Stand By Me

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed!

Stand by Me (1986), which shares its title with the great Ben E. King song, was directed by Rob Reiner and is based on a story by Stephen King (two kings make a great pair here). The tale takes place in the summer of 1959 in the form of a reminiscence by the narrator who is The Writer (Richard Dreyfuss). He thinks about the first time he saw a dead body after reading about a death in the newspaper. Even though it’s been many years since he was twelve years old, the memory has haunted him his whole life.

The main characters are young boys who are in a transition period between being children and becoming adults. The Writer is the grownup Gordie Lachance (Will Wheaton). They play cards in a tree house as kids will do, but Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy DuChamp (Corey Feldman) smoke cigarettes, showing they are rebelling against childhood norms. The screenplay is effective as they engage in trashy put-down comments which fit their age group. The Writer notes that “finding new and preferably disgusting ways to degrade a friend’s mother was always held in high regard.” The Writer comments that Teddy acted crazy for a reason because his violent father almost burned off the boy’s ear once. Chris, their leader, came from a “bad” family also, and according to The Writer, was expected to have a “bad” life (unfortunately true for the actor River Phoenix, whose early death was a shocker). The film suggests that external factors can abnormally thrust children out of their carefree innocence.

One of the boys’ crew, Vern Tessio (Jerry O’Connell) enters the treehouse with news. While searching for where he buried his coins under the house porch, Vern overheard from his brother, Billy (Casey Siemaszko) and his pal, Charlie Hogan (Gary Riley) the location of a young dead boy, Ray Brower, who went missing. The older teens stole a car and that was why they were near the train tracks where they found the dead boy. Since Billy and Charlie are staying clear of the police, the younger boys think they can get credit for finding the body. Youths enjoy pretending to be heroes and these boys sing the title songs of old TV shows that told cowboy stories, which shows that desire.

As the kids concoct alibis to free them up for their quest, The Writer notes that his mother (Frances Lee McCain) and father (Marshall Bell) were traumatized by the death of Gordie’s older brother, Denny (played in flashback by John Cusack) in a car accident, another initiation into the harshness of the world. Gordie’s dad is disappointed in Gordie for not having friends as admirable as Denny’s pals. So, these boys have something to prove to themselves, let alone others, that they are not losers.

Chris catches up with Gordie on their way to meet the other boys. He took his dad’s handgun, and Chris accidentally fires off a round into a trash can behind a restaurant. The firearm holds adult fascination for the boys, but its explosive deadliness also is frightening, which again stresses their cusp of adulthood predicament. The boys encounter Chris’s older brother Eyeball (Bradley Gregg), and Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland), who overpowers the younger boys and steals the New York Yankees cap Denny gave to Gordie. That act is particularly hurtful to Gordie who loved his brother, and Ace’s theft is a desecration of Gordie’s memory of Denny. The preteens wish they were older and bigger so they could defend themselves (a foreshadowing), which stresses their in-between stage of growth. (There is a short later scene where Ace and the other teenagers drive a car and knock mailboxes off their posts with a baseball bat. Subsequent scenes with these older boys show that the next stage of maleness is full of rebelliousness, egotism, obsessions over sex, foolishness, and danger).

The boys follow the train tracks with their gear and are supposed to travel around twenty or thirty miles, quite a stretch for these youths. They act like adventurous men, but are not responsible enough to remember to bring any food. Vern says he remembered to bring a comb, which is funny, but also stresses immaturity. A locomotive approaches, but Teddy wants to play “dodge train,” waiting for the last moment to get off the tracks. He pretends he is meeting the enemy at Normandy on D-Day. The scene is reminiscent of playing “chicken” in Rebel Without a Cause, where the adolescents head to a cliff in cars and are supposed to jump out at the last minute. Here is the same combination of adult male bravado and youthful recklessness. Teddy’s father, who was a hero in the war at Normandy, went insane, possibly due to war trauma, and is now in a mental institution. There may be a subconscious desire to prove his bravery so he can measure up to his father’s war heroics. Chris saves Teddy from himself by pulling him off the tracks.

The young boys flex their rule-breaking potential by scaling a junkyard fence despite the warning not to trespass. They use the water pump there to hydrate and then goof around. The child in each of them still watches The Micky Mouse Club, but their budding manhood focuses on Annette Funicello’s breasts. Gordie loses the coin toss, and he has to go to the store nearby for food. The grocer recognizes Gordie as Denny’s brother. He also lost a brother, only in Korea. He quotes the Bible that says death is there amid life. Tragedy seems to be something that we never outgrow.

