In our culture, many of us romanticize love. We see it as some supercilious cure-all for all of life’s problems. Our movies and our stories and our history all celebrate it as life’s ultimate goal, the final solution for all of our pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it. As a result, our relationships pay a price.

We believe that all we need is love; we’re more likely to ignore fundamental values such as respect, humility and commitment towards the people we care about. After all, if love solves everything, then why bother with all the other stuff — all of the hard stuff? 

But healthy relationships require more than pure emotion or lofty passions. We understand that there are things more important in our lives and our relationships than simply being in love and the success of our relationships hinges on these deeper and more important values. 

Every flow you picked apart inside the mirror. Every lie you told yourself about your limitations. Every “I am not good enough” thought that ever flitted through the recesses of your mind setting into a place where it mattered – you cannot even value yourself.

Love is when we forgive ourselves for not being our own best friends, our own confidants and our own biggest cheerleaders.  We didn’t know what a differences it would make to love ourselves, until we finally did. Indeed, love is a word unless you give meaning to it.

Love does not equal compatibility. Just because you fall in love with someone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good partner for you to be with over the long term. Love is an emotional process; compatibility is a logical process. And the two don’t bleed into one another very well.
It’s possible to fall in love with somebody who doesn’t treat us well, who makes us feel worse about ourselves, who doesn’t hold the same respect for us as we do for them, or who has such a dysfunctional life themselves that they threaten to bring us down with them.

It’s possible to fall in love with somebody who has different ambitions or life goals that are contradictory to our own, which holds different philosophical beliefs or worldviews that clash with our own sense of reality.

Love is not always worth sacrificing yourself. One of the defining characteristics of loving someone is that you are able to think outside of yourself and your own needs to help care for another person and their needs as well. 

But the question that doesn’t get asked often enough is exactly what are you sacrificing, and is it worth it?

In loving relationships, it’s normal for both people to occasionally sacrifice their own desires, their own needs, and their own time for one another. 

But when it comes to sacrificing one’s self-respect, one’s dignity, one’s physical body, one’s ambitions and life purpose, just to be with someone, then that same love becomes problematic. 

We cannot sacrifice our identities and self-worth to it. Because the moment we do that, we lose love and we lose ourselves because you need more in life than love. Love is great. Love is necessary. Love is beautiful. But love is not enough. 

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso is a film which combines comedy and romance. I find the film very artistic. It is very emotive and it exists to a considerable degree in the realm of shared experience and memory. It has the element of flashback, and in a way it remains primarily a linear work. It begins with the present day, recalling the past and it regresses back. The film showed the audience the development of relationship the protagonist having. 

The film started to an adult Salvatore (Jacques Perrin) who is a film director by the time, he recalls his childhood upon hearing the news that his father-figure Alfredo passed away. As a fatherless child, young Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio) loved movies. To him, Cinema Paradiso, the small theater in their town, in which the title of the film driven, is his home. He wanted to be a projectionist and always beg Alfredo to teach him. He keeps film strips and plays with it.

He build a relationship to Alfredo and throughout the film, we see the development of their relationship. The film showed the audience how a small theater be the heart and soul of the town. The people in the town love the theater so much, the theater is the place where they can be who they are and there comfort place. In theater they find love and family. 

The editing of the film remarks good editing, especially the fire scene, in then get to the climax of the scene and the big key cut, the poster shot of the two main characters.
The film made up of the theme of romance. Romance is first displayed between Salvatore and his love for film. Second, romance is displayed between Salvatore and Alfredo in the sense of Alfredo becoming a father figure to Salvatore and guiding him on the right path through life. Third, romance is displayed between Salvatore and Elena. Salvatore was in love with Elena and would do anything for her from the day he laid eyes on her. I think it was overly cheesy with romance, but I still enjoyed it. 

The symbols of the film are the Cinema Paradiso, the “fine” sign in the end of the compiled deleted kissing scene put in a reel, and it is the ending of Salvatore’s past life and shows what is to come for him in the future. When Alfredo passed away it was the ending of who he was and started who he will be. This symbol also represents his love for Elena and how he must let go of that love to create new love for the future. “Fine” also represents Salvatore’s life at the theatre and how it has come to an end. 

Cinema Paradiso is interesting because it is made up of many themes and symbols. One can learn many lessons from this movie like I have.