And, Susan IS irredeemable.
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tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 14, 2017 01:29 PM)
. . I would be far more enraged and think even worse thoughts than Edward.
Rage is a waste of energy and poisons the angry. After any serious setback, a period of grieving and self-examination is appropriate, before moving on with one's life. This is the prudent course for any person. As far as we know, Edward took his loss like a man and turned his experience into art. According to his note, he felt gratitude toward his ex-spouse for her part in transforming him into a decent author. There's no evidence he harbored any ill-will towards her, apart from a dinner no-show which can be easily explained if one examines the novel's events.
All this barking up the Tree of Revenge is just pursuing red herrings. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 14, 2017 06:01 PM)
We're talking past each other, but saying the same thing.
Again, I don't see it as a 'revenge' tale, though it could be read that way. If I zoom out all the way, I see it as mostly a postmodern story-in-a-story formal exercise, the subject of which is that tired old yarn of a disintegrated marriage. Who would finance this as a film? Thus, the revenge angle.
That bit about me saying I'd be far more enragedactually, I probably wouldn't be. This was just more to illustrate that I have emotional depth (and that I'm not some uncritical "women's rights" advocatein fact, it's precisely these people and their tendencies that I'm drawing attention to). Edward's novel did not have to be revenge; the narrative contents need not have been a metaphor (this is where we get POST-Modern). The manuscript itself, echoed in the fact that the novel Tony and Susan draws attention to itself (is self-conscious) as fiction,
was
the message. Whatever that says about Edward's character, whether he is vengeful or spiteful or manly or magnanimous, is really beside the point. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 15, 2017 09:57 AM)
. . that tired old yarn of a disintegrated marriage. Who would finance this as a film?
In the right hands, a disintegrating marriage is far from a tired old yarn - see Bergman - tired old yarns are gangster movies, space operas and superhero fairy tales. Since Ford apparently financed the film, it would be him - and since he's already made a film about a man grieving for his dead lover, he clearly isn't interested in making conventional box office fodder. In actuality, NA is an allegory about how it feels to come out the other side of a disintegrated marriage and achieve peace of mind - nothing more. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 14, 2017 12:42 PM)
Consider Braveheart, the macho tale of Scottish Independence.
Mel Gibson decides to paint Prince Edward II as gay and weak and ineffectual: a soft aristocrat under his overbearing and psychotic father, who throws the Prince from a window.
Ok fine, business-as-usual: hardy, manly, straight Scottish nationals against the weak English overlords. Plot device received, understood, and audience sympathies firmly aligned.
But did Gibson give the titular character William Wallace some long solliloquy about how 'backwards' the English are and yet exploit the same 'backwards' thinking in the minds of the audience to further his story?
No, he just straight up went full-on macho.
Maybe Tom Ford could have done the same. Ford should have just went full-on with the abortion thing when it served his narrative purposes and said nothing against Southern conservatives (who also happen to think abortion is wrong as the killing of unborn childrenHELLOOOOOOO) when championing well-to-do gays. -
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RagingR2 — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 03:15 AM)
Does anyone else find it interesting that screenwriter Tom Ford decided to give Amy Adams' character some long, irrelevant soliloquy about her gay brother and her intolerant parents, but then added some story element not found in the novel about her character having an abortion as some justifiable reason for her ex-husband's revenge tale?
I did notice both elements, yes.
But I didn't think they were as contradictory as you seem to think.
Did the movie say the abortion thing was a justifiable reason for revenge? I don't think so. Yes, the suggestion was that this may have been a reason. Or more precisely: we saw it in her flashback, so she remembered it and possibly created this link in her mind. So you might as well interpret that
she believes
it might be a possible reason for his attempt at revenge (projection), not necessarily that this is the correct conclusion. Edward may have had other reasons, or the entire novel he was writing may not have been an attempt at revenge in the first place; the movie leaves it pretty open in the end, I think.
And even if the novel was indeed a revenge tale, and even the abbortion was indeed Edwards reason for writing it, still I don't think the movie ever claims that this is justifiable.
Also I certainly don't see how this whole thing constitutes "misogyny" with the director, as you mentioned in further replies in this thread.