The grocer talks about what a great football player Denny was. That remark triggers a dinner table memory where Gordie’s father is obsessed with Denny and his ball playing. Denny goes out of the way to talk about how good a writer Gordie is, but the father ignores the praise for his other son. Older males, like Mr. Lachance and the grocer, don’t see writing as masculine, so they focus on the athletic, muscular nature of sports.

By the time Gordie returns to the junkyard, the owner, Milo Pressman (William Bronder) has returned, and the rest of the boys are on the other side of the fence. Gordie runs with all his might and climbs over the barrier just in time to escape the junkyard dog, Chopper. The animal was supposed to be this fearsome creature, but he turns out to be not that threatening. The Writer says it was his first revelation about how myth did not measure up to reality, another growth moment.

After getting upset when Pressman recognizes him and ridicules his father, Teddy says he is spoiling his friends’ fun. But the maturing Gordie says maybe they shouldn’t be treating their journey as a “party” since they are going to “see a dead kid.” So, this journey is a symbolic one, a rite of passage which leads away from childhood.

Chris gives Gordie a speech, similar to the one Ben Affleck gives Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, about how Gordie has to use his brains and take academic courses while his pals are in shop classes. Chris realizes Gordie’s writing potential, unlike Gordie’s dad. Chris says, “God gave you something, man, all those stories you can make up.” He says that it’s like God is telling Gordie not to lose those tales as he grows up. (And he doesn’t since it is the grown Gordie who is telling this story). Chris is more of a father figure here and is actually more mature than Gordie’s real dad. At the same time, Teddy and Vern talk about who is stronger, Superman or Mighty Mouse. These contrasting conversations further stress how these boys are in a maturity transition.

The boys come to another challenge as they approach a trestle. To not go far off their route they must cross it without any room to avoid a train that might be coming. Vern loses his comb, which is sort of a child’s safety blanket. They start to walk over the tracks when Gordie spots the smoke coming from the stack of an approaching train. Chris and Teddy make it to the other side. The overweight Vern is not as quick as the others and Gordie tries to urge him to move faster. They jump off onto the dirt embankment, just in time to avoid the train. They have leapt over another hurdle on their perilous road to adulthood.

At a campfire, the boys want Gordie to tell a story. His tale is about a heavy boy who has sustained ridicule for his size. The town calls him Lardass (Andy Lindberg). He gets his revenge at a pie eating contest before which he consumed a bottle of castor oil and a raw egg. After eating several pies he initiates a cascading vomiting scene to exact his revenge on the nasty citizens. The story fits the mindset of these boys, and vicariously allows them to feel justice since they, too, feel like outsiders. But, Teddy’s demons rise again and he wants a better ending where Lardass goes home and kills his father, and then joins the Texas Rangers. His reaction shows his pathology which has sprung from his divergent feelings about his father.

After falling asleep, howling coyotes awaken the boys. They take turns standing guard, and despite Teddy’s acting like a military sentry, and Vern’s exaggerated startle response to every sound, the scene is disturbing since they are pointing Chris’s handgun. The next scene depicts the outcast feelings of Gordie and Chris. Gordie has a nightmare where he pictures himself at the grave of his brother and his father tells Gordie it should have been him in the casket. He wakes up and joins Chris, and suggests to his friend he can also take college classes. Chris says that the community considers his family dangerous lowlifes, and presume they are guilty instead of innocent if a transgression takes place. He stole the school milk money, implying that being law-abiding would not better his family reputation because of the residents’ prejudices. But he gave the money back to the teacher who showed up with a brand-new skirt she had been eyeing. Chris begins to cry since he found out how crushing it was to find that even a schoolteacher can be so devious. It is an example of losing innocence and moving toward cynicism concerning life’s realities. Chris says he wishes he “could go someplace where nobody knows me,” which would allow him to live without others unfairly judging him.

There is a scene where Gordie is alone sitting on the train track rails. A doe comes out of the forest, pauses, and the boy and the animal exchange looks. Stephen King said that the story is about discovering the world, and this moment is magical for Gordie, since he says he never shared it with anyone before. It appears that Gordie is feeling a oneness with nature. Since it is a young deer, perhaps it is on the same journey of learning about life. Both are shedding their past lives.

The older boys led by Ace find out about the dead boy from Billie and Charlie. Ace decides that they will get the praise for finding the missing boy. On their drive, Ace races against a group of boys in another car. When a truck hauling lumber heads straight at him, Ace refuses to exit the lane. The trucker goes off the road to avoid a collision, losing his cargo. Ace says, “I won,” as if beating death is a contest. Ace’s toxic masculinity will most likely grow stronger as he gets older, and the scene shows the destructive road men may travel down because of the macho attitudes that society fosters.

