Does anyone else find it interesting that screenwriter Tom Ford decided to give Amy Adams' character some long, irreleva
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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. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 01:24 AM)
Eh, I'm not sure how you can deduce that Edward is dying of cancer from the bald facts of the film. The only time we ever see Edward is in flashback. Sounds more like speculation than deduction (or even inference) to me.
The only material presence we have of Edward is his manuscript. That's the central conceit of the film: what it represents, what it could mean (diegetically, and also symbolically, but also as a gift to Susan).
But it also seems that the explanation you're providing is more to suit the conclusion you want to see (regarding Edward), instead of derived as logical outcomes of unmistakable narrative clues. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 01:37 AM)
Consider the bald fact that Ford has Jake Gyllenhaal play both Edward and Tony. So we as the audience are automatically prescribed to assume metaphorical (maybe even allegorical) continuity between these two characters. It could be possible that he has cancer, like Shannon's character, and that this is really the motivation for sending the novel to Susanbut again, in my mind, this is pure speculation.
Why is everyone forgetting that in Edward's novel, Tony dies an alone and broken man? That his vengeance against those who killed his wife and child never truly brought him peace and satisfaction? I think there's lots of important symbolic value there regarding how (or whether) we should understand his gesture of giving Susan his novel as "revenge" and whether he really walked away from this whole affair as a restored individual.
I read the end as Susan in some way getting the
wrong
message from Edward. Edward wanted Susan to understand his emotional turmoil, through the metaphor of the novel. And though she's seen this as a revelation regarding Edward's talent (so to speak), in the end she sees him as just another way out of the life she left him for. In some way, she still doesn't get it (much like all the others who see this film as having a non-ending). And whether she gets it or not while she's sitting alone at the restaurant is not Edward's concern. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 05:36 AM)
It could be possible that he has cancer, like Shannon's character, and that this is really the motivation for sending the novel to Susanbut again, in my mind, this is pure speculation.
Of course it's speculation - that's exactly what you're supposed to do when confronted by an allegory! You engage your brain and speculate about the meaning of the allegory in a rational manner. In a well-constructed, nested story which is clearly an allegory, every line, action and prop should do double duty - it should move the narrative along, and also reveal info about the source characters and their story.
When you discover
both
characters associated with Edward are facing death or die - your reasoning faculties should recognize those two events as a very gigantic, bright red flag. An allegorical bell should ring loudly in your allegorical ear! Only the dimmest dimwit would ignore such an enormous neon signpost when the template for those characters fails to show up for an appointment at the conclusion.
What kind of person are
you
? A deaf, dumb and blind dimwit, or somebody who possesses a few functioning brain cells? -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 01:55 PM)
More ad hominems please. I don't think you've convinced me or any other reader sufficiently enough of your cancer theory. Please also comb my posts thoroughly for grammatical and spelling errors to bolster your case as well.
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DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 11, 2017 08:50 PM)
Ford is definitely not saying that women shouldn't have the right to abort their fetuses (I prefer this to "unborn children".) No one is. He just threw it into the story as a plot device to "legitimize" further his vengeance. Again, it wasn't even in the original novel upon which this film was based.
He is saying that it's wrong to use that right do what Adams' character did to her husband.
Is Ford really saying that? Are you saying that Susan had an abortionto do something to her husband? To wound him intentionally somehow? I'm pretty sure her husband followed her and her lover to the clinic and witnessed the aftermath of the procedure which she tried to hide from him.
Does supporting women's rights mean that we can't criticize women who use those rights to do terrible things?
What exactly was the terrible thing she did? Was exercising her right to have an abortion wrong becauseshe had an abortion?
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.
Now the "unborn children" phrase makes sense.
She didn't want to have a child with a man whom she didn't love and didn't see a future with. Should her husband rape some sense into her? -
jimmer69 — 9 years ago(January 12, 2017 09:58 AM)
I'll try this again.
No one is saying a woman doesn't have the right to get an abortion. We should get that out of the way. Seems quite a few people who bark out 'women's rights, women's rights' seemed to have stopped right there and said, 'well, she got an abortion, it's her body, oh well. the guy needs to deal with it and it's no biggy' without looking at the whole picture. There's more to it than that.
Here's what happened in the story.
His wife left him, and while processing that, he:
1: finds out she was pregnant
2: finds out she aborted the fetus without even telling him she was pregnant with
their
creation (yes, it takes two create a human)and without any conversation at all about other options before exercising her rights to have an abortion
3: finds out she had another man in her life already.
Those three things he finds out all at the same time while still processing the fact that she left him. It's not like she told him she was pregnant, they talked about options, she said she wanted an abortion, he was against it and she did it anyway. That's not how it went down.
There's a women's right to exercise control of her body and have the abortion, and then there's actual common human decency which Susan discarded thoroughly. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 12, 2017 10:21 AM)
Those three things he finds out all at the same time while still processing the fact that she left him.
You know, all of those three things are quite common, none of them are capital crimes, and only a juvenile mind would consider them grounds for a twenty-year campaign of revenge. In fact, many injured parties in a divorce would probably prefer to be fed Susan's anodyne version, especially since they have no say in the matter.
Therefore - as I've pointed out on numerous occasions, Edward's novel contains no revenge motivation. Try considering some other options. -
jimmer69 — 9 years ago(January 12, 2017 10:34 AM)
Okay, no one said anything about capitol crimes. Jesus Christ some stupid strawman arguments fly around here. Since when does a capitol crime have to be committed for people to be hurt?
And it's quite common for someone to find out those things all at once? OOOOOkay
I've never come across anyone, ever, that got slammed with all that stuff all at once. And, like many, I knows tons of divorced people.
But you go ahead and think men could/should just roll with finding out all those things all at once and have them think, 'Meh, whatever.' It's not realistic. Not all men are emotionless robots. Some actually have some feelings and I imagine anyone finding out that his wife/ex-wife/soon-to be ex-wife (who he still loved) was pregnant, aborted it, and had a boyfriend all at once would have some real hard emotions to deal with. Nothing juvenile about that. Anyone who minimizes the effect that would have doesn't have a grasp of reality.
I also think it's stupid that he would ponder on it for twenty years and have it consume his life. At some point, you'd think he'd finally come to the realization how horrible of a person she was and he was lucky to get out as quickly as he did.