"Love Is Strange" question...SPOILERS!

Cafe Society
1

We saw “Love Is Strange” a couple of months ago, and I’ve been thinking about one particular scene, trying to figure out something, ever since.

Spoiler space so the preview isn’t rude…
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Okay, after Ben’s hospitalization, and after George is shown the new apartment, there’s a scene with Ben and George at a local bar, then saying goodbye at the subway stairs.

Is this scene meant to be an actuality? As in, did Ben actually recover enough to go wandering around Manhattan before finally dying? Or was this in George’s head, a kind of mental/emotional goodbye to a man who’d already shuffled off this mortal coil?

I originally thought that it was the former, but my husband suggested that it was actually the latter, and to tell the truth, I’m not absolutely sure now. I don’t think the somewhat abrupt ending scene was a bad choice…the movie isn’t about overwrought melodramatic death scenes or gut-wrenching funeral grief, and it wasn’t necessary to bring those in. However, it does sort of ambiguify (is so a word! I just made it up!) the meaning of the bar/goodbye scene.

2

I thought this would be about Mickey and Sylvia.

3

Yeah? Well, how do you call your lover boy?

4

Buddy Holly & The Picks was my first thought…

5

I saw the movie in the theater several weeks ago but I missed that bit because I kept closing my eyes and then jerking them open, struggling not to fall asleep. It had NOTHING to do with the movie, which I thought was a beautiful love story about two people, soul mates for decades and finally able to marry, separated against their will and trying to get through a temporary rough patch forced on them by bigotry. It’s just that I was seeing it after work and I had gotten up at 6:00am after not having enough sleep. I just zoned out for a very brief time a couple of places near the end, and that was one of them. I meant to go see it again because even if I only missed 30-45 seconds, that can be enough for me to say I didn’t see the movie.

So, I’m useless and that explanation was boring, but I wanted to let you know that at least one other person knows you’re talking about the movie with John Lithgow, Alfred Molena and Marisa Tomei, and not the song.

6

Heh. Thanks for that.

It’s not a flashy movie at all. Very quiet, very gentle. It’s like the anti-Michael-Bay. I really loved it.

7

My husband & I saw it at the cinema when it was out, and truly enjoyed it.

Now we’re working our way through “Dexter” on Netflix & trying to reconcile John Lithgow as Trinity. :eek:

8

Getting back to the question in the OP, I assumed that the meeting in the bar was reality. But I noticed that the camera lingered on the subway station Ben climbed down at the end. So I assumed that he might have died on the platform after meeting George in the bar.

9

I’ve just watched the movie and I’m wondering the same thing.
Also why did they go their separate ways) if they got the new apartment, I don’t understand.