Meanwhile, the kids, abandoning the safety of the train tracks that can represent civilization, cut through a forest as a shortcut. In literature, writers have used forests as the places where unlawful or dangerous activities take place (think The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Princess Bride). They misjudge the depth of a river they cross and find themselves in water up to their shoulders. Teddy starts to be mischievous and dunks Vern. Chris tells him to “act your age.” Teddy rightfully says he is acting his age. The boys, except for the anti-party Gordie, start dunking each other. They are in a perilous situation which calls for adult thinking, but they are still playful children in that place. When they discover that leeches have attached themselves to their bodies, the serious nature of their quest sobers them up as they pull the creatures off their bodies.

They finally find the body of the Brower boy off the side of the train tracks they reconnect with after their shortcut. The boy was hit by a train. The Writer says the boy was not asleep, not sick, which is what the boys experienced in their previous youthful life. He is dead, which ushers them into the next stage of their maturity. Encountering this brutal end of a life prompts Gordie to question why bad things happen to some people. After all, they dodged trains twice on this trip, but Brower couldn’t escape the danger. The low self-esteem that Gordie’s father instilled in the boy causes Gordie to tearfully tell Chris (they have now exchanged sorrowful confessions) that he deserved to die instead. Chris consoles his friend in a compassionate parental way (unlike Gordie’s real dad) by telling him he’s wrong, and accurately states that Gordie has a life ahead of him being a writer.

At that moment, Ace and his gang show up and threaten to beat up the youngsters if they don’t give up the body. Chris will not back down. Ace starts to cross that legal line that the remote forest removes, and pulls a knife. As he is ready to cut Chris, Gordie shoots off a warning shot from the gun, playing its part as the equalizer, which Chris brought. Gordie aims his wild card weapon with a steady hand at Ace, who decides to fold. But, Ace issues a warning about the boys’ futures (a foreshadowing).

After besting the older boys, the younger ones probably feel the quest was what was important and they no longer have the need to get credit for finding the body. They leave it there and decide to make an anonymous phone call to have it found. They head back to their town, which, according to The Writer, “seemed smaller.” They have grown up some on their journey and things aren’t as large or magical when one revisits a childhood place.

The Writer says that Gordie and Chris didn’t see as much of Vern and Teddy as they grew up. Many of us lose track of friends who we bonded with when younger as life’s situations place us on divergent roads. Vern settled into the grownup world, getting married, having four kids, and working as a forklift operator. Teddy couldn’t get into the military because of his vision defects and ear injury, courtesy of his father. He was also in jail a few times. Some sins of the father can’t be erased from the marks they leave on the children. Chris did escape the judgment of the town, going to college and becoming a lawyer. But he went into a fast-food restaurant, tried to break up a fight, was stabbed in the throat, and died. He couldn’t escape that knife that threatened him in his youth. It was his death that Gordie was reading about that initiated the memory of finding the body. The Writer, the adult Gordie, has a boy of his own now, as the cycle continues, is finishing typing the memoir we have been hearing. He had not been in touch with Chris for over ten years, but he knows will miss his best friend “forever.”

The last lines he types say that he never made friends like the ones he had when he was twelve, and asks, “Jesus, does anyone?” Don’t we all hold onto those days when we shared our early years with precious others while we were in that state of becoming?

The next film is Donnie Darko.

The Shawshank Redemption

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I would like to announce the publication of my new novel, The Bigger Picture. The link to Amazon is: https://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Picture-Augustus-Cileone/dp/0997096284/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527711220&sr=1-1&keywords=cileonea

All of my earnings will be donated to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. It is a mystery for movie lovers, like its prequel, Out of the Picture. The new story deals with the double sexual standard and sexual abuse of women.

This 1994 film, based on a Stephen King story and directed and scripted by Frank Darabont, is in the tradition of past movies such as The King of Hearts, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Cool Hand Luke, and the current Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, which question whether those in control of the institutions of confinement may be more dangerous than some of the people locked away.

The film begins in 1947 in darkness as Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), intoxicated after almost draining the bottle of whiskey he holds, loads a revolver. There are cuts to a courtroom where Andy is on trial for the murder of his wife and her professional golf pro lover. He says that he didn’t kill them, but there are his footprints near the scene of the crime along with bullets and a broken liquor bottle, and he admitted to being there the night of the murders. He says that he thinks he was just going to scare them, but as he sobered up he just left and threw the gun into the river. The police dredged the water but did not find the weapon. Andy comes off as distant, a “cold fish.” The judge sentences him to consecutive life terms and says that Andy is “icy and remorseless.” The song we hear during the opening is, “If I didn’t care,” which is an ironic piece, since it not only refers to Andy’s aloofness, but also implies he wouldn’t be in this predicament if he “didn’t care.”

