The End
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Nocturnal Animals
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:15 AM)
Imagine you sent your ex a novel you wrote after she told you you'd never amount to much, that you were merely a dreamer, and that you wrote too much from your own experience.
And this novel is a gritty Western genre piece that serves as a metaphor, with themes and characters blended so that a direct correspondence between these aspects, and the experiences and people they're supposed to represent in real life, is somewhat difficultbut one that nevertheless registers on an emotional level with your ex.
Now imagine your ex is dissatisfied with the life she left you forthe same life that she chose which placed you in the turmoil that was the genesis of your novel. Andnow she wants to have dinner with you after she's finished reading it.
Your ex sends you an email. She apparently hasn't understood that after all that she's done to you, after all the rage and pain, leaving you like the broken protagonist who dies in the novel you wrote, that you wouldn't be open to meeting with her. Your ex doesn't get that you sent her your manuscript because you wanted her to understand what she put you throughthat sending her your manuscript
was
your message. Not only that, but your ex thinks that she can just leave the life which she left YOU for and that you two can start again.
For most of us, we'd just never respond to the email.
But THAT would be a real non-endingbecause, after all, this is a movie.
So that's why Edward agrees to a meeting, and we see Susan getting dolled up, leaving her wedding ring, only to get stood up at the end.
It's not a non-ending. There's just really nothing more to say, Susan. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 09:39 AM)
It's not a non-ending.
If NA is a story about revenge - which it isn't - it is absolutely a non-ending. Yesterday I asked my girlfriend whether a woman like Susan would be
crushed, destroyed
or even much much perturbed by this dinner no-show, if she thought it was some kind of revenge.
She laughed - like myself, she's acquainted with women like Susan, and knows she'd be over it by morning, just like she'll get over Hutton in very short order. Susan is an amalgam of women like Mary Boone, Anna Wintour and Tina Brown - all of whom Ford would have likely met in his fashion career. All of them have demonstrated utter ruthlessness in their self-interest.
Susan is beautiful, respected in her field, has powerful, rich friends and an interesting career, even if she is somewhat disillusioned with it. In short, she has a life - this supposed revenge would be a pitiful ending. -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 10:57 AM)
Considering how big a deal is made out of telling the audience that Susan is unhappy, does not sleep etc. I'm not really sure about what you're saying here. The point about Susan seems to be that she betrayed her own ideals back in the days.
Also she is in her late 40ies, and some of what she's feeling may be specific to her age like empty nest syndrome, loss of purpose, old age approaching, husband screwing younger women and so forth. Ford has said in interviews that A single man was partly about his own mid life crisis, so it makes sense that he would keep that ball rolling.
Finally regarding her success, it's stated explicitly that it's staring to fall apart and she also questions her own exhibition and talent in the early scenes. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 12:13 PM)
. . some of what she's feeling may be specific to her age like empty nest syndrome, . .
Precisely. Just suppose the dinner no-show is revenge from the guy she dumped 20 years earlier, the next morning it's going to be submerged by more important mid-life crisis business. When the revenge isn't a blip on the
victim's
radar, it's not very effective revenge - either in real life or drama.
. . she also questions her own exhibition and talent in the early scenes.
Who doesn't do that? OTOH people are still fawning over her and she's on museum boards. Are you really so naive to think this kind of woman is going to collapse over being stood up for dinner?
Try to imagine this - a guy in a bar, some obscure Texas schoolteacher, informs you his ex-wife dismissed his writing, cuckolded him, aborted his child, divorced him, became a high-end art dealer in LA and has been living high on the hog in Beverly Hills with a venture capitalist for the last 20 years. Now he tells you how he's avenged himself big time by standing her up for dinner. Wouldn't you think he was kind of delusional and pathetic?
I'm not really sure about what you're saying here.
It's what I've been saying all along. This
avenging
Edward is hardly Iago, is he? Therefore he doesn't exist except in the minds of those who swallow red herrings whole. -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 12:44 PM)
some obscure Texas schoolteacher
Edward is not some obscure Texas schoolteacher and that's where I think you miss the mark. He is an important part of Susan's past and identity. She may have forgotten about him when she was on a roll, but the thing is, at some point people often start to think differently about their past and it comes back.
Who doesn't do that? OTOH people are still fawning over her and she's on museum boards. Are you really so naive to think this kind of woman is going to collapse over being stood up for dinner?
Do you think that people just erase their past because they have success? The thing is, she is not just being stood up, there's more to it. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:04 PM)
Edward is not some obscure Texas schoolteacher . .
I wasn't talking about Susan's POV - please refer at the context of this comment. He's an obscure schoolteacher from the POV of the person listening to him in a bar.
Do you think that people just erase their past because they have success? The thing is, she is not just being stood up, there's more to it.
She's being stood up by somebody who hasn't been part of her life for twenty years. No doubt she's reflected on their time together while she's been reading the novel, but that's only the last couple of days. Bottom line - he's not important to her current life. In addition, Susan has no idea if he hasn't turned into a 300lb fast food-loving loser wearing Dallas Cowboys polyester who no-showed after he saw her sitting in the expensive restaurant.
I don't think much about the girl with whom I lived in my 20s. I might want to meet her if she contacted me asking my opinion on some surprisingly good fiction she'd written about the emotional impact of our break-up. If she didn't show up for our meeting, I'd be curious to know the reason, but I wouldn't go into a terminal collapse, as some have suggested for Susan. Would you under those circumstances? -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:02 PM)
She falls in love with Edward again and turns her back on her life with Hutton. At least that's Tom Ford's own interpretation:
..because she falls in love with him again through reading [the novel]. She is liberated, by the way, at the end. This has been painful. Shes taken those rings off. Shes wiped off that lipstick, and she is not going back to that life. We dont know what the next chapter is for her, but [the previous] chapter is over.
