MONTY. I don't want you to visit.
His
voice is rough and slurred, his split lips impeding his diction.
[Naturelle] opens a bottle of rubbing alcohol, wets a cotton ball,
presses the cotton lightly against the gash in his forehead. He
shudders, his fingers gripping the edges of the sofa cushions.
MONTY. I don't want you to come see me up there.
Naturelle struggles mightily to keep herself together. She continues cleaning his wounds.
MONTY. Why'd you stay with me? You should have left a long time ago.
NATURELLE. You idiot.
MR.
BROGAN. And maybe one day years from, long after I'm dead and gone, you
gather your whole family together and you tell them the truth. Why you
are and where you came from. You tell them the whole thing. And then you
ask them if they know how lucky they are to be there. It all came so
close to never happening. This life came close to never happening...
I loved Nell's reaction to the ending. "No...No...You're kidding"—or something along those lines. Well, I felt the same way when I saw it with Clark Cloyd when it first opened. I totally thought the fantasy was reality. It's as audacious an ending as there has
been in a mainstream studio movie. I know a number of you—Nell definitely—were sucked in by this fantasy, this wish-fulfillment, of Monty (and
maybe his father). I've seen this movie several times; and for some
reason, this time I found the ending—the fantasy—uncommonly powerful and emotional. I want Monty so much to make his life "right"—that he will use a second chance to make the world a better place than he left (and had a hand in ruining). And I love looking at the beautiful children and grandchildren he and Naturelle could have had.
So, to keep this short and sweet: And here's the screenplay.
1.
Your reaction to the "ending": from the moment Monty goads Frank into
beating him (it didn't take much), through his goodbye (his last, I
think) to Naturelle, through the scene above. Along with your reaction,
answer the question: what's the meaning of this ending? How does it
resolve the conflict(s) of the movie? Do you find it satisfying or not?
And why?
2.
Is the movie misogynistic? I ask that because the last time we watched this movie, we spent a good portion of the discussion debating this. And a couple of you—Agasha? Nell?—responded to the comment on made about the possible sexist ways the film portrays its women. So going with this train of thought: misogynistic—how so or how not? Think about this question
before answer it. And think too: is the movie portraying, commenting
on, a misogynist mind set that is in the story, or is it reflecting
Spike Lee's misogyny. Remember: Lee did not write the film—David Benioff
did (though clearly it stylistically and thematically is consistent with
many of his other films).
3. Finally: do the 9/11 references have a place in this movie? Do they serve a purpose in it? If so, how? If not—how do they, for you, affect the experience of watching the movie?
Finally, fittingly, we end the semester with a rant that most definitely and consciously mirrors the rant in our first text of the year, Do The Right Thing.
This is the last blog of the semester. Thanks for the effort, thought, and insights you put into it. Have a good weekend. Be sure to see me starting Monday if you have questions about the paper.