The story shifts not only visually but also in point of view. The rest of the film is almost entirely narrated by Red, whose full name is Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman). By having Red tell tell the tale, Andy can remain a mystery as to what he thinks and plans, thus allowing for plot surprises, and we only get to know him from his actions and effect on others. We see Red at the first of three interviews he attends to determine his eligibility for parole. He has been a prisoner for twenty years and presents a stock speech that he hopes will get him his release. When asked if he thinks he is rehabilitated, Red answers, “Oh yes sir, absolutely, sir. I mean I’ve learned my lesson. I can honestly say I’m a changed man. No longer a danger to society here, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” Of course the board realizes that there is no sincerity behind the words and deny his request. But, the board also is just going through the motions, not really trying to delve into the prisoner’s situation or character. That is why the other prisoners say that they have been or will be up for “rejection,” since those in authority offer them little hope, a word that becomes the central focus for the main characters.

Red is a supplier, the man who smuggles items into Shawshank Prison that on the outside would be easy to obtain, but which are precious and in short supply inside. This fact stresses the deprivation of the incarcerated, who must bribe, haggle and scrounge for what free people take for granted. Red mentions some of the things he acquires, including “a bottle of brandy” to “celebrate” the high school graduation of a prisoner’s child. This simple sentence accentuates the sadness of the inmate with the ironic reference to a celebration that is diminished due to being absent from a cherished family event.

Of course many would say that those who have broken the law deserve such deprivation, but the movie implies that the brutality depicted here would challenge the Constitutional requirements against “cruel and unusual” punishment. The group of new arrivals which includes Andy receive a dehumanizing reception from the cruel prison guard, Hadley (Clancy Brown, who makes amends as a sympathetic prison guard in The Hurricane). He tells the novice inmates, “You eat when we say you eat. You piss when we say you piss, and you shit when we say you shit.” So, those incarcerated have even lost the freedom to control their basic drives and bodily functions. Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) also addresses the group, and shows his warped priorities by stating the most important rule is to not take the Lord’s name in vain, which he labels “blasphemy.” Apparently any acts of violence are secondary, on the parts of the prisoners and the guards. He issues bibles to everyone and pretends to be an upright Christian, but he turns out to be a religious hypocrite.

The seasoned prisoners bet on which of the new men will break down first. Red thinks it will be Andy because he appears to be a privileged citizen who will not be able to tolerate the reality of his new situation. Red says that the first night in prison is awful because the only thing a man has to do is dwell on all that he has lost. First-nighters are stripped of their clothes, and symbolically their identifications with their past lives, and are hosed down naked and burned with delousing powder (this demonic rebirth contrasts with the ending). But it is not Andy who breaks. One man does, and his unstoppable crying elicits a beating from Hadley that results in the prisoner’s death. Red misread Andy, which is consistent with his early on inscrutability. However, we start to see how Andy is the bringer of humanity to the prison when he wants to know the name of the man who was beaten to death, while the others dismiss the man, seeing him as just someone to bet on. Red says that they found out that Andy was a vice president of a bank, and this status job along with his aloofness caused resentment from others who saw him as uppity.

Andy kept to himself for the first month, but eventually speaks to Red, saying he wants to pursue his hobby of collecting rocks, which is probably an attempt to stay connected to his past. He asks Red to get him a rock hammer, and a suspicious Red asks if it can be used to tunnel out, which if found, could get Red in trouble. Andy laughs because he says when Red sees it he will understand Andy’s amusement. The hammer turns out to be very small. Red observes that Andy had a look and a walk about him, as if he were strolling in the park as he walked through the prison grounds. He says that Andy acted as if “he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.” After actually meeting him, Red admits that he “liked Andy from the start.”

However, Andy had no such protection. The “Sisters’ take an interest in him. Red says that prison is no fairy tale world, and these men, led by Bogs (Mark Ralston), whose name reminds one of a swamp, attack and rape Andy. Over a two year period, Andy was sometimes able to fight them off, but other times could not. That the film does not paint all convicts as victims can be seen in the depiction of these men, who Red says are not homosexual, because  “you have to be human first. They don’t qualify.” Red tells us that Andy would have been destroyed if the assaults would have continued. But, if one wants to consider a religious interpretation, a sort of miracle occurred. The event took place, appropriately, on an elevated level - a roof. Red fixed it so that he and his pals would be assigned to a detail outside in the warmth of the sun, tarring a roof. The men overhear the nasty guard, Hadley, complain that the $35,000 dollars he inherited will be eaten up by the IRS. In a scary move, Andy approaches Hadley and asks him if he trusts his wife. The guard almost throws Andy off of the roof, but Andy says that there is an exclusion in the tax laws that allows a gift to a spouse. Andy offers to do the paperwork if he can get some beer for the other inmates during a break. The deal is made, and Andy, who has given up drinking since the night his wife was killed, did not risk his life for himself. He sits in the sun, with a smile on his face, enjoying how he has done something for others. Red says that maybe Andy did it to win over some fellow prisoners, or to gain favor with the guards. Red believes Andy did it to just to feel “normal” again. But, that normal state that Andy brings fans out to others, as he bestows a moment of transcendence from bondage. Red says that the men “felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses.” Andy is a transformative agent. He brings humanity, and hope, to others.

