurance before turning over the books to Satan. Perhaps. But given that this is D.H. Lawrence, and the film had been adapted from a novel written in that pivotal year of 1920, I believe the explanation is much simpler, if not completely obvious.
Based on conservative estimates, World War I took around 16 million lives. Trench deaths, mind you. Cut to ribbons with newly minted machine guns, or reduced to grotesque contortions by any number of lethal gases. Generations wiped clean, economies in ruin. Naturally, the romance had gone out of life. Something a bit obscene about a man chasing a woman amidst the flowers as butterflies frittered about, when those same fields, just two years prior, had been soaked to the crust with blood and brain matter.
Witnessing the slaughter, Lawrence had an idea. Not a new idea, mind you, but one more likely to stick given the unprecedented insanity of 1914-1918. Love was dead. More than tired, it was forever removed from the human experience. We’d discuss it, of course, even write a sonnet or two, but we’d made our decision at last. Passion had finally run its course. It would be all theory, with no execution in real time. The beauty gone, its presentation will be reduced to everything ugly and obscene. Pitiful, rather than poetic.

Women in Love is like that. An intriguing title that bears no resemblance to the finished product, but one that still leaves a hint as to further implications. Not Men in Love, or People in Love, but Women. Authoritative, in that special way the writers of the past had for using bullying insistence in lieu of compromise. No alternative, without even the hint of “some” or “a few.” Women. All of ‘em. Period. Cut, print, and lock it down. In our own age, where values and norms seem so hyper-individualized that grand pronouncements are practically a declaration of war, Lawrence plants his flag for universalism. He’s not concerned if you have a friend who contradicts the message. He’s signed everyone up for the cause and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Generalizations as a bastion of truth.
I’ll be frank: I had a hard time following Women in Love, I assume because director Ken Russell was a flamboyant madman, and his liberties no doubt would have driven even Lawrence himself mad with distraction. It’s not an altogether pleasant experience, combining tedium and boredom with the sort of sex that forces one to conclude that the life of a monk wouldn’t be half bad by comparison. Anything to avoid having to do that. I think it’s fair to say that the sex in Women in Love is deliberately off-putting, as anything even remotely erotic would undermine the grand plan. These are grunting, savage beasts, not strapping hunks and delicate ladies. Every time they pawed at each other and clothes came off, I rolled my eyes with displeasure, as if they were all about to sit in the middle of the room and release an especially odious bowel movement.
It also struck me that Lawrence seemed to be arguing that male friendship is always and forever more meaningful than the romantic love between men and women. He’s not wrong, of course, and this is before Tinder. Male friendships are not at all in vogue in these dark days (nothing men do is), and whenever two men seem close, they are accused of sharing more than bottles of beer. As if to mock the notion, the director stages what is, on its face, the most homoerotic scene ever filmed. Over the top on an unprecedented scale, so as to prove a valuable point.

The two men in question, Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, are as overtly masculine as anyone then alive (even dead, Reed could take on all comers), and they shamelessly engage in a naked wrestling match before a roaring fire. It sounds like something left on the cutting room floor of Commando, when in fact it’s the ultimate dare for the audience. I’ll give you as gay as gay gets, Russell states, only it’s not gay. Not even remotely. Two brawling men, cocks swinging in the wind, with enough sweat to fill several dozen buckets, and it’s not sexual. Don’t even go there. This, Lawrence (through Russell) seems to be saying, is what men do. Or should do. Be allowed to, anyway, without anyone’s finger wagging. It’s the most defiant declaration for male comradery I’ve ever seen. And I’ll still be saying so even after my erection subsides.
Maybe I’m reaching. Wouldn’t be the first time. As a firm believer in subtext, I’m not about to start fresh with a literal reading. Still, I’m supremely confident that both author and director alike agree that in an age of madness (and it’s all madness, now that we can kill each other on a massive scale), sex is an act of hate. Something you do to erase the driving reality that all things considered, men and women really shouldn’t be spending time together. And good lord, don’t even mention marriage.

Sure, men without women is a bloody, drunken, idiotic loony bin, but at least it’s authentic. An expression of nature’s disorder without any of the forced niceties. Once the broads arrive, we spend so much time trying to get in their pants that we forget about nobler pursuits: literature, music, philosophy. And yes, naked wrestling. Damn it all, it’s time we celebrate it again, much as we did the hunt. Or the telling of tales to define what’s what. And that’s Lawrence’s final epitaph. We’ve conquered nature but have never been more removed from it. We exploit, but fail to recognize the real part we play. Back to the basics, the primitive adventure. Before we invented love and threw the whole thing out the window.
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