The End
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Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 12:44 PM)
some obscure Texas schoolteacher
Edward is not some obscure Texas schoolteacher and that's where I think you miss the mark. He is an important part of Susan's past and identity. She may have forgotten about him when she was on a roll, but the thing is, at some point people often start to think differently about their past and it comes back.
Who doesn't do that? OTOH people are still fawning over her and she's on museum boards. Are you really so naive to think this kind of woman is going to collapse over being stood up for dinner?
Do you think that people just erase their past because they have success? The thing is, she is not just being stood up, there's more to it. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:04 PM)
Edward is not some obscure Texas schoolteacher . .
I wasn't talking about Susan's POV - please refer at the context of this comment. He's an obscure schoolteacher from the POV of the person listening to him in a bar.
Do you think that people just erase their past because they have success? The thing is, she is not just being stood up, there's more to it.
She's being stood up by somebody who hasn't been part of her life for twenty years. No doubt she's reflected on their time together while she's been reading the novel, but that's only the last couple of days. Bottom line - he's not important to her current life. In addition, Susan has no idea if he hasn't turned into a 300lb fast food-loving loser wearing Dallas Cowboys polyester who no-showed after he saw her sitting in the expensive restaurant.
I don't think much about the girl with whom I lived in my 20s. I might want to meet her if she contacted me asking my opinion on some surprisingly good fiction she'd written about the emotional impact of our break-up. If she didn't show up for our meeting, I'd be curious to know the reason, but I wouldn't go into a terminal collapse, as some have suggested for Susan. Would you under those circumstances? -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:02 PM)
She falls in love with Edward again and turns her back on her life with Hutton. At least that's Tom Ford's own interpretation:
..because she falls in love with him again through reading [the novel]. She is liberated, by the way, at the end. This has been painful. Shes taken those rings off. Shes wiped off that lipstick, and she is not going back to that life. We dont know what the next chapter is for her, but [the previous] chapter is over.
That would turn Edward's no-show into a bit of a bummer for her. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 01:40 PM)
The glaring logical flaw to me in Tigerfish's arguments is the appeal to consequences.
His argument is that Edward couldn't be taking revenge, because that would make the story weak, or Edward would be shown as pathetic, or Susan would be too strong and unperturbed (which again would make the story weak.)
What Tigerfish doesn't realize is that these could actually be legitimate problems with the filmand not improbable "red herrings" thrown in (by whom, exactly?) that detract from such a great film as Nocturnal Animals. Oh no.
Maybe those things Tigerfish explains away as impossible given that this must be a good film are really just evidence that it's a rather uncompelling and unconvincing one.
Consider, if we accept everything that Tigerfish says about Susan being ruthless and not bothered by Edward's no-show, and Edward having moved on and expressing gratitude (!) through his manuscript, then what was even the point of the majority of the film? Why all of this hullabaloo and "rape-murder-revenge red herrings" about two people who DON'T CARE AND HAVE NO EFFECT ON EACH OTHER? -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:46 PM)
What Tigerfish doesn't realize is that these could actually be legitimate problems with the film . . .
I'm far from an uncritical admirer of the film, and have described the interior narrative as
thin
on several occasions. OTOH I don't believe Tom Ford is a simpleton who would make those kinds of elementary dramatic mistakes.
Consider, if we accept everything that Tigerfish says about Susan being ruthless and not bothered by Edward's no-show, and Edward having moved on . . .
It seems you have no understanding how psychological self-defense mechanisms operate. I've said numerous times
if
Susan regards the no-show as revenge, her ruthlessness immediately chimes in, and the pathetic attempt at revenge becomes totally ineffective. How can
you
believe in a totally ineffective revenge? Or do you, like feeble-minded FartyKat, invent feverish fantasies about Susan going into meltdown mode?
By contrast, the film points firmly in the direction these two characters do have compassion for one another. The revenge aspect is nothing more than Tom Ford's basic conjuring trick which successfully fooled so many of the village idiots who gather here. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:10 PM)
It seems you have no understanding how psychological self-defense mechanisms operate. I've said numerous times if Susan regards the no-show as revenge, her ruthlessness immediately chimes in, and the pathetic attempt at revenge becomes totally ineffective. How can you believe in a totally ineffective revenge?"
But we're not saying different things. Just because it was an ineffective or petty revenge, given Susan's shallowness and sour grapes defense mechanism, doesn't mean that that was NOT what we're supposed to interpret it as: an ineffective and petty standing-up. For me, and others, and even you, this narrative manuever fails, because who cares about this shallow woman and her petty ex?
But I wouldn't say that his not showing up (after he replied to the email to ask where or when) categorically DOES NOT have a tinge of malice, as you do. Why would you say I have no sense of defense mechanisms (none of which were pictured in the last moments, while what we did see is her disintegration just like the ice cubes in her whiskey), while you couldn't possibly imagine that Edward's fake-out no-show was a spiteful move? If it were, then the film seems to me more thematically and emotionally consistent regarding the character of Edward. The tables had been turned.
