He’s not a triumph because his house is likely in decline. But I don’t see anything in the idea that he has met a bigger bully who will basically let him keep on keeping on with brief interludes of being tormented as non-triumphant. He thinks her torturing him is helping him in his tortured genius. The film is sold on the idea that the tortured genius is a thing.
Imagine a film with an artist who regularly hangs himself from his wrists from the ceiling in order to improve his art and at all other times is a monumental shit. I don’t think I would feel that because he’s willing to suffer for his art that it upends the trope of the tormented artist. It just gives a better idea of just how far he’s willing to go.
ETA: To be more clear: I don’t think it’s unusual at all to show the tortured genius using self-torture, self-destructive behaviors, hanging out with people who are destructive to him, making bad choices, etc. Life on the edge is not what I would consider an uncommon aspect of that trope.
Interesting. I didn’t see that at all. My take was that Alma’s “dedication” to him and stabilizing the business were going to allow him to carry on exactly as before, if not better. He was going to be able to continue pushing himself (and others) to the edge, only now he has someone other than Cyril to pull him back when needed. I don’t see any reason the business would be in decline.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying about the trope of the tortured artist. I don’t disagree at all that he fits the concept, but I understand you to be saying this movie celebrates that in a way that Hollywood (and, in some cases, real life too) often does. To me, that’s the idea that we should be looking past his flaws to focus on the great things the artist has accomplished.
That’s not what I took away from this movie. The message, for me, is that the audience should absolutely be horrified by the behavior of both individuals. We aren’t supposed to be looking past it to focus on their accomplishments—the dress-making is an afterthought. We are supposed to be reeling from the idea that there’s anything normal or acceptable about what they’re doing.
This seems to support the idea that a literally “tortured” artist is a good thing.
I took it as more of a “Oh, he’s horrible but a genius! And look, he’s met his match! Now he can be even more genius-y!”
Nothing at all is pushing back against the idea that his horrible behavior is because of his artistry. If the House of Woodcock is bolstered at the end (I don’t think it was), that would only be more evidence that we’re supposed to be seeing the link between being fucked up and being creative, that these things are inextricably linked.
I just saw the film last night, and have a number of thoughts. (Since it’s is still in theaters, I’ve used spoiler boxes.)
First, does everyone just take the ending at face value? I have a number of problems with that, chiefly Reynolds’ rapt attention to Alma as she’s making the omelet, and the very deliberate and slow way he eats it. He’s never paid that much attention to anything she’s done, so I think we are supposed to believe that he somehow knows she’s poisoning him. (I was reminded of the scene at the end of I Claudius where world-weary Claudius knowingly eats the poisoned food his wife offers him.) But how would Reynolds know that? And why would he eat if he did?Also, consider that the very first shot in the film is Alma telling someone about her relationship with Reynolds. We come back to this scene several times in the movie, and it isn’t until about halfway through that we see who she’s talking to, and it’s some time after that that we learn that he is the young doctor called to treat Reynolds after Alma’s first attempt at poisoning him. That whole scene appears to be happening after her second attempt at poisoning Reynolds.Before I started hanging out at the SDMB, I would never have come up with a theory of the kind I am about to expound, but Dopers have taught me to consider speculative possibilities far beyond a straight reading of the text of a story. So here goes.
[spoiler]Everything from that scene with the omelet in the kitchen is happening only in Alma’s mind, not in reality. Part of her may have wanted merely to sicken him again, as a way to get back to the best time in their relationship, but we see how much more of the poison mushroom she is using this time, so obviously she really intends to kill him. And I think she succeeds.
The way he watches her cook, and his careful eating of the omelet, is her wishfully thinking that he knows and approves of this plan. Her conversation with the doctor may be her confessing what she has done, after Reynolds’ death. Her talk of running his business and having their child are her dreams of her life after him, not with him. [/spoiler]If you don’t think this is a reasonable interpretation of the ending, please tell me what you think the ending means, and how I should understand the scenes I’ve pointed out here.
(I’m omitting your spoiler boxes because the thread title has a spoilers warning.) I think it’s an interesting speculation, but I don’t agree with it: I think the style of the film is plain old realist narrative all the way through, even if some of the events are a bit weird.
Yes, I agree that in the kitchen scene Reynolds knew that Alma was poisoning him, and wasn’t sure if it was actually going to be fatal. Since he’s a despair-ridden insecure neurotic, he didn’t resist an attempt at what for all he knew was literal murder. When he found out that Alma was “merely” deliberately making him ill, specifically for the purpose of temporarily infantilizing and dominating him, it was a relief and a gratification to him. His role of artistic genius and wealthy business owner is incredibly taxing to his fundamentally weak and fearful nature, and for Alma to take on periodically the role of the controlling and protecting mother whom he desperately misses makes him even more enamored of her.
