[Crying] "It wasn’t over for me!
I waited for you for 7 years."
Longing is at the heart of every good story.
Characters long for someone
or something that lies beyond their reach.
Maybe it’s a new love,
"Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand that might touch that cheek!"
or a better life,
"I can run away, and I can go to the ocean,
I can go to the country, I can go to the mountains."
A prized object,
"My precious."
or even just a vague idea of something else.
"I’m just looking for something.
I don’t know what it is really, but it’s not here."
What they long for changes,
and films and TV shows of various genres have different methods
of creating that feeling, drawing it out, and ultimately, resolving it.
But the mere fact of a character’s longing drives the story —
and pulls us along with them.
"I imagined it all, waiting for you."
Here’s our take on how creators use longing to hook us into their narratives,
how it speaks to something profound in the human condition,
and why we still empathize with characters who long for something,
even if their object of desire is nothing we would ever want.
"You can’t tell people what they want.
It has to be what you want."
"You’re watching…"
"The Take!"
"Let us know your take."
"I wish I could touch you."
The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote of longing
in its most obvious sense — romance.
As Aristotle put it, "He who delights in the form of another does not,
for all that, love her, but only does so when he also longs for her when absent
and craves for her presence."
"I miss you more than I can bear…"
Pining for another has remained our most familiar form of longing.
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
"Then why don’t you?!"
It defines some of our greatest love stories of all time,
from Romeo and Juliet to Titanic.
"Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls."
But longing isn’t just about romance.
It’s a part of nearly every story ever told.
"They kept going... because they were holding on to something."
In his roadmap for storytelling, The Hero’s Journey,
Joseph Campbell laid out the foundational elements
of one of storytelling's oldest narratives:
a protagonist embarks on a quest,
then endures a series of trials and tribulations before returning home,
forever transformed.
"We set out to save the Shire, Sam.
And it has been saved...
But not for me."
Although there may be external forces that provide inciting incidents
and conflict, what the hero is really motivated by is an internal desire —
a core longing that drives them,
even through the most arduous steps of their journey.
This longing can be as grand as the desire to save the world from evil.
"Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight!"
Or it can be as small as finding someone who makes you feel less alone.
"I mean, I've always had this picture of me and my next wife in bed on Sunday.
And my kid comes running in, and leaps up onto the bed."
But without longing, there is no story.
"You cannot have a protagonist without desire.
It doesn’t make any sense!"
In films, this journey often adheres to a three-act structure,
in which the climax typically delivers on that desire established in Act I:
The protagonist gets what they’ve been longing for,
and we, too, are left feeling satisfied.
"This day does not belong to one man, but to all."
Even films that give us a deliberately ambiguous resolution,
upon closer inspection, still tend to resolve their central longing.
Take Christopher Nolan’s Inception, which leaves us questioning
whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s character has truly reunited with his family,
or is only dreaming.
Neither he nor we know for certain,
but the film’s ending still provides the emotional fulfillment
of his getting what he’s pined for,
"Hey guys!"
"Daddy!"
because he’s decided it doesn’t matter whether this final moment is real.
"He was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality,
and didn’t really care anymore.
And that makes a statement that perhaps all levels of reality are equally valid."
Longing plays out differently on television,
where the lack of resolution is what spurs us to keep watching.
"So pick me.
Choose me.
Love me."
A TV character might long for something or someone
over the course of an entire series.
Although newer, more immediate desires present themselves
across season-long arcs, or even change from episode to episode,
their primary, overall yearning keeps us invested.
"I never stopped loving you, and I don’t think I ever will."
For the TV viewer, longing is more about the journey than the destination.
"I'm so proud of you...
I'd like to think that we helped each other get here."
Moreover, finding ways to prolong that journey — and that longing —
is often key to a TV show’s success.
The 1985 series Moonlighting famously struggled in the ratings
after it consummated its central sexual longing.
[Slapping noise] [Music]
And while the so-called "Moonlighting Curse" has since been debunked
by plenty of series that allowed their romantic leads to get together —
and continued to thrive —
many did so by plunging the characters into a relationship,
then finding new reasons to push them apart again.
Jess and Nick barely lasted two seasons of New Girl
before acting on their chemistry,
"Good night, Nick."
"Good night."
but amid a tepid viewer response to their being in a relationship,
they went back to pining for each other from across their apartment
"I live across the hall from my beautiful ex-girlfriend!"
until the series was almost over.
"Come on, please go faster,
I've gotta tell my best friend that I'm in love with her!"
