Love rendered as a profound full-body-and-mind-and-spirit experience that words, no matter how beautiful or well-wrought, can only do so much to describe or give voice to, let alone replace. That kind of aching romanticism is easy to mock, as are the National's mumbled, introverted songs, whose own words often threaten to trip over themselves. But I personally found the marriage of Wright's trademark visual and directorial decadence and the unapologetically theatrical tragedy and deep sensuality of the source material(s) to be extremely moving. Roxanne opening that first letter is some of the lushest, most unabashedly erotic Hollywood-adjacent filmmaking I've seen in some time; and you can be sure I'll be thinking about "Wherever I Fall" for a while yet.