I think the ending means exactly what it seems to: a depiction of two stunted people making a superficial success of a fundamentally and deeply unhealthy relationship. (For one thing, what’s going to happen when one of Alma’s “dominance omelets” has a bit too much toxin in it and/or Reynolds’s resistance is weakened and he actually is killed or seriously damaged by it? You can be sure that Cyril will not have any qualms whatever about seeing that the widow is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.)
I also think that one of Alma’s acts of independence/dominance is, or is going to be, cuckolding Reynolds with the young doctor, and that’s why she’s telling him this whole story. Yes, I believe she really loves Reynolds, but she’s not a truly stable and healthy person any more than he is, and one of the things she loves in him is his weakness and incapacity to prevent her from flexing her control-and-cruelty muscles. The doctor’s young and attractive and if Alma wants him she intends to have him, in the same way that if she wants to dance at a New Year’s ball she intends to go do it.
How is he supposed to have found out that she poisoned him the first time? She put a little bit of the mushroom in his tea. Is there any sign in the movie that anyone knows or even guesses this? I don’t recall anything. He’s briefly grateful to her when he recovers, asks her to marry him, and in fairly short order goes back to being his same old assholish self.
I don’t think he had a clue about her earlier actions until the moment in the kitchen when he was watching her make the omelet. All of a sudden it dawns on him "wait a minute, she’s going to poison me. And that time before our engagement when I got so sick? [I think we can assume that type of illness is a very rare thing for him, as he seems to have a pretty hearty appetite.] That was her first attempt. She doesn’t love me at all and just wants to get rid of me and be my wealthy widow. She hates me. I’m a worthless despicable talentless pile of shit just as I always thought. Nobody could possibly care anything for me, stupid heartless idiots that they are. Well, at least I’ll be with Mother again."
And then when he finds out that the poisoning is instead about her (super-twisted and unhealthy, but neither of them sees it that way) determination to temporarily “unman” and control and devotedly tend him as he completely and helplessly gives way to his weakness, he’s overwhelmed with relief and love for her. “Kiss me, my girl, before I’m sick”…? :dubious:
Yup. IMHO he had no notion about the poisoning before that kitchen scene, as I said, and there is nothing about the poisoning (either before or after he realizes it) that in any way permanently “cures” him of being his assholish self. As with many fundamentally weak natures, his assholishness is completely natural to him: it’s how he displaces his fear and self-loathing onto everyone around him. His toxin-induced episodes of incapacitated “softness” are just brief interludes in that essential pattern.
Something else that just occurred to me: Alma may very well be aware that she’s flirting with the risk of manslaughter, and that it could be helpful to have Reynolds’s doctor complicit or entangled in some way so that if the worst does happen, she’ll have some control over him. Having control over people is something she’s quite okay with.
Remember, as we know from all those classic British murder mysteries, when a death occurs the attending physician is required to give a certificate stating the cause of death. Refusing to give a certificate invites the possibility of criminal investigation.
Being in a position to explain to the authorities that your late husband’s doctor was an accessory before the fact to your little Borgia-lite roleplaying games and kept quiet about it because he was banging you behind your husband’s back sure could help to overcome any reluctance Dr. Hardy might feel about giving a death certificate, couldn’t it? [sinister side-eye smiley]
There’s not enough there to make a sequel, but I definitely would have enjoyed at least a quick post-credits scene suggesting such a setup. A genuinely heartbroken red-eyed Alma in beautifully cut widow’s black. In the background, the bewildered and silent young child. Dr. Hardy motionless but sweating like a man in a nightmare, finally realizing just what his infatuation for his fascinating young mistress has let him in for.
And, meeting Alma’s eyes from across the room, the equally elegantly-black-gowned Cyril’s three-degrees-Kelvin stare.
Heh
heh
heh.
Watched it today. Acting, production values, DDL, music, blahblahblah, all good.
I’m going to skip any analysis because others have done it already, but mostly because this was a appalling film about nasty, warped people living nasty, warped lives. What obnoxious characters! The sister was sort of okay, but Mr. Prince on a Satin Cushion Wookcock and his co-dependent, sociopathic, Merry Poisoner–good grief. What a household of sickos. This was Lewis’s swan song? What was he thinking? I did watch the whole thing because I paid for it, and I was curious about where it was going–ugh. That’s $5.00 I’ll never get back.
Did anyone recognize Frasier’s agent Bebe Glazier as the drunken What’s-her-name Rose in the dark green dress?
Just saw it tonight. Great cast, acting, score, costumes (for which it won an Oscar) and cinematography. Too long, though, I thought, and once it got into the poisoning subplot it just got a bit too weird for me.
She’s from Luxembourg, and her character, judging by accent at least, wasn’t English. I kept expecting the movie to tell us more about her backstory - some terrible experience during WWII under Nazi occupation, perhaps?
So the main female figured out how to what’s called n some circles “topping from the bottom” ie meek little mouse knows how to minipulate The mental part relationship without the Man of this relationship reailsing it …