Red and Andy play checkers, but Andy prefers chess, and later he carves pieces out of rocks. His liking of this strategic game gives us a hint that he will be planning something in the future. In fact, the following scenes add to the clues concerning his future endgame. We watch him carving his name on the wall of the cell with the rock hammer which is followed by his approaching Red while the latter is viewing the Rita Hayworth film Gilda. Andy asks Red to get him a poster of the female movie star. At the time we don’t question the significance of these two scenes following each other, but we later receive the payoff.

In another assault, the “Sisters” almost beat Andy to death, and he must spend a month in the infirmary. Because Andy has helped Hadley with his taxes, the guard is waiting for Bogs in his cell and beats him viciously. Red says that Bogs never walked again and spent his life in another institution eating his food through a straw. In a way, Andy has turned the devil into an avenging angel, at least in this instance. For a while he is able to subvert the oppressive penal system into a beneficial force. The hardened criminals around him, because of the way he secured beer for them and out of sympathy for his beating, become generous. They gather rocks for his chess pieces and Red gets him his Rita Hayworth poster free of charge. Warden Norton, through Hadley, visits Andy in his cell to size him up. Andy is able to quote scripture which the warden admires. While holding Andy’s bible the warden recites the phrase “Salvation lies within.” The irony of this quote is revealed at the end of the film.

Based on his meeting with Andy, the warden assigns him to the easy detail of helping the senior inmate, Brooks (James Whitmore), at the prison library. There is no real need for Andy being there, the library being small. The area, however, is a good pace for Andy to do the taxes for the guards and later the warden, along with guards from other prisons. They all get Andy’s expert financial advice without having to pay accountants or lawyers. Andy figures he can bargain. He asks the warden to allow him to petition the state legislature for funds to expand the library, which the warden agrees to.

In the middle of Andy’s attempts to better the plight of the convicts, there is the story of Brooks, who, after fifty years of confinement, has been granted a release. He has become what Red says is an “institutionalized” man, and has no clue as to how to deal with the outside world. Brooks holds a knife to the prisoner Heywood’s (William Sadler) throat, hoping the act will keep him inside. He relinquishes the blade, and before he leaves, sets free his pet crow, Jake. The bird finds freedom, but Brooks remains imprisoned in his mind. We now get a change in the point of view as Brooks becomes the narrator, as he tells of his problems in a letter to his friends in prison. Brooks is frightened by the world he is forced to rejoin, whose abundance of choices overwhelms a man whose life was rigidly structured. Everything moves much quicker, as is seen by a speeding car that almost hits him. It is symbolic as to how life has moved on, leaving Brooks behind as he fossilized behind bars. He lives in a halfway house, which indicates how he is caught halfway between two worlds. He has no skills because his incarceration did nothing to prepare him for reentry into society. At a senior age, riddled with arthritis, the system secures him a job as a lowly grocery store bagger. He thinks about committing a crime so they will send him “home,” which is a sad indication that he considers the prison his place of true residence. He eventually hangs himself. Red says, “These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them … They send you here for life, and that’s exactly what they take.” Red’s take is that the system is set up for punishment only, and doesn’t really offer the chance for a new start.

But, redemption (thus the film’s title) is exactly what Andy wants to bring to the situation. After six years the state government sends him some money and books donated by a library. Instead of stopping his letter writing, Andy increases the number or requests for more expansion. The state eventually gives him an annual stipend, and walls are broken down and the library is expanded. Andy provides a new world of knowledge to the inmates, and even gets them a release from their dreary labor to help him set up the library and do the taxes each year. He tutors may of the prisoners who eventually earn their high school equivalency diplomas. Early on in this process, Andy discovers a recording of two women singing an aria from Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.” He locks himself in the warden’s office and plays the record through the PA system so the whole prison population can hear it. The beauty of the music contrasts with the harsh voices of the guards shouting at Andy, and Hadley’s breaking of the glass on the door, as those in authority become the agents of disharmony. The men are spellbound. Red, who through his narration shows the effects of Andy’s actions, says he doesn’t know what the women singing in Italian were saying, but the content of the words was not the point. He says, “those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.” These poetic words again refer to the bird as a symbol of freedom. Andy bestows that feeling onto the imprisoned.