Again, the crux of the film and the scene in question is not revenge per se, but more a sense of "now you see how I feel." That people desperately want this to be a vulgar "in your face" moment is neither here nor there. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:40 PM)
Again, the crux of the film and the scene in question is not revenge per se, but more a sense of "now you see how I feel."
Perhaps we've been disagreeing about nuance. That's easy enough to do face-to-face - in fact I exchanged emails on that subject with my GF this morning - and a forum makes communication even more difficult.
IMO both characters are fundamentally decent but flawed people struggling to deal with their emotions, insecurities and attachments - and making mistakes as we all do. In a sense, the ending is a mirror - different for each person. I see death - and an absence of malice. I consider that something to aim for in life. -
Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:56 PM)
Totally agree. From fishyfish's POV there was no reason to make the film or write the story. It was like a non event, which then obviously proves he is wrong and that no one can abstain from the human experience.
Every writer writes from the same POV, the view of the human experience. We can say and do things to people in film and expect certain results, even if they aren't fully explained. That's actually the whole point of this film.
Fishy's conclusions are somewhat fishy. Maybe Fish can brush things off so easily, but humans have a soul and there's no getting away from that. A person can only be so shallow. If Susan was as shallow as Fishy believes she never would have married Edward in the first place. The point of the film is Susan made a mistake and is now paying for it, not brushing it off like last night's crumbs. -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:13 PM)
This is not ammo for the turf war, but here's what Ford has said himself:
.because she falls in love with him again through reading [the novel]. She is liberated, by the way, at the end. This has been painful. Shes taken those rings off. Shes wiped off that lipstick, and she is not going back to that life. We dont know what the next chapter is for her, but [the previous] chapter is over.
Seems like she has a heart (which to me was fairly obvious all along) -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:23 PM)
Seems like she has a heart (which to me was fairly obvious all along)
That's what I've been saying too. It doesn't seem very likely this kind of transformation would follow an attempt at revenge. And it doesn't much sound like she's destroyed. If it was revenge, it kind of back-fired - liberation is generally considered something positive. -
Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:32 PM)
yes, she has a heart, like we all do, and when it's stepped on it hurts. It's something you can just forget about. It can eat at you, for a very long time, which is exactly what happened to Edward. His heart was stepped on and it hurt him for a very long time. How long? We don't really know that, but we know that something came from that hurt. His work, his novel, had meaning behind it. He gave it to the person who hurt him and she fell in love with him all over again, as women can do.
And then he stepped all over her heart.
and that is exactly why this film is so good.
It's not about sunshine and roses, it's about how love and life can hurt, so very much. -
christmastiger-16003 — 9 years ago(February 10, 2017 11:04 AM)
He gave it to the person who hurt him and she fell in love with him all over again, as women can do.
What? I think this kind of logic only flies in movies, reading a book by your ex doesn't usually make you fall in love with them. Maybe in the improbable movie situation where you just so happen to be unhappy with your life at that particular moment in time, but as OP and others have said:
How would Edward even know she was unhappy?
She called him once? People like to keep up with each other, especially if it's been 20 years. Otherwise he was taking a HUGE shot in the dark, nobody other than Susan's friend had figured out what was going on with their expenses.
Also, did he write the book with the intention of making her fall back in love with him so he could stand her up? He knew that would work? Honestly, I don't really see much in that story that would have made me fall back in love with him, but that's just me.
Or did he write the book just for himself and sent it to her to be like, "Look, I wrote a book!" and didn't give a care what she thought? If so, why was it dedicated to her and basically about her? I genuinely don't understand Edward's motives.
He really had no reason to think that Susan wanting to see him had anything to with falling back in love with him. He wrote her and her daughter as characters who were raped and murdered, I would have honestly been more creeped out by Ed than amorous.
It also seems to follow more realistic logic that she just wanted to meet him to give him feedback on the book, as that's why it appears he sent it to her in the first place.
I'm definitely with OP in that there are a lot of unanswered questions and confusing directions taken in this movie, coupled with the non-ending it felt wholly underwhelming.
She was unhappy with Edward, so I don't really know what it was about the book that made her want to go back to him. Seriously, Susan, find a new guy or learn to be single and happy with yourself because you're obviously not going to be happy with the people you've chosen so far. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 04:03 PM)
She's rolling around in bed, swooning at her ex's magnificent manuscripther shower scenes mirror Tony'sshe defends a protg (that her colleagues want to replace) out of a new-found sense of commitmentshe gets all pretty and hopeful and removes her ring to meet Edward.
And for Edward, who knows NOTHING of Susan's dissatisfaction, and with NO INTENTION of winning Susan back, the manuscript was all he had to say.
There's no grand and elaborate revenge, because Edward has no such intentions either. After all, HE DIDN'T KNOW that Susan was miserable and that she would see him as a way out. It's not like Edward was sitting next to us watching this film, people.
He just stands her up at the end, because as a film, it needed closure, some scene, for us to realize that the tables had been turnednot a non-response to an email.