Greetings, RagingR2 -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 06:42 AM)
But I didn't think they were as contradictory as you seem to think.
You're correct - it's not at all contradictory. The OP just wanted to make a political point.
The abortion is entirely necessary for the plot. An ex-husband obsessing about being dumped 20 years after the fact is borderline psycho as well as unbelievable. The abortion adds an extra ingredient.
As for Susan's mother - she ostracizes her son for his homosexuality. We see her glacial, controlling personality for ourselves - and apparently she's also racist and elitist. She's not a nice person. -
aleksi-suuronen — 9 years ago(February 09, 2017 06:08 PM)
I don't think Edward was necessarily obsessing about it for 20 years. As he said, everybody writes about themselves and that whole mess was a big deal in his life. Writing the book propably opened some old wounds and that made him go for the revenge after all those years.
And as you said it's not contradictory at all. It's valid plot point and Tom Ford isn't saying anything about abortion. Even characters of the movie ain't saying if they think abortion is bad or not as a whole, some of them thought that in those circumstances it wasn't the right decision. It was all about how Susan was running away from her fears about Edward not making it and them not getting the high life.
Edward couldn't beleave she was running away to get fulfilment from materialistic things even though they were having a baby and she didn't even tell him about being pregnant. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(February 09, 2017 07:19 PM)
I don't think Edward was necessarily obsessing about it for 20 years.
None of us have any idea how Edward has spent the last 20 years, but a lot of posters have assumed he's been stewing in misery, and his novel is an attempt to inflict a cutting revenge on his ex-wife.
I'm sure he has regrets about his failed marriage, but as I suggested some time ago, for all we know, he's been dating a lot of hotties, hiking the Rio Grande at weekends and writing novels in those long school vacations. Now he's getting one of them published. That doesn't sound so agonizing to me. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(February 10, 2017 11:50 PM)
Why would these things be contradictory? That mainstream gay men took on the Orlando shooting as
their
tragedy while the true victims were largely Latino non-gender-conforming queers, and yet also use derogatory terms like "trannies," is not contradictory either: it's just something people do.
That Ford, as screenwriter, would add a soliloquy more against conservative Americans than pro-gay (as something of a mirror image of what he did in
A Single Man
, which read as a plea for gay marriage), and then add a plot device not found in the novel
Tony and Susan
regarding Susan having an abortion to further the point for us that she "killed his baby," is not contradictory, as you say, either. It's just something people do.
I'm having a really hard time understanding what people see as political and what they don't. Does one (whether a character or a writer) need to hold up a sign that reads "I'm being political here" to preface their statements, or the narrative choices they make? And why is it so difficult for people to see that filmmakers can be political with their aesthetic choices, and yet so easy for many to presume that
I'm
being political just by reading my critiques thereof?
I'm not saying you're doing this, RagingR2; but just bask in the delicious irony and hypocrisy of it all for a moment with me. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(February 11, 2017 12:07 AM)
Read the above posts for my comments on "misogyny" and "homophobia." Ford doesn't 'hate' women. Ford doesn't really think enough about them to hate themas witnessed in his use of abortion as a plot device to establish why Edward might hate Susan.
"If they're gunning for you, boyyou've already won." -
shoutatthesky — 9 years ago(February 11, 2017 03:10 AM)
This is not a movie about gays. This is a movie about integrity. The woman had none just like her parents. The man had a lot of integrity because in spite of his weakness he persevered till the end, sacrificing all in the process.
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DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(February 11, 2017 12:39 PM)
I agree. But that's precisely why the soliloquy sticks out, for me, like a sore thumband also invites the side-eye with the abortion plot point. Restraint and staying true to the story would have been better here.
In contrast, there's a nice scene in this newest season of Sherlock where Watson's wife figures out how Sherlock inferred that Watson would find a female psychiatrist. She says something along the lines of choosing a female psychiatrist because Watson was tired of having the world explained to him by a man, "and aren't we all?"
So here the writers are bringing in a little topical element in reference to "mansplaining" but doing so with wit and brevity, rather than making a political 'statement' out of it.