In another world, Jules and Jim might have had an idyllic life, perhaps as eternal bachelor friends, or perhaps as lovers. Instead, into their lives storms Catherine, maelstrom of and frivolity and fraught, a third wheel wrecking ball equally caged by a society that demands from her children and domesticity. Perhaps a pessimistic metaphor for life itself, promise and optimism weighed down by responsibilities and a realization of one’s own limitations.
It's fine to want to rediscover the laws for human life, but how practical it must be to conform to existing ones. We gambled with the sources of life and lost.