Ed
doubled over in discomfort at the cab company, and again experiences pain
during the bridge game. He then collapses near the outside doorway, and his
hand grabs onto the frame, pressing the buzzer button. The sound serves as a
kind of warning signal to what is happening to Ed. He goes to the hospital. The
doctors, figures of authority, seem almost cold, and inefficient, in their
continued probing of Ed’s body, which includes biopsies, to determine his
problem. They finally diagnose him with a rare disease involving inflammation
of the arteries, which can prove fatal within a year. They offer hope in the
form of what was then a new, experimental drug, cortisone. They do warn that it
must be taken in proper doses because it can cause mental changes. While in the
hospital, one of the cab workers visits Ed, and he must tell Lou the truth
about his second job.
Before
exploring more what happens to Ed, it may be revealing to discuss a couple of
supporting characters and their relationship to America’s contradictory stances
regarding individuality, especially in the 1950’s. Another teacher is Pat Wade
(Kipp Hamilton). She is young and attractive, but not involved with a man.
Although the U. S. extols the importance of individual sovereignty, it also
finds those who do not conform to societal expectations to be suspect. Pat
stands out because she is not involved romantically, and should be on her way
to having a family. She has car problems, which underscores a shared economic
problem of not being able to afford new things, but it also underscores that,
being single, she needs help from others which she would not have to request if
she had a husband to aid her. Ed tries to set her up with Wally, who is also
single, to rectify both of their societal deficiencies. There is an implication
that Wally’s lack of a marital partner may be because he is gay. At the
school’s open house, he has a brief, mutually supportive exchange with a male
teacher outside the entrance. Wally grips the other man’s arm, and they enter
the building side-by-side with their arms wrapped around each other’s
shoulders. So, despite the prevailing U. S. anti-communist sentiment at the
time involving the subjugation of the individual in favor of the glorification
of the state, the individual preferences of these two people make them, in a
sense, societal outlaws.
What
happens to Ed, however, illustrates that when self-importance becomes predominant,
it poses a danger to the other members of a society. The cortisone not only
eases his pain, it initially produces an energized high. Ed can’t wait to get
back to work. After being dropped off at the school, he tells Lou that seeing
his family in the hospital lobby made him feel “ten feet high.” We then have an
upward shot of Ed, looking like a giant, his head appearing as if it rises
above the roof of the building. He is on his way to feeling bigger than the
lives around him. It is significant that we hear him teaching his class about a
“bigger than life” person, Julius Caesar, and how the character of Cassius in
Shakespeare’s play refers to Caesar as a “colossus.” Perhaps Ed is seeking a
role model.
After
taking over Pat Wade’s class (disrupting the normal work flow by being late
because of those car troubles), he admires her dress when she arrives. He
decides that Lou deserves some upscale clothes. He wants to take her out
shopping, because he wants to celebrate his getting better, which is a “big”
occasion, the word stressing the supersized attitude he is adopting. The
emphasis on class identification is emphasized here. Lou seems frightened to
even enter the pricey store, embarrassed about being in a place above her
social station. Her fears seem to be justified, as a female salesperson ignores
their requests for service. Ed, however, begins to threaten the employees with
a scene unless they get first class service. He then conducts himself like a
monarch ordering those around him to do as he wishes. He practically forces Lou
to try on one dress after another until he approves of the ones he wants her to
wear. But, at the same time, he adopts a superior stance by minimizing the
talents of clothes designers. He is on the road to building up his opinion of
himself by knocking down accomplishments of others.
