Susan level of commitment to Billy never made sense to me. I mean there were not married or even engaged. Were they?
-
Withrow68 — 16 years ago(August 03, 2009 06:20 AM)
But he's the one who jeopardized their future with his drug deal. Also, he could have gotten her arrested as his accomplice. And when she went to see him, it was not 5 years. That period had come and gone. It was 30 years, or life at that point. Her level of commitment was surprising because they were not married or engaged at that point. A scene in the movie indicates they had not even had sex yet as he had just reached the point where he was allowed to feel her up. Remember him touching her breasts when she tells him to "knock it off" while the old guys smiles at him? Yet, she waited for 5 years? To put it another way, if his escape plan had not worked, how long would she have waited. It's not called being 13. It'a called being realistic. When your main squeeze gets life in prison, it might be time to move on.
-
BrockLong — 16 years ago(September 16, 2009 11:57 PM)
I agree about Susan's dedication to Billy. He appeared to genuinely care for her as he intentionally kept her out of the loop about his attempt to smuggle the drugs so as not to involve her. It also made sense to me that Susan would visit him in the prison with the money. However, I really didn't buy why she was still waitng for him. Billy was serving a life sentence. I thought that it would have been more realistic if a weeping Susan told him that she had waited for him for years but, once he received the longer sentence, realized that she had to move on with her life and that she had married someone else.
The movie ended very abruptly with still shots of Billy's reunion with Susan and his family. We really didn't get any explanation of anything. Maybe Susan had moved on and just didn't tell Billy when she visited him in the prison. That would make sense giving how badly he was doing when she visited. I would have loved to have seen a final scene with Susan tearfully telling him that she was married. -
helenelisechat — 16 years ago(September 17, 2009 04:43 PM)
Re: 'I would have loved to have seen a final scene with Susan tearfully telling him that she was married' Why???? Don't you think he'd suffered enough? I can't imagine anything worse! Being reunited with Susan was probably the only thing keeping him going. I can't understand people thinking 5 years is such a big deal for a woman to wait for a man she loves. Maybe some of you posters have never experienced true love. It's the only logical conclusion I can come up with.
He's taking the knife out of the Cheese!
Do you think he wants some cheese? -
Zhan_Zhuang — 16 years ago(September 29, 2009 01:30 AM)
^
I would have loved to have seen a final scene with Susan tearfully telling him that she was married
Being the sado-masochistic movie it is that would certainly have been probable. But in all seriousness I think Susan went to Billy to give him an ultimatum: escape or she would have to continue her life without him.
Amzing scene when she visits him in prison though, so tragic and emotive.
"Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river." - Laozi
The Shadow Warrior -
MrAgmoore — 16 years ago(October 30, 2009 03:23 PM)
I think that you are misinterpreting the boob-squeeze scene. To me, that scene meant that they were so intimate that he could playfully squeeze her boobs in public.
I used to do stuff like that all the time with my ( now ex ) girlfriend. I would slide my hands along the inside of her thighs, on the subway, pinch her boobs ( while she'd try and fend me off ). We ended up having sex in public theatres and parks.
That kind of boob squeeze is entirely different from when you see teenagers, in the back row of a cinema and the guy stereotypically slides his hand around the girl's shoulders and tries to cop a feel.
Within the context of the movie, I hard a hard time seeing why Susan had the hots for a guy who, at the beginning of the movie, clearly had rocks in his head LOL
Things were kind of different back then, in the 70's - people would get married and stay in unhappy marriages. You have to watch Blow (2001) just to get a feel for the lack of airport security.
One person who read the book mentioned that she was a fictional character -
r-lambert20 — 15 years ago(August 18, 2010 09:10 AM)
Yepit's true, Susan is indeed a fictional character.
The book is quite different from the movie.
Somebody has already pointed out that Billy had relations with a girl named Lillian, who, as i understand it, wrote to him throughout his incarceration.
He visited her after his return to the US, but he said their wild dreams of happiness were never realised in real life, it was just a fanasy in pages, that kept him alive on the inside, and not much happened between them.
Irene Miracle's Character was supposed to introduce a love interest to the story in a way that would be accepted to movie goers.
Things in real life are a little more complicated, and the real love story that kept him going,(albeit, one in letters) wouldn't have made good television, so they invented Susan.