"God of Love" Analysis

“God of Love” is a short film about a young man named Raymond who seems to be overall pretty satisfied with his life. He does not want much, but one thing that he does desire- and very strongly- is to fall in love. The object of his affections is a young woman named Kelly, who happens to be in Raymond’s band and also, unfortunately, happens to be madly in love with his best friend. Raymond prays to God nightly that Kelly will return his affections, but there seems to be no progress in his relationship with her until he receives a mysterious box of darts that he can throw at people to make them fall in love for a short period of time. Raymond decides to use the darts to make Kelly jealous and ends up with a swarm of women, all of whom absolutely adore him. One of the women says that they will help him win over Kelly’s affections, to which he replies, “I mean, that’s nice but aren’t you guys kind of in love with me? Isn’t that like a conflict of interest or something?”. The woman replies nonchalantly, “That is why we will help you. We love you, Raymond, we want you to be happy” (12:50 starting point).
This part of the film was an interesting foreshadowing technique from the director, because at the end of the film Raymond accidentally strikes his best friend with a dart, causing him to fall in love with an ecstatic Kelly. Therefore, he is forced to let go of Kelly, and although he does not do so willingly it seems that in the end he is at peace with the way the situation with Kelly played out and that he realizes that she is much happier with his friend than she would have been with him. However, if Raymond had adapted this attitude from the beginning, it is possible that he could have used the darts to strike someone else and may have had a chance at a happy relationship after all.
For most of the film, Raymond’s happiness is greater and more important in his mind than Kelly’s free will. The way he acted up until he accidentally struck his friend with the dart was quite selfish, and this is why he was never quite satisfied with the way things turned out. However, once his friend fell in love with Kelly and the two of them ended up being happy together, it seemed that Raymond changed his mindset quite drastically and realized that he could actually use his dart-throwing talent, along with his magical darts, for the benefit of others. This is when he became “Godly”: when he stopped thinking about himself and instead began to focus on helping others.