Andy serves time in the hole for his act, which the warden in his warped way sees as an infraction instead of an act of kindness. After his punishment, Andy tells the other prisoners that it was easy time, because he kept the music he played inside himself, and those in charge can’t take away the liberating feeling that music instills. He tells them basically that they can still be free inside and reach a higher level of humanity spiritually despite the fact that their bodies are locked away. Red admits that he played the harmonica once, but threw it away because he didn’t see the point of keeping it given the circumstances. Andy argues that inside prison is when you need that feeling music inspires most. It keeps the feeling of hope alive. Red does not want to entertain false expectations. He says, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” Even though he has experienced brief moments of that hope while tarring the roof and listening to the music, Red, at this point, won’t allow himself the possibility of experiencing the crushing disappointment of unfulfilled dreams. In another symbolic act, Andy acquires a harmonica, and gives it to Red after another denial of parole so as to inspire hope even in the face of rejection. Red can’t find it in himself to play it yet, probably because it would seem too optimistic to him. He does produce one note in his cell, a foreshadowing of a future change in attitude.

Years pass, and Andy turns the library into the best one in the state prison system. His accomplishment comes by way of making a bargain with the devil, though. The warden institutes his “Inside Out” program. On the surface it sounds admirable. He gets the state government to pay for the prisoners to go out into the community and do public works projects. It is supposed to teach the inmates the value of honest work and save the taxpayers money as tasks are completed at a cost far less than what would be paid to private providers. But, the warden skims off the top of the allocations, and accepts bribes from contractors so that the warden will not deploy his men for certain projects that can be awarded to businesses. To launder the excess money he receives, the warden uses Andy. He creates a person, Randall Stephens, complete with Social Security number, birth certificate, and driver’s license. The money is invested in bonds, stocks and securities, and the earnings placed in bank accounts supposedly belonging to this fabricated man. In an ironic statement to Red, Andy says, “on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.” Instead of the penal system reforming a guilty person, it instead corrupts an innocent one (remind you of HBO’s The Night Of?)

But through this compromise of ethics, Andy continues doing his good deeds, including helping a career young criminal by the name of Tommy (Gil Bellows) obtain his high school diploma. When Tommy asks Red about Andy’s crime, the young man realizes that a past cellmate, who loved to talk, told Tommy how he killed a golf pro at a country club in bed with this woman while the criminal was robbing the man. He said they blamed the murder on the woman’s banker husband. Since Tommy supplies the name of the convict, Andy goes to the warden for help in tracking the man down as a first step in gaining his release. But, the warden has no interest in justice, and only cares about his selfish accumulation of wealth. He throws Andy in the hole for a month, and has Hadley shoot Tommy, with the cover story that the young man was killed trying to escape. The warden visits Andy in the hole and tells him that he will continue to help him or the guards will no longer protect him from getting raped and his library will be sealed off and all the books burned. This association of fire with the self-proclaimed Christian warden makes him appear to be a sort of devil in disguise who uses his minions, the guards and the prison rapists, to enforce his sinful plans.

After two months in the hole, Andy appears hardened. He no longer sees himself capable of changing what goes on in the prison. He also assumes some guilt for what happened to his wife, saying he didn’t know how to show his love and that drove her away, which eventually led to her death. It may be that he tried to achieve redemption by showing warmth to the men in prison by helping them. Red tells Andy that maybe he was guilty of being a bad husband, but he is no killer. Andy then talks about wanting to go to a little town in Mexico on the Pacific Ocean where he can have a little hotel, fix up a boat, and take guests on fishing charters. Red tells him he shouldn’t torture himself with his “shitty pipe dream,” words that will shortly carry an ironic meaning. Andy says that if Red ever gets out he should go up to Buxton, Maine, and seek out a stone wall which leads to an oak tree. Near it there will be a piece of volcanic rock that doesn’t belong there. Under it there will be something buried for him. When asked what it is, Andy simply says he will have to make the journey to find out. In a way, Andy makes it a test of faith. He the says that it’s time to get busy living or get busy dying. Red worries about Andy trying to take his own life, and is even more concerned when he finds out that Andy asked Heywood for some rope.

