“What am I doing with my life? I’m so pale. I should get out more. I should eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Oh, right, it’s because I’m dead.”
These are the first words spoken in the 2013 film Warm Bodies. Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, and based on the book by Isaac Marion, the film is one part paranormal romance and one part zombie comedy with a dash of Shakespearean inspiration. Warm Bodies differs though from the tragic romance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in its approach to love, hope, and happily ever afters. While Romeo and Juliet might overestimate the power of fate or random chance and equate love with death, this initial monologue by R (Nicholas Hoult) conversely sets the stage for the ensuing thematic meaning throughout Warm Bodies — that both love and hope are, rather, something life-affirming and that to choose to love or to have hope is world changing.
In the world of Warm Bodies, there are three ways to exist: as a human, as a zombie, or as a boney. To be a human in this new world is complicated; it is as full of death, loss, bitterness, and loneliness as much as it has the potential to be full of life, happiness, hope, and love. To be a zombie, on the other hand, is to have lost touch with what makes each of us human: our extraordinary capability to love, have hope, and dream of a better tomorrow. Zombies cannot dream or communicate with each other outside of grunts, moans, and the occasional fragments of words likely calling to hunt for food. While incapable of feeling sensations or experiencing the depths of emotion, they long to feel again what it was like to be human, living through the memories of the people’s brains that they eat. Boneys, rather, are skeletal zombies that have lost all hope and literally shed the final physical and emotional remains of what once made them human.
The line between these three modes of existence though is a blurry one. Zombies can experience a person’s life by eating their brain, but if they leave the brain of their victims alone, that person will become a zombie too. And while all zombies will someday turn into boneys, with a little love some zombies can become human again.
It is both the concept of love in and of itself and the representation of that love through the unfolding relationship between R and Julie (Teresa Palmer) that jumpstarts the cure for the zombies. He chooses to save Julie from the other zombies — the importance of this monumental decision on the narrative is reflected in a snowglobe of two people holding hands that he finds while doing so — and soon after his heart beats again for the first time. The imagery of two people holding hands is used throughout the film as a symbol of life-affirming love. By re-enacting this one gesture of proclaimed love in front of other zombies, R and Julie change everything. As R continues to fall in love with her, he starts to come to life again. He dreams of becoming something new, is remorseful about killing Julie’s boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco), feels sad when she leaves him to go home, and experiences the cold again as it rains. Yet, R is not the only zombie feeling the effects of such a powerful symbol. In the window of a store in the airport concourse, an advertisement of two silhouettes holding hands brings back memories for a growing crowd of zombies and together, their hearts start to beat again as well. Suddenly, there is hope for them all to feel alive again.
As the final battle rages between the humans, zombies, and boneys to shape the future of the world, R and Julie share their first kiss. This sweeping moment of love and hope for a new life finally realized is interrupted by Julie’s father (John Malkovich) who shoots R. As his blood slowly soaks into the water, they all come to realize that he is bleeding — R is alive again and with him, the world is born anew. Working together, humans and zombies defeat the boneys. Zombies are taught how to live again amongst humans and everyone gets a new beginning. Julie and R sit and watch together as the walls around the city and the metaphorical walls around the hearts of humanity are demolished.
It is only through the acts of choosing to have hope and to love that such a happy ending becomes possible. In Marion’s novel of the same name, it is suggested that the sickness that destroyed the world came from humanity’s crushing, negative emotions. Warm Bodies suggests that it was our disconnection from things such as living fulfilling lives, reaching resolutions to the hopes and dreams we might experience every day, and loving others that was responsible for the apocalypse in the first place. And there is no better way to end a film that places so much importance on the fatal loss of these key elements that comprise a happy ending than to subvert this.
In a world already so full of darkness, why not shine a light every now and then? Love is not death, it is not decay, it is not something that dooms you; love is life, it is healing, and it is something that can save you. To choose to love even in the face of something so tragic and horrific like a zombie apocalypse is incredibly powerful. To choose to have hope for a better tomorrow can change the world. What can be more meaningful than to have hope that we can all live out the happily ever afters of our dreams? There is hardly a film out there that so clearly embodies the significance of love, hope, and a happy ending like Warm Bodies.