Ed,
now overcompensating for not being able to financially bestow gifts upon his
family, follows up the clothes-buying binge by wanting to purchase a new bike
for Richie. Even the boy says to his mother his father may be acting somewhat
foolish. When they arrive home, Ed wants to throw his prize football around, in
a way trying to recapture the glory of his youth. He and his son toss the ball
around the house. Ed breaks some glass at one point with a toss, but he doesn’t
even seem to care, showing how his needs are beginning to surmount any other
concerns. He ate a roast for dinner, and orders Lou to make sandwiches, too,
symbolically suggesting his ego needs feeding. When the cab company wants to
know if he is coming back to work, the mere intrusion into his current state of
mind that he worked at what he now openly scorns as a menial job infuriates
him. With condescension, he says he won’t be back as a dispatcher, and will be
getting something more in line with his profession. When Lou asks what that is,
he yells at her for picking on him, while really angry because he has no
fitting job lined up, and is stern with Richie for playing the TV loudly,
reminding him of the “boring” nature of the programs.
Lou
tells him that she will get him some warm milk to calm him down. The movie
serves up several instances involving milk. The drink works as a device to offset
female and male sensibilities, and subvert accepted positive outcomes into
negative ones. In the above instance, the milk is associated with the
traditional link to female nurturing. It plays a similar role later in the film
when Lou secretly gives it to Richie after Ed inflicts a marathon teaching
lesson upon his son. In anticipation of Ed’s return home from the hospital,
Wally tells Richie he has bought ingredients, including yogurt, to whip up what
he calls “tiger’s milk,” to build Ed up so he can fight his illness. This seems
to be some macho version of milk, an indication that previously submissive Ed
needs to revive his manhood, a sort of harkening back to rugged individualism. However,
milk’s nourishing image is tarnished at the bridge party, as Ed, at the
refrigerator, gets a glass of milk and then doubles over in pain. At the
hospital, while undergoing tests, Ed must swallow barium, which is used for
gastrointestinal x-rays. It is white, simulating the appearance of milk. So,
the nourishing drink has turned into a false version of itself, used to analyze
problems with the digestive system, the very tract through which it is supposed
to provide nourishment. Ed discovers by mathematical logic (sounding something
like Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny)
that there is a glass missing from the pitcher of milk, and accuses Lou, in his
paranoia, of undermining his instruction of Richie. When the milkman makes a
delivery, Ed berates him by saying that the rattling of the bottles has
disturbed his concentration. He makes a snobbish accusation that the milkman,
being an inferior worker, was envious of Ed’s intellect, and deliberately tried
to distract the teacher. Ed is making himself “bigger” by running another
person down. Through the use of the milk image, the story metaphorically shows
how Ed’s mental imbalance has upended the stability of his world.
After
quitting the cab dispatcher position, Ed wants to take a soothing bath. But
that pesky hot water heater, reminding him of the financial limitations of his
place in society, thwarts his desire to pamper himself. He says he will buy a
heater that is “bigger” (that word again), but Lou painfully deflates his
proposal by reminding him they can’t afford it. Lou says she will boil up some
water in a tea kettle for the tub. While she is in the kitchen, Ed plays at
making himself look like an upper-class gentleman, wrapping a towel around his
neck, and covering it with his robe, as he views himself in the bathroom
mirror. He takes another cortisone pill, as he has been upping the intake of
the medicine. When Lou brings the hot water, he treats her like an employee,
saying that another full kettle will do. She now revolts, like a rebellious
put-upon worker, reminding him he is not in the hospital now, and it is not her
role to wait on him. In the middle of storming out, she slams the medicine
cabinet mirrored door. Ed looks at himself amid the glass shards. A distorted, monstrous
visage of himself reflects back at him. The broken mirror seems to symbolize
how his once integrated personality which comprised both individual and social
elements, has been shattered. Ed looks scared as he wraps his arms around
himself, as if feebly trying to hold his splintering self together. He tries to
smooth things over with Lou by saying they were away from each other too long
while he was in the hospital. He the gives her a prolonged kiss.
We
witness Ed’s growing addiction to the drug (echoing the cab driver’s
preoccupation with gambling as an attempt to escape his predicament). His son finds
him downstairs at night, crying. He tells Lou that he is depressed for not
achieving what he deserves, which shows his feeling deprived of his proper
station in life. He says he is just experiencing a drug “letdown.” He is being
accurate, medically, because he is in withdrawal from his increased dosage.