The next day Andy does not come out of his cell. But, he didn’t commit suicide - he escaped. We hear Red’s narration and see flashbacks of how rock broke off from the cell wall as Andy tried to carve his name. He used the Rita Hayworth poster (and eventually one of Marilyn Monroe and one of Raquel Welch) to cover his tunnel work. He dumped the dirt in the prison yard through his pants (similar to what is done in The Great Escape). It took him twenty years to get through the walls. On the night he escaped, he wore the warden’s shoes and the man’s suit under his prison clothes. He put them in a water-tight plastic bag which he tied to his leg with the rope. He picked a rainy night, went through the tunnel and reached the space between the prison walls where the sewer line sat. He used a rock to smash the pipe when thunder roared to cover the sound, and crawled through the excremental filth to freedom. So, Andy’s plan, to use Red’s words, was a “shitty pipe dream,” which seemed like only a false hope, but was turned into a liberating reality. The warden finds Andy’s bible which the inmate cut a wedge in to hide his rock hammer (appropriately in the book of "Exodus,"symbolizing escape from oppression). He inscribes the good book by saying that salvation does lie within, but the reference is to the hammer, and the liberation is from the hypocritical Christian tyrant.

One can argue that Andy is a type of Christ figure. His last name, Dufresne, means “ash tree,” and, according to IMDb, the ash tree in folklore represents healing or death and rebirth. Andy sacrifices his old self by going to prison, and the naked scene as he enters prison symbolizes a rebirth into a trial by ordeal (like Jesus’ incarnation) in a place where he tries to bring salvation to others. As Red says in the end he crawled through “a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.” When he exits the sewer pipe, he again strips off his clothes and the rain falling on him, in a shot downward from the heavens, appears like a deluge of grace, washing him clean, like a baptism, symbolizing a rebirth out of the world of sin. Andy even stretches his arms out, like Christ on the cross, but now freed from that cross. Andy is reborn into the man he created, Randall Stephens (maybe like God the father creating Jesus the son). Since he has all of the identifying papers, and a signature to match, he visits all of the banks where he has deposited the warden’s wealth. He withdraws it all, and sends incriminating evidence to the newspapers. The guard Hadley is arrested, and the warden commits suicide before being caught. Divine justice is dispensed?

Red receives a blank postcard from a place in Texas which he assumes is where Andy crossed into Mexico. He misses his friend, but says, “Some birds aren’t meant to be caged.” We are again reminded of Brooks’ crow, Jake, and Andy, unlike Brooks, is capable of flying beyond the walls that imprison him, both physically and spiritually. Red finally obtains his release when he doesn’t give the rehearsed speech to the parole board. He says that he feels sorry for that boy that was him in his youth and wants to go back and talk sense to him to stop him from committing murder. But, that boy is long gone, and what replaced him was this old man. Since he convinces those in authority that the law breaking person no longer exists, he is set free. But, Red is an “institutionalized” man like Brooks, and he seems to be following in the dead ex-con’s footsteps, living in the same room and doing the same job. But, his promise to Andy keeps him going. Red looks beyond the guns in a display window and decides not to commit a crime to go back “home” to prison. He instead purchases a compass to find what is buried in Buxton. Andy has given him a direction. He finds a box buried near the tree where Andy asked his wife to marry him, representing the romanticism of young love, a feeling in opposition to Red’s cynical anti-hope stance stated in prison. The box has a picture of a ship on it, implying more direction and a journey, something to pursue. In this sort of “treasure chest,” Andy has left money for Red’s “voyage,” and a letter saying if he came this far, he has it in him to push himself, to go further. He has given Red signposts on the road to salvation. Andy pays his redemption forward, and Red is the recipient as he joins his old friend on a beach, bathed in sunlight (the opposite of the dark beginning of the story) and symbolically cleansing waters.

As he rides toward his destination, Red now invokes hope in a sort of prayer. He says, “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” Andy says in his letter, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Through hope, in the presence of adversity, maybe, we can all be redeemed.

The next film is High Noon.

Dolores Claiborne

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Since two TV shows, Pretty Little Lies and The Handmaid’s Tale, recently won several Emmy awards, I decided to talk about this 1995 movie, directed by Taylor Hackford and based on a Stephen King work, since these stories address a topic which is important to me, the abuse of women by men.

The movie starts with an upward shot of an opulent house, emphasizing the elevated status of its owner, Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt). The story begins in the present, with Vera, in a wheelchair, shouting at her maid, Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates), in the upstairs hallway. Vera is yelling, “Let me go Dolores!” Vera then topples down the long staircase, crashing into the spokes of the banister. She is bleeding and in agony, and then says to the other woman, “Please Dolores.” She runs into the kitchen, knocks objects onto the floor in a frenzy, looking for something, and settles on a rolling pin. She stands over Vera, ready to end the woman’s life, but cries and shakes, and is interrupted by the mailman. Vera then dies from her injuries.

It appears at first glance that Dolores is trying to kill Vera, but her conflicted emotions about harming the other woman leaves us with a mystery concerning what really happened. The narrative then moves back and forth between flashbacks and the current situation in order to let the audience know what truly occurred.

