The Beauty of Love Jones

Never in a million years would I have thought Love Jones would reemerge into black pop culture as heavily as it did recently. Commencing with the 2010 BET awards, Lorrenz Tate and Nia Long graced the stage with their reenactment of their noteworthy movie. Half the crowd reciting the exact words to Darius Lovehall’s famous open line “ Say baby can I be your slave” while the other half of the audience are completely lost because they never saw this underground classic for themselves. Nonetheless, the real plug came when Single Ladies hit the scene and the main character Val, a hopeless romantic insinuates that Love Jones is her favorite movie every chance she gets.

 Love Jones for me was one of those films like Waiting to Exhale that I would throw tantrums at 8 years old because I was so desperate to watch it. Of course I was rejected and denied by my overly protective mother. But when I finally did get a chance to watch it and appreciate it, I learned that this movie is a classic urban love story about Nina Mosley and Darius Lovehall, that ensues after the first night of great passionate intimacy. Both Nina and Darius didn’t want to admit that their connection could result into love let alone love at first sight, which was the case when Darius felt compelled to change the title of his poem to “A Blues for Nina,” essentially capturing the heart of the film from the start. Love Jones exposes an alternative Neo-Soul group of educated black people who entertain intellectual conversations, have great friendships, and the ambition to reach their “highest potential.” They congregate at “The Sanctuary” which is an underground spoken word club with Afrocentric roots which add to the raw reality of the film.

The beauty of Love Jones, however is not the physical and mental attraction between Darius and Nina. Nor is it the ending of the movie where Darius and Nina reunite in an attempt to live in the Now and recapture their love. For me, the eloquence of this film is that you finally see a man fight for his woman, not in the physical sense but fight for love. When Darius rides his motorcycle through the streets of Chicago and chases after Nina’s train to New York he could no longer deny his feelings for this woman. He caught the “jones” and there was nothing he could do about that but fight for what he wanted. In reality we rarely see this kind of “fight” for love. I believe our generation gives up on love to easily. We literally have an “on to the next” mentality when we should be questioning if we are letting real love pass us by. Essentially the elements of this movie is what makes it one of my favorite and it really defies description.