Does anyone else find it interesting that screenwriter Tom Ford decided to give Amy Adams' character some long, irreleva
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joekiddlouischama — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 08:14 PM)
It's like Ford's waving his rainbow flag and equating (however indirectly) abortion in the mind of a man as tantamount to a brutal abduction and murder all in one fell swoop.
These ideas never occurred to me in my two viewings. Would you describe yourself as politically conservative (perhaps passionately so)? You may well possess a pointthat Ford was covertly pushing a liberal political agenda or at least offering some progressive political subtextbut one might have to be especially sensitive to such issues in order to come away with that interpretation.
For the record, I am not sure that the "soliloquy about her gay brother and her intolerant parents" is that "irrelevant," because it suggests that Susan is socially isolated and alienated on some levela theme that continues through the end of the movie and that may explain why she got into the LA art scene rather than, say, moving back to Texas like Edward. And the abortion point creates (or at least tries to do so) some emotional depth and a plausible theory for motivation.
I never saw any of that as especially political. Yes, the whole "Republican, racist, sexist" spiel is superficially political, but I saw it primarily as a point of character illuminationto suggest Susan's disaffectionand one that Ford presents with humor and irony. Actually, even Susan is saying those lines with some humor and irony, as if to suggest that she is being somewhat hyperbolic while still reflecting a strong kernel of truth. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(December 31, 2016 04:43 AM)
Susan's isolation and disaffection is compounded, first by rejecting the stifling, conservative existence of a Southern debutante, and second by eventually capitulating to her family's bourgeois way of thinking.
We don't really need Ford's treatise on anti-gay conservative Americans to bring this point home. It's beyond superficial; it's superfluous.
What's interesting to me, however, is that you seem to see this as somehow significant for character development (Really? We're talking about Columbia grad school students enjoying dinner at a place most of the student body couldn't afford), while giving Ford a pass for his abortion plot device as grounds for Edward's rape-revenge fantasy.
Does gay acceptance trump women's rights for you as it apparently does for Ford?
And no, I'm not politically conservative. Maybe I'm just attuned to these things after having studied film and political anthropology and even queer theory. Perhaps that you didn't see this as especially political means that it's so commonplace for you as (now it's my turn to presume) an urbane sophisticate in a wealthy liberal society as to escape your notice. But if you haven't seen Ford's previous film A Single Man, and hear echoes of the overtly political sentiments in that film here, then maybe it's not so much my 'conservative' sensibilities that were affronted as these pro-gay-yet-misogynistic ideologies being as natural as the air your breathe. -
VonDC — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 01:03 AM)
DHfilmfan wrote:
'But if you haven't seen Ford's previous film A Single Man, and hear echoes of the overtly political sentiments in that film here, then maybe it's not so much my 'conservative' sensibilities that were affronted as these pro-gay-yet-misogynistic ideologies being as natural as the air your breathe.'
You are absolutely right. -
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ashman-12 — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 05:07 AM)
Agreed; the aesthetic of the movie was beautiful, but it did have some weirdly discordant misogyny that really stood out for me. Especially things like rape (suggested and then depicted, which was really unnecessary) as a plot device to motivate a male character to fulfil his revenge fantasy; and abortion where one of the first thoughts the woman has afterwards is that her ex won't forgive her for "killing his child", as opposed to the emotional ordeal she's just gone through herself and her own decision-making autonomy. The whole focus on how much of a victim Edward was from Susan's abortion (as if it was a malicious act of hers towards him) seemed pretty messed up.
OP, glad you brought this up. You're right to juxtapose this misogyny with Ford's liberal stance with gay men. It's great to see more gay men represented in cinema, but I get your point that the focus on the acceptance of gay men contrasts with the lack of acceptance of women's autonomy. Speaking from within the community, I do observe that many cis gay men can be quite casually misogynistic, often without really realising it. -
agostino-dallas — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 05:52 PM)
English is not my first language but I guess reading your post that all you wanted was to point out how the screenwriter has some sort of sympathy on the gay cause clearly putting the Republican parents on the spot while at the same time the abortion is compared to a rape/murder which means he is like justifying or at least giving some implied support to the husband's revenge, criminalizing abortion or making it "revenge-worthy".