Sam and Diane on Cheers endured five seasons of intermittent bliss and breakups
until actress Shelly Long’s departure brought their romance to an abrupt end.
"Have a good life."
But even as Cheers — and Sam — moved on,
pursuing new desires for another six seasons,
Diane still had to come back for the series finale.
The show simply couldn’t end
until their waylaid longing for each other was finally resolved,
one way or another.
"I guess I remember life being more comfortable!"
There is perhaps no more successful — if often frustrating — illustration
of how TV stretches out this sense of longing than Friends’ Ross and Rachel.
"With us, it’s never off the table."
Ross pining for Rachel drives the beginning of the show.
"Do you think it would be OK if I asked you out sometime, maybe?"
"Yeah…
Maybe."
But even after his affection is returned and the two become a couple,
their happiness is short-lived.
They spend the vast majority of the show’s screentime not together,
"I mean, we haven’t been a couple in like… six years."
and constantly going back and forth on who’s longing for whom.
"I have continuing feelings of love.
But that doesn't mean that I'm still in love with him.
You know, I have sexual feelings for him, but I do love him!"
But this unfulfilled longing is what kept their story
(and much of Friends’ popularity) alive,
and naturally the show could only conclude with Ross and Rachel
finally getting together, supposedly for good.
"I do love you."
"Oh, I love you, too, and I am never letting you go again."
Even if it takes many many seasons,
eventually resolving this longing is key to completing the characters’ journeys.
"Nick, you have been in love with this girl
since the moment you opened the door."
But in the end, obtaining the long-coveted object of desire
isn’t always what they — or the audience — really wants.
[Panting] [Roaring]
"I don't get it, I mean, I was so sure this is what I wanted."
"Mm-hmm…
Me too."
"Josh does not complete me.
I complete myself."
What a character thinks they want is often not what they need —
"I miss my life!
And I miss doing things.
And I miss being surrounded by loose acquaintances who think that I'm funny
and smart and charming."
and it’s the tension between wants and needs that often fuels the story.
"He promised to give me everything I've ever wanted."
"Then... why aren't you happy?"
"Turns out I wanted all the wrong things."
When it comes to the audience, this can actually be a bit of clever misdirection,
creating a longing for a resolution that’s revealed to be unsustainable,
"It just wasn't me that you were right about."
before delivering what’s actually necessary to complete the journey.
"Nice to meet you.
I'm Autumn."
Disney’s Finding Nemo offers a simple illustration of this tension
between want and need.
Marlin desperately wants to protect his son, Nemo.
"I promise I will never let anything happen to you."
But Marlin clings so tightly to Nemo that he only ends up pushing him away.
[Shouting] "You think you can do these things, but you just can’t, Nemo!"
"I hate you."
After Nemo becomes lost, Marlin wants nothing more than to find his son
and shelter him from any more harm,
but eventually the father realizes that what he really needs is to let go.
"Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him.
Then, nothing would ever happen to him!"
2011’s Like Crazy centers on two lovers
who prove that absence makes the heart grow fonder
when they’re separated by immigration issues.
"Yeah, I wish, I wish I could stay longer.
I really do."
"Well, it would be so much easier
if the whole immigration thing was sorted out."
But once they at last get to be together after so much struggle,
the awkward reality doesn’t live up to the romanticized memories
of their early love which have been fueling them.
[Music]
Sometimes what a character longs for
is even fundamentally at odds with who they are.
"When I told you that when Gotham no longer needed Batman,
we could be together, I meant it.
But now I’m sure the day won’t come when you no longer need Batman."
In The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne wants to be with Rachel.
But he needs to be Batman.
The Joker exploits this tension,
forcing him to decide whether he will save Rachel or Harvey Dent —
to choose what he wants over what Gotham needs.
"And that’s the point.
You’ll have to choose."
By following his own desires, Wayne falls into the Joker’s trap —
and he loses not only the woman he loves,
but the man he hoped would be Gotham’s savior.
It’s only through this experience that he finally realizes that,
to be Batman, he has to sacrifice himself and his own desires.
"I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be."
In romantic comedies, we often see a character long to be with someone,
only to discover that this object
of their obsession isn’t who they thought they were.
[Yelling] "You wrote me a novel about how you were dying to blow me in Petland,
you psycho!
I'm not here to get to know you!"
Often this discovery leads them to the person they should really be with,
who better suits their needs.
"You're, like, the best person I know."
It’s a misdirection that’s become something of a cliche.
"I never thought of him in that way.
But, I guess in most romantic comedies the guy you're supposed to be with
is the one that you never thought of in that way."