But, he also feels “let down” by not reaching the personal heights to which his
ego aspires. He lies to his doctor, saying he spilled his pills down the sink,
so he can acquire an additional supply of the cortisone. At one point, he walks
into a pharmacy where he is not known, pretends to be a doctor, uses a fake
name, and writes a prescription for himself.
At
the school open house, we find Ed headed toward full-blown grandiosity. He
stands on an elevated platform in the classroom, looking down on others from
his “bigger” stance, pontificating to the parents in attendance. He being a
teacher is an appropriate position for someone spouting off what he considers
is his superior knowledge. He now has no patience with the slow maturation
process of children, who enjoy childhood before growing into their roles as
adults. He sees youths as inferior human beings, saying that the children’s
drawings are a waste of paper. He says, “Childhood is a congenital disease and
the purpose of education is to cure it.” He says that fostering self-expression
and emotional security is “hogwash,’ and will only create arrested development,
letting the children stay as “morons,” and “moral midgets.” That last size
phrase again emphasizes how Ed sees himself as rising above all others. Some of
the parents are outraged by his denunciations, but he has supporters, one in
particular, who likes Ed’s call for “self-discipline,” and “a sense of duty,”
for children to excel. In Ed, we have an exaggerated example of that
contradictory nature mentioned earlier of glorifying the individual while also
wishing to subjugate her/him. Ed is in extreme self-righteousness mode now,
uncensored by any external social restraints. But, from that self-importance
flows intolerance for any other position, which, by definition, has to be
wrong, and thus inferior to that of the superior viewpoint. Also, by forcing
agreement to the megalomaniac perspective, the superior beliefs gain confirming
validity through numbers. Thus, the exalted individual knows what is right for
everyone else, and for their own good wants all others to conform to the
correct belief system.
Wally
tells Lou that Ed is acting like a “big shot,” and even looks taller in the way
he carries himself, demonstrating an outward manifestation of his personality
metamorphosis. Economics again interferes, even if it means helping Ed, as Lou
tells Wally not to say anything to Ed’s boss about her husband’s behavior, for
fear that Ed might lose his job. Ed comes across the two talking. Because he
believes his superiority is threatened by envious inferiors, Ed becomes
paranoid, thinking there are conspiracies against him. He calls Wally “Mr.
Muscle Beach,” probably subconsciously fearing he falls short in the physical
department, and believes Wally may be trying to have Lou for himself. Later,
when Lou tells Ed about how the cortisone is warping him, Ed accuses she and
Wally wanting him to stop taking the medication so he will die, so they can be
together.
Ed
announces he wants to fulfill his mission in life, which is to write up and
promulgate his revolutionary solutions to educational problems in a series of
articles. He again treats Lou as an employee, expecting her to type up his
tome. But, then says that she is just an impediment to his work, and he must be
free of “petty domesticity.” He says he can now jettison Lou, dismissing her by
bemoaning the fact that he did not meet someone who was his intellectual equal.
He eventually tells her that in his mind, he is divorced from her. He begins to
pack his things. He tells her that she is unable to differentiate between the
important and the trivial. But, in his enhanced view of himself, everything
else from that towering perspective is trivial, including people. He even says
that the human need for sleep is a waste of time, and dismisses doctors for
doling out sleeping pills. He says that the word for “doctor” and “teacher”
used to be the same, his ego not allowing him to be limited to one profession.
He will not concede any high ground to the medical profession, as he now says
that physicians only extend life, but don’t know how to make the best of it. Lou,
realizing he is mentally disturbed, plays along.