Anyway, it is so weird how the internet has brought up the worse of some people. Not only to your post but thousands everyday. And some of them are unjustified angry comments like the person reads it dynamically and just start "punching the keyboard" like crazy. And usually, one gets so angry they refuse to read it again and the confusion snowballs quickly to a point of no return. I am not like "Gandhi" when it comes to writing but I tend to avoid arguing when the person is clearly too defensive or when the person is totally biased and avoids to analyze the text. I guess the same is valid to the "It doesn't matter" post here as well. I go a lot to the movies in Brazil and I also did when I lived in Texas in the USA. And one of the funniest thing is you go to the movies, you watch something you hate and something you loved. And you get to the office and sometimes before you even mention you have been to the movies you listen some colleagues saying they find movie "A" awesome and movie "B" terrible, and it is just the opposite of what you think. That's how we are. In a much broader way, Europeans movies were for a long time considered art, thought-provoking, long dialogues about existential issues and used nudity all the time while Hollywood would demonize nudity and focus on non-stop car-crashing and bullets ripping all over with almost no critical dialogue. And in the end there was market for both. -
agostino-dallas — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 05:52 PM)
English is not my first language but I guess reading your post that all you wanted was to point out how the screenwriter has some sort of sympathy on the gay cause clearly putting the Republican parents on the spot while at the same time the abortion is compared to a rape/murder which means he is like justifying or at least giving some implied support to the husband's revenge, criminalizing abortion or making it "revenge-worthy".
Anyway, it is so weird how the internet has brought up the worse of some people. Not only to your post but thousands everyday. And some of them are unjustified angry comments like the person reads it dynamically and just start "punching the keyboard" like crazy. And usually, one gets so angry they refuse to read it again and the confusion snowballs quickly to a point of no return. I am not like "Gandhi" when it comes to writing but I tend to avoid arguing when the person is clearly too defensive or when the person is totally biased and avoids to analyze the text. I guess the same is valid to the "It doesn't matter" post here as well. I go a lot to the movies in Brazil and I also did when I lived in Texas in the USA. And one of the funniest thing is you go to the movies, you watch something you hate and something you loved. And you get to the office and sometimes before you even mention you have been to the movies you listen some colleagues saying they find movie "A" awesome and movie "B" terrible, and it is just the opposite of what you think. That's how we are. In a much broader way, Europeans movies were for a long time considered art, thought-provoking, long dialogues about existential issues and used nudity all the time while Hollywood would demonize nudity and focus on non-stop car-crashing and bullets ripping all over with almost no critical dialogue. And in the end there was market for both. -
andrewmichaelbrookes — 9 years ago(January 07, 2017 12:21 PM)
You seem to be saying that Ford is being inconsistent or hypocritical by getting preachy about gay issues in one scene but then portraying it as a bad thing that Amy Adams' character secretly aborted her and her husband's unborn child because she was planning on leaving him for the man she was having an affair with. That is not inconsistent and it is not misogynistic. Ford is not saying that women shouldn't have the right to abort their unborn children. He is saying that it's wrong to use that right do what Adams' character did to her husband. Does supporting women's rights mean that we can't criticize women who use those rights to do terrible things? Must we pretend that what she did was nothing more than a beautiful expression of her female autonomy and not a devastation to her husband? Whatever you think of women's rights, you must admit that what she did by leaving him and aborting his child does somewhat correspond to the fictional rapes and murders in that his family was taken away from him in a brutal way.
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tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 08, 2017 07:27 PM)
Susan 's decision is perfectly logical in today's narcissistic society where abortion is legal and divorce is common. She's leaving the marriage and starting a new relationship; she's the one who will carry the child for 9 months, not Edward; not aborting the child will lead to all kinds of complications and potential legal issues with her ex-husband. Abortion is the practical choice.
