With Love and a Major Organ
Directed by Kim Albright
Written by Julia Lederer
Starring Anna Maguire, Hamza Haq, Veena Sood
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
Premieres March 7 at the Genesis Cinema

by Tina Kakadelis, Staff Writer

There is a flaw in the human condition. Unlike other animals, humans are ruled by emotions. It is a flaw of the human condition and we have personified our hearts as the spokesperson for our feelings. Our hearts ache, they flutter, they beat too fast, and sometimes, they shatter. What if our hearts weren’t the flesh and blood organs we know them as? What if we existed in an alternate universe where our hearts were ordinary objects in our chests? This is the world that With Love and a Major Organ asks the viewer to enter. Much like the world we are used to, the film’s universe is filled with people who believe that suppressing emotions is a form of self-care only this is taken to the extreme.

Anabel (Anna Maguire) is an artist who expresses herself through painting. She is often the butt of the jokes of people around her because Anabel has decided not to tamp down her emotions. She feels them to their fullest extent and uses them for her art. Most of the people in this society use an app called LifeZap that makes decisions for its user, taking the uncertainty out of everything. During her lunch break, Anabel sees the same man, George (Hamza Haq), sitting by himself on the bench in the park. They strike up a conversation and Anabel falls head over heels for George instantly. She boldly decides to give him her heart, only for George to run away with it.

With the ever-looming fear of artificial intelligence rearing its ugly head, With Love and a Major Organ feels like a rallying cry for what makes the human experience an essential component in the creation of art. All art comes from a strong sense of emotion. It doesn't really matter what that specific feeling is, but it has to be so big and so loud that it cannot be ignored. It must be poured out onto a canvas, into a notebook, through a piano to create something. For as long as humans have existed, we have created art for art’s sake. Now, with the growing prominence of A.I., there is the question of the human’s role in all of this. Should we streamline the process and let these supercomputers work their magic when it comes to painting, filmmaking, and music? With Love and a Major Organ vehemently says no, that we lose something essential if we take messy, beautiful human emotions out of the equation.

In many ways, With Love and a Major Organ feels like a contemporary adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The fears that likely inspired both are quite different, but the overarching worry is the same. Both films feature, to borrow a turn of phrase from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pod people who have lost the ability to feel human emotions. It’s a more conscious decision in With Love and a Major Organ which speaks to our current fears about technology and maybe lingering trauma from all of these “once in a lifetime” events like natural disasters and political upheavals that keep happening. Maybe it would be easier to turn it all off. To let someone (or an app) make all of our decisions for us and then we get to follow those decisions blindly. Of course, to do that, to put your humanity into a technology, you have lost something distinctly human. Something that is worth savoring, fighting for, and wallowing in.

Beyond the heart on the sleeve emotions is a beautiful visual landscape to enjoy. With Love and a Major Organ has the retro futurism of a Black Mirror episode mixed with technicolor neon magical realism. It’s a treat to live in this world for an hour and a half and be reminded of the breadth of human emotions. To see these hearts be ripped out when the pain gets to be too much, to be swept up in earnestly awkward poetry, and to try to connect with somebody else. Humans are not good at many things. We are made of frail bones, easily breakable skin, and fallible minds. Our greatest strength is our ability to try again and again. To take our broken, bruised, hopeful hearts and give it to someone else in the hopes that they take care of it. With Love and a Major Organ is an argument in favor of feeling everything, to let our lives be ruled by passion.