Still, the pervasiveness of this trope
speaks to just how much we romanticize the very idea of longing.
In 1979, psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence"
to define the kind of romantic attachment
that’s not based on the reality of the other person,
describing limerence as involving "an acute longing for emotional
reciprocation, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors,
and emotional dependence on another person."
"Say, Rachel, l was wondering if you'd like to go to a movie with me sometime…
as my lover."
Some psychologists have even argued
that pop culture has nurtured this idea of "limerence,"
giving audiences an idealized version of things like love at first sight,
romanticizing infatuation, and encouraging us to equate love with obsession.
"You don't want to be in love.
You want to be in love in a movie!"
But movies and TV also occasionally show us that,
while we often long for what we think we want,
there is a more lasting happiness to be found in getting what we need.
"Sorry about your house, Mr. Frederickson."
"Ya know, It's just a house."
"But, what is happiness?
It’s a moment before you need more happiness."
Every story about longing is rooted in self-fulfillment —
the idea of seeing all our hopes and desires realized at last.
"This part of my life… is called "happyness."
It’s a concept that dates back to ancient Greek philosophers.
Aristotle used the term eudaimonia to describe this fulfillment —
a state of doing and living well
that he said transcends mere, fleeting happiness.
In his book Self Fulfillment, philosopher Alan Gewirth further characterized
this idea as "a bringing of oneself to flourishing completion,
an unfolding of what is strongest or best in oneself."
"We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, and fabulous?"
We’re naturally drawn to characters who are striving to become those better,
virtuous selves that we know that we need to be.
Over four seasons of The Good Place,
we watched as Eleanor Shellstrop and her friends were slowly transformed
from characters who are focused only on their shallow wants
"They’re deep-fried jalapenos, filled with cheese."
"Mmm."
into fully realized, self-fulfilled people,
who understand their own capacities and how to best flourish within them.
"I’ve spent most of my life pretending to help people.
If I were an architect, I could do it for real!"
Although they begin their journey seeking eternal bliss in the afterlife,
eventually they realize that achieving eudaimonia
and leading a virtuous existence is the more satisfying reward.
This kind of self-fulfillment is often remarkably hard to achieve back on Earth,
where the demands and distractions of life make it difficult for us
to figure out what would make us truly content.
"We have absolutely no idea what we want."
And as much as we are drawn to characters who strive
to become better people, we’re equally fascinated by stories of those who fail.
"I did it for me."
And we relate to characters who share a more undefined longing.
We watch them become stuck in a series of temporarily gratifying,
but ultimately unsatisfying relationships based on circumstance,
shallow attractions, or limerence, and we recognize ourselves in them.
"I keep going to a lot of places and, uh, ending up somewhere I've already been."
We enjoy them because so often,
it feels like we’re stuck in the Act I of our own lives,
unable to bring about a resolution to our own longing.
Thus, we can relate to those stories which don't resolve the longing —
because they remind us that it's a natural, universal state of being.
"Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn."
As Gewirth writes, "self-fulfillment is far more a process than a finished product."
[Shouting] "You wanted to tell me more, I want to know!
Everything!"
"That you have to find out yourself.
That's the fun of it."
Watching characters go through that process, too, reassures us
that we’re not doing it alone.
Everybody longs for something,
and that pain of wanting something we can't have may never go away.
"But what about us?"
"We'll always have Paris."
Longing is a concept so all-consuming and fundamental to being a human being
that no film or show — and not even the English language —
can fully capture it.
"Why does looking at it make my chest feel so tight?"
The Portuguese have the word saudade,
which is loosely defined as "a deep emotional state
of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent."
[Crying] "I miss her so much!"
Strikingly, saudade can encompass both sadness and happiness:
You can be sad over losing someone, for example,
but still be happy to have known them at all.
"I’d always think of Jenny."
In the heightened emotional worlds of fiction,
many characters exist in a quasi-permanent state of saudade.
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to be."
They are often both happy and sad —
and they long for the absence of something
that they have only begun to realize is gone,
or to sense has yet to arrive.
For the Portuguese, to experience saudade is simply to feel.
You can be grateful for the happiness of the present,
wistful for the past, and yearning for something in the future —
all at the same time — because that’s what it means to be alive.
[Whispering] "Elio.
Elio.
Elio."
It’s no wonder, then, that this feeling is so key to the stories we tell
ourselves, about ourselves.
We never stop longing.
Why would we ever want to?
"Why is it so important to dream?"
"In my dreams, we're still together."
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[Music]