Ray
again uses camera angles and lighting to reflect Ed’s view of himself. We see
him at the top of the steps leading to the second floor of the house, looking
down at Lou and Richie, who has returned home. But, Ed lessens his superior
stance, walking down the steps, and changes his mind about leaving. He says
that his first obligation is to guide his son so Richie will reach his full
potential. What follows are the long personal teaching instructions mentioned
earlier. Ed projects a looming, monstrous shadow on the wall of his study as he
literally and figuratively towers over Richie. The shadow changes to a profile
of a man with a pompadour hair style, reminiscent of Elvis Presley. The effect
shows that Ed considers himself to deserve the same praise as a rock star. He
also continues football practice with Richie, but this time it turns into a
rigorous drill. Richie can’t match his father’s perfectionistic requirements,
and begins to cry while stretched out on the ground, seeing his failure in his
father’s judgmental eyes as Ed looks down on him, again standing in the
elevated position. There is also a satirical thrust here, as there was about
the need to be macho by drinking “tiger milk,” because Ed tells his son that he
has to be a real man, male athleticism being equated with success.
We
then see the family in church, as the clergyman gives his sermon and asks the
congregation to bow their heads in prayer. On Ed’s face is a look of scorn as
he refuses to lower his head. Back at home, he says that the preacher is not
worthy to tell others about morality. In order for him to be above everyone
else, Ed wants to even topple those holding religious authority, calling them
“sanctimonious stuffed shirts.” So, he says he must now take on Richie’s
religious education as part of his burden, since the rest of the world is not
carrying its weight. Richie, showing the mature responsibility that Ed stated
at the open house children do not possess, finds Ed’s hidden stash of
cortisone. He takes the telephone, locks himself in the bathroom, and starts to
call the doctor in order to help his father. Lou in the meantime calls Wally.
Ed cuts the phone cord (and symbolically his connection to his son), and calls
him a thief. He reads from the bible about the sacrifice of Isaac. Lou tries to
dissuade Ed from going down this path by saying God saved Isaac after Abraham
passed his test. In an ultimate expression of superiority, Ed says, “God was
wrong.” He says that he will be saving the boy from being a criminal by
sacrificing him. He knows that the bible says killing is forbidden, so he and
Lou must also die. He locks Lou in a closet and is ready to use one blade of
the scissors to kill Richie. Wally bursts in and the two men struggle.
Significantly, Ed falls from the stairs, implying that Wally knocked him off of
his inflated place of importance, and they wreak havoc in the house during
their struggle, showing how Ed’s world is now in shambles, as circus music
plays on the television, its carnival sounds commenting on the bizarre chaos
unfolding.
They
eventually get Ed back in the hospital. Lou and Richie rest in the waiting
lounge. The film then brings us back to the default class distinctions shown at
the beginning of the movie as Ed is no longer a factor. An African American
janitor cleans the floor, showing the low-level job to which society has
relegated him. Richie comments that some people have to work very late. When a
nurse goes by and Lou asks for information, she walks right by, ignoring her,
just as did the salesperson in the dress shop. The story now shows the other
extreme where sometimes there is no respect for the individuals that make up
society.
Lou wants to show Ed that
his family is there to support him after he wakes up after being sedated. When a
doctor asks if she has faith that he can be okay once the proper level of
medication is taken, she says she has faith in her husband, but does not
mention the medical profession.
When
Ed does wake up, he asks that they turn out the “sun,” referring to the bright
light in the room. Is he still feeling grandiose, believing that the sun can be
blotted out? He tells the doctor that he is a poor substitute for Lincoln.
Again, is he delusional, thinking he should be in the presence of the great president?
But, then he realizes that Abraham is Lincoln’s first name, and he remembers
about the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in the bible. He says he was afraid he
tried to hurt Richie, and now says he remembers everything. The doctor comments
that he is no longer psychotic because Ed has left behind his violent
tendencies.
The
ending on the surface appears uplifting, as the family gathers together. But
there is a staged feel to their embracing each other with exaggerated smiles on
their faces. Will Ed be able to take the correct doses of his medicine without
reviving his addiction? Will he again become delusional? Will the medicine even
actually save him from the disease? There is no fair and just solution
presented that reconciles the desires resulting from the individual’s wants and
the sometimes punishing restraints of society trying to reign in those wants.
Ray, as an artist, does not provide answers, but instead raises the questions.
After a one week break the
next film will be Fight Club.