That would turn Edward's no-show into a bit of a bummer for her. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 01:40 PM)
The glaring logical flaw to me in Tigerfish's arguments is the appeal to consequences.
His argument is that Edward couldn't be taking revenge, because that would make the story weak, or Edward would be shown as pathetic, or Susan would be too strong and unperturbed (which again would make the story weak.)
What Tigerfish doesn't realize is that these could actually be legitimate problems with the filmand not improbable "red herrings" thrown in (by whom, exactly?) that detract from such a great film as Nocturnal Animals. Oh no.
Maybe those things Tigerfish explains away as impossible given that this must be a good film are really just evidence that it's a rather uncompelling and unconvincing one.
Consider, if we accept everything that Tigerfish says about Susan being ruthless and not bothered by Edward's no-show, and Edward having moved on and expressing gratitude (!) through his manuscript, then what was even the point of the majority of the film? Why all of this hullabaloo and "rape-murder-revenge red herrings" about two people who DON'T CARE AND HAVE NO EFFECT ON EACH OTHER? -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:46 PM)
What Tigerfish doesn't realize is that these could actually be legitimate problems with the film . . .
I'm far from an uncritical admirer of the film, and have described the interior narrative as
thin
on several occasions. OTOH I don't believe Tom Ford is a simpleton who would make those kinds of elementary dramatic mistakes.
Consider, if we accept everything that Tigerfish says about Susan being ruthless and not bothered by Edward's no-show, and Edward having moved on . . .
It seems you have no understanding how psychological self-defense mechanisms operate. I've said numerous times
if
Susan regards the no-show as revenge, her ruthlessness immediately chimes in, and the pathetic attempt at revenge becomes totally ineffective. How can
you
believe in a totally ineffective revenge? Or do you, like feeble-minded FartyKat, invent feverish fantasies about Susan going into meltdown mode?
By contrast, the film points firmly in the direction these two characters do have compassion for one another. The revenge aspect is nothing more than Tom Ford's basic conjuring trick which successfully fooled so many of the village idiots who gather here. -
DHfilmfan — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:10 PM)
It seems you have no understanding how psychological self-defense mechanisms operate. I've said numerous times if Susan regards the no-show as revenge, her ruthlessness immediately chimes in, and the pathetic attempt at revenge becomes totally ineffective. How can you believe in a totally ineffective revenge?"
But we're not saying different things. Just because it was an ineffective or petty revenge, given Susan's shallowness and sour grapes defense mechanism, doesn't mean that that was NOT what we're supposed to interpret it as: an ineffective and petty standing-up. For me, and others, and even you, this narrative manuever fails, because who cares about this shallow woman and her petty ex?
But I wouldn't say that his not showing up (after he replied to the email to ask where or when) categorically DOES NOT have a tinge of malice, as you do. Why would you say I have no sense of defense mechanisms (none of which were pictured in the last moments, while what we did see is her disintegration just like the ice cubes in her whiskey), while you couldn't possibly imagine that Edward's fake-out no-show was a spiteful move? If it were, then the film seems to me more thematically and emotionally consistent regarding the character of Edward. The tables had been turned.
Again, the crux of the film and the scene in question is not revenge per se, but more a sense of "now you see how I feel." That people desperately want this to be a vulgar "in your face" moment is neither here nor there. -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:40 PM)
Again, the crux of the film and the scene in question is not revenge per se, but more a sense of "now you see how I feel."
Perhaps we've been disagreeing about nuance. That's easy enough to do face-to-face - in fact I exchanged emails on that subject with my GF this morning - and a forum makes communication even more difficult.
IMO both characters are fundamentally decent but flawed people struggling to deal with their emotions, insecurities and attachments - and making mistakes as we all do. In a sense, the ending is a mirror - different for each person. I see death - and an absence of malice. I consider that something to aim for in life. -
Farshnoshket — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 02:56 PM)
Totally agree. From fishyfish's POV there was no reason to make the film or write the story. It was like a non event, which then obviously proves he is wrong and that no one can abstain from the human experience.
Every writer writes from the same POV, the view of the human experience. We can say and do things to people in film and expect certain results, even if they aren't fully explained. That's actually the whole point of this film.
Fishy's conclusions are somewhat fishy. Maybe Fish can brush things off so easily, but humans have a soul and there's no getting away from that. A person can only be so shallow. If Susan was as shallow as Fishy believes she never would have married Edward in the first place. The point of the film is Susan made a mistake and is now paying for it, not brushing it off like last night's crumbs. -
Oldguy69 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:13 PM)
This is not ammo for the turf war, but here's what Ford has said himself:
.because she falls in love with him again through reading [the novel]. She is liberated, by the way, at the end. This has been painful. Shes taken those rings off. Shes wiped off that lipstick, and she is not going back to that life. We dont know what the next chapter is for her, but [the previous] chapter is over.
Seems like she has a heart (which to me was fairly obvious all along) -
tigerfish50 — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 03:23 PM)
Seems like she has a heart (which to me was fairly obvious all along)
That's what I've been saying too. It doesn't seem very likely this kind of transformation would follow an attempt at revenge. And it doesn't much sound like she's destroyed. If it was revenge, it kind of back-fired - liberation is generally considered something positive.