Watched movies Great Expectations and Lolita

Almost every minutae of the world can be both used for both good and evil. Obsessional love is no different. In the movie "Great Expectations" (a modern take on the Dickens classic) which I watched recently, there is a strong portrayal of the good obsessional love. I also watched "Lolita" where the dark side of obsessional love is shown. 

Lolita direct by Stanley Kubrick was a old film based on the novel of the same name by Nabokov. It was about the obssessional love this middle aged university lecturer Humbert, has for a 14 year old girl. This obsessional love turns Humbert first into a criminal, with sexual relations with a minor and practically inducing suicide of his wife. Then later he is destroyed, becoming a baubling mess after Lolita has run away from him, and then finally murders Clare Quilty, goes to jail and dies of thrombosis. The acting and story telling of the film were excellent. However my Nana telling me the film was banned at one point and anyone reading the book was regarded as morally perverse, makes one expect some hedonistic material but at least with modern standards the film was very tame, though a lot was probably censored as the director Kubrick says he wouldn't have made the film if he knew how harsh the censors would be.  If one wanted to regard how realistic or idealised the "love" was, as one of the themes of past scholarship questions, it would be quite realistic. After all a much worse image of Josef Fritzl has been cemented all too strongly in our minds.

Great Expectations (again modern take) wasn't as good as Lolita. It was about a good hearted boy Finn who falls in love with Estelle. Estelles aunt hurt in love has trained her to be cold and toy with men so Estelle falls into this pattern with Finn. I won't give an excessive overview but Finn becomes a great success because he helped a convict he saved when he was a little boy and in the end after much trouble meets Estelle again and they love each other. With "love" it is pretty idolised as a real person is unlikely to be obsessive enough to wait the decades for this cold heartless women to actually find a heart. As an enjoyable reader of other of Dickens books I will suspend judgement on him. But this movie definitely messed it up, like all good things love in films needs real conflict. Instead we have Finn perhaps true to his name just flopping on the ground saying "come on Estelle, please this time love me."

So it seems at least in this case the dark side of "love" seems more probable. But I wonder is it perhaps because the media would always obsess over a horror story about love and not report the happy endings as too boring. Perhaps also too blame are the writers of crappy romance movies, who can't conceive of positive love without raining us with cliches.