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DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 11, 2017 09:05 PM)
Yeah, pretty much. But even beyond the ramifications of having an abortion and why and so on, why does Ford use this to garner sympathy among audiences as to how we should understand Susan's ex?
Seems kinda lamebut maybe there are people out there who watch this and think, "Yeah, if my ex who didn't love me aborted our fetus which she didn't want to have with me, I'd totally have rape fantasies against her and also feel like my wife and child had been raped." Or something.
#gayrights -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 12, 2017 09:01 AM)
Seems kinda lamebut maybe there are people out there who watch this and think, "Yeah, if my ex who didn't love me aborted our fetus which she didn't want to have with me, I'd totally have rape fantasies against her and also feel like my wife and child had been raped." Or something.
It does seem there are countless people out there - and on this board - who believe that. However, I'm not one of them - and I don't believe Ford is either.
Personally I feel the abortion is a required plot element for belief in the Revenge red herring. A man still festering away over an infidelity after 20 years is kind of pathetic - the abortion adds some additional outrage.
OTOH I don't buy the novel's revenge motivation at all. The novel's abduction, rape and revenge elements are metaphors for Edward's grief and self-blame after his divorce. Administering frontier justice to the thugs represents Edward slaying his demons and becoming a man. If the story had merely been the author's rape and punishment fantasy, those events would have occurred on-screen - Tony would have been forced to watch.
If the revenge aspect is cast aside, the story becomes adult and interesting - and you can toss aside Ford's imagined misogyny as well. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 13, 2017 03:31 PM)
Interesting points. I use "misogyny" loosely, as I don't really think Tom Ford hates women (any more than "homophobes" fear gays), but I do feel Ford 'resorted' to abortion as a plot device.
I mentioned this in the "It Doesn't Matter" post, which you commented on as well, and I think marketing is primarily to blame for our interpretation of this film as a "revenge" tale. But I don't quite see it as that either.
To return to your view that the contents of Edward's novel and the novel itself (how postmodern) were a way for him to exorcise and grow as a man, I can see that. But personally, I think there's something almost petty in his gesture of sending the manuscript to Susan, a gesture beneath someone who would indeed not only have moved on, but had become a better person through the experience. When I bring my own experience into watching and reading this film, I couldn't help but recall all the times people have hurt or damaged me in the past. Some may have said that I'd never amount to what I dreamed I could be, and so on. And sometimes when the desire strikes to, say, friend them on Facebook and regale them with photos of how well I'm doing now, I pause and think that this serves less to prove I am triumphant than to underscore how much I'm still under their thumbs.
So why not just tell a different storyone that ends, like many others, with Susan walking past a Barnes and Noble and seeing Edward's face plastered on the new bestseller in the window? Well, then we wouldn't have a film (or the novel it was based on)or an even more boring film than the one we were subjected to. But also, Edward standing Susan up at the end serves as this moment in the film for us, as if to saynothing: "Don't you get it, Susan? I have nothing else to say to you Susan."
which to me means Edward's novel said it all. It may not be revenge per se, but it's nonetheless a demonstration that he still had something to say to her, to prove to herif only that he could write something compelling (or so we'd led to believe) that was drawn from his life. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 15, 2017 11:39 AM)
I don't really think Tom Ford hates women (any more than "homophobes" fear gays),
Actually, I suspect many homophobes (like those infamous homophobic right wing pastors Craig and Haggard) do fear gays - because many of them are latently gay, and fear their own attraction to other men.
But personally, I think there's something almost petty in his gesture of sending the manuscript to Susan, a gesture beneath someone who would indeed not only have moved on, but had become a better person through the experience.
Perhaps it's worth considering the bald facts presented to us by the film. Like several other posters, I deduce Edward is dying of cancer from Bobby and Tony's fates. He knows Susan tried to contact him some years earlier, and he knows she provided him with the inspiration his novel. Maybe he simply wants to express his gratitude for the important role she played in his life before he dies. IMO that would make him a good person and a big man.