If you were the object of these Three Greatest Looks

Perhaps it only happens in fiction. Perhaps it only appears when we don't expect it to. Perhaps it is The Look only because only we -- and no one else -- know the mystery behind the person looking at us through our deficiencies and still loving us. Here is a compilation of the Three Greatest Looks that have taken my breath away...

1) The Train Station: This. This is the Richard Armitage Look. How could any woman resist? This is the slow, patient look that says he has already discovered and understood and welcomed the realization that You are leaving the station and coming home with him. He has known and accepted what you may have been too nervous and reserved to recognize. This is the look that makes you bumble and mumble gibberish. This is the look that wipes your mind blank because you've been locked into his eyes as the one person in the world, despite all your imperfections. With this look, if you'll have him or not, he chooses you. (Check it out at 1:30 on the youtube clip. Fiction/Film: North & South)



2) The Lendler: The look that Christopher Plummer (Captain Von Trapp) gives to Maria after they dance the Lendler is the look that every woman wants to see on a man's face. This is the look of a man whose strict expectations, traditions, and formalities are unraveled all at once. The look in which he realizes that he cannot make a choice, that he is not the one who chooses, that it is not his doing. The look of a man seeing for the first time that his heart has been stirred, mostly without his knowing. (On this youtube clip, The Look appears first at 3:12. Movie: The Sound of Music.)



3) The Wentworth: Notice how the light of his face changes as it dawns on him that he has not lost all hope, that in fact there is still reason, cause, for him to aspire to You. Watch how he looks back into your eyes, unflinching, but with slowly ebbing caution. See the beginnings of excitement, still curbed, but growing, building. This is the look that says you've taken away his obstacle, removed his pain, and he can once again, without reservation, hope. (On youtube clip, start at 6:52. Fiction/Film: Persuasion by Jane Austen, BBC version.)