There is a cut from the site of the death on the island off the shore of Maine to New York, where Dolores’ daughter, Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh - the three lead women here should have received Oscar nominations. They are excellent), pleads with her boss, Peter (Eric Bogosian) to cover an important story in Phoenix. In economic fashion, we quickly learn that Selena is an excellent journalist, but slept with her boss, who now has moved on to the next pretty young worker, and Selena will probably not land the next important assignment she deserves. Here we have a talented woman who, despite her success interviewing famous people, must be made subservient to a man, both professionally and sexually.

Selena receives an anonymous fax indicating that her mother is under suspicion for killing Vera. Out of responsibility, she returns to her home which she ran away from not long after her thirteenth birthday. The sunny skies of New York change to the overcast chilliness of the island, symbolizing the somber and troubled mood of Selena and her relationship with Dolores. The ride on the ferry stresses the isolation in which Dolores resides, both physically and psychologically, and the mental journey of returning to an unpleasant place is mirrored on Selena’s grim face. Indeed, Selena appears irritable and sad throughout the movie because of how she perceives her mother, until more information comes to light, and her buried memories of what really happened in her youth are unearthed.

Mother and daughter have been estranged for so long that Dolores doesn’t even recognize her. She is glad to see Selena, hugs the emotionally distant daughter, but she did not send the fax, not wanting to involve Selena in more sordid business. Because this incident is the second time Dolores is a suspect in a death. Selena’s father, the alcoholic Joe St. George (David Starthairn) died and Dolores was accused of killing him. She was acquitted, but the detective, John Mackey (Christopher Plummer), lost the case, and now wants to make sure that Dolores doesn’t get away with it again. But, the fact that Dolores did not actually hit Vera with the rolling pin only makes her a suspect in the death of Vera, and can’t be arrested, much to Mackey’s disappointment. So, she goes back to her abandoned house with Selena because she had been living full time at the Donovan house, taking care of the invalid Vera.

Mackey is another male in the story trying to subjugate a woman with his power. But, to her credit, and, as Selena points out, to her mother’s own detriment, Dolores refuses to be bullied. Her colorful and combative language vents her hostility, but also provokes anger in others. She says that the police station is a mess, and starts to tidy up, despite the mild protestations of Constable Frank Stamshaw (John C. Reilly), one of the few males in the film that is not depicted in a negative light. When going home, some young men shout out to Dolores if she has killed anybody else today, and her angry retort is to say, no, but she knows where to start. After getting fed up with Mackey’s snide comments and vindictiveness toward her, she wittingly and aggressively says, “Now, you listen to me, Mr. Grand High Poobah of Upper Buttcrack, I’m just about half-past give a shit with your fun and games.” She explains to Selena that she is hostile many times because, “Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.” This phrase is repeated in the movie to show that women have to use the only tool at their disposal to survive.

The return to their house allows for memories to emerge in the form of flashbacks, primarily for Dolores, but a significant one for Selena toward the end of the film. Selena does not want to remember her childhood, but subconsciously she flinches as she enters the house again, and looks wary of ascending the stairs. But, she is stuck there because the only hotel is closed for the season, and the inn burned down. The coldness of the season suggests the harshness of confronting negative thoughts and the desire to close the mental door on what is threatening, and withdraw into one’s comforting status quo. Selena’s selective way of looking at things is seen by her accusing her mother of not getting in touch with her after Dolores mentions that she hasn’t recently heard from Selena. She can’t see that Dolores kept away to shield her daughter from unwanted reminders of what happened to her father since Selena believes, just like Mackey, that her mother killed her father.

While Selena gets washed, Dolores unpacks her bags in Selena’s old bedroom. There are newspaper articles on the wall showing her daughter’s interest in current events, and the books on the shelves are those of prominent writers, such as Saul Bellow, Doris Lessing, and Kurt Vonnegut. These items show us that Selena was a very bright girl and young woman with great potential, who was able to overcome prior trauma, but who is psychologically damaged because of past abuses. Indeed, Dolores finds several bottles of medicine to treat psychiatric conditions in Selena’s travel bag. Dolores may be wanting to rationalize when she says her daughter only went through a “bad patch.” Selena corrects her, saying she had a nervous breakdown. But, despite the terrible experiences Dolores has endured, and her resultant bad humor, we see Dolores remembering a pleasant time, when she played hide and seek with the young Selena.

In addition, Selena smokes and drinks, and the latter upsets Dolores because she is afraid the daughter may have inherited a tendency toward alcoholism from her father. While Dolores admits Selena has been under a great deal of pressure, maintaining her reputation, which includes interviewing noteworthy people such as President Richard Nixon, and drinks to alleviate the stress, she, nevertheless, advises Selena to