It's one thing for Joe to resent being a kept man and to start quietly looking for a way out, but it's quite another for him to boldly insult his sugar mama, to, like a merciless predator, zero in on her weakness — her vanity — and rip her to shreds. It seems like a smarter, more compassionate man might contrive a plausible excuse to get out of the house and simply not return, instead of making a big production out of his "honor" and "the truth" by telling her — unstable as she is!— that she's a has-been, that Max is responsible for the fan letters, that no one will care if she commits suicide ("Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.")
He's smart enough to realize this:
Joe Gillis (as narrator): You don't yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.
Or he may shoot you dead with the gun he just showed you, you Goddamn idiot!
So my question to you, notwithstanding my feelings on the matter, is this: Is Joe a Goddamn idiot? For undersestimating Nora's capacity to do something truly dire, to think she would take his hubris sitting down? Of course, the film could not have had its justly famous ending if Joe hadn't provoked her in some way. Did he ultimately do her a favor by shattering her way of life, even if she's not really aware that it's been shattered?
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The first time I saw the movie, I was a bit surprised that Joe finally stiffened up and decided that he had to stand on honor. We had just watched him drift into being a gigolo. We watched him start a romance with an engaged woman while trying to hide his life from her. And when we first met him, he was scamming the repo men. Honor didn’t look like it was ever going to enter into it.
So not only did he stir up his unhinged and gun-wielding sugar mama, but when Betty offered to forget about his past if he would just leave with her, he turned down this easy out and instead did the uncharacteristic thing of driving her away in disgust.
If his action seemed to come just from some notion of honor, then the scene wouldn’t work. But his motive is as much self-loathing as anything else. So instead of being an idiot, I found him to be self-destructive: to unconsciously be tempting Norma to shoot him.
So maybe she did him a favor by putting a dog out of its misery. But he didn’t do her one. After her big scene on the stair case, she wasn’t going to get too many more. I figure she won’t even get much of a trial just a few hearings on the way to the loony bin and an early death in the ward.
I agree with you, dw. I think maybe he knew but was being self-destructive. The minute Norma said she loved him on New Year's Eve he bailed. But he ran into Betty and it started kindling feelings for her. But since he didn't think he could have her he went back to Norma.
Yes, self-loathing is definitely part of it. There's a sense at the end that he's saying Let's stop pretending. You're a loser, I'm a loser, we're all losers.
I think the tone of voice of the voiceover makes the self-loathing palpable.
Wonderfully so. As more than a general rule, I dislike voiceover—if you are going to write a novel, then write a novel. But this is one of the few films where I think the voiceover is a major plus. That snide but self-loathing voice sets the tone of the movie and helps make the impending doom seem inevitable.
Well, voice-over is one thing and has its place, but what do you make of the dead-man voice-over?
I read a book recently called "Gilead," and the narrator in it is dead, but not while he's telling the story. We know he's dead because we're reading his book (a condition at the outset).
That’s by the author of “Housekeeping”, isn’t it? Or am I thinking of a different book? Anyway, did you like the book?
It is hard to answer the dead-man voice-over question in general. When George introduced his pick, he mentioned “American Beauty”. That and our current one are the only two dead-man voice-overs I can think of right off. I liked “American Beauty”, but I don’t think the voice-over made much contribution to the movie although it didn’t hurt either. Anyone want to jog my memory and throw in a few more?
Perhaps having a dead-man voice isn’t as bad as some other uses. I really don’t like the ones where an adult is narrating his or her coming-of-age. Nor do I care for reading bits of text from the book when a movie is based on a novel. Even if it is a well written book.
The set-up in “Gilead” sounds like a very good device for a book but would require cleverness to do in a movie.
Oh, and while I’m complaining about filmmaking devices, let me add that I don’t like “bookend” devices where the movie is framed at the start and end with scenes at another setting usually at a later date. If this sets the movie up to be somebody’s reminisces, the movie is bound to violate the device by showing scenes that were not in that person’s experiences. That is often what is bad about the remembered childhood voice-over too. Ok, so now I do have an answer to your question. The dead-man voice-over isn’t as bad because, if we are going to have dead men speak, why not let them be omniscient?
I LOVED "GILEAD" WITH ALL MY BEING.
Marilynne Robinson's writing is unbelievably beautiful, which may explain why she has written only two novels.
And yes, she wrote "Housekeeping," which I also recently read and am desperate to discuss with someone, if you have read it. There's also a movie of same.
Yes, once you let the dead talk, anything goes. I did not mind the device in this movie so much because Joe is a storyteller. He could have told this story before he died, really. On this front, he finds in death success that eluded him in life.
Yes, Marilynne Robinson is the one.
Sad to say, but “Housekeeping” has become too dim in my memory for me to be a worthy partner for your discussion. I do remember asking several people at the time, “Have you read this? It is beautiful.” Nobody had. I think I would like reading it again. Send it to me if you still have it.
I agree with you about Joe-the-storyteller. In a similar vein, I thought the voice-over in Wong Kar-Wai’s “2046” was effective because that character was a writer and the voice-over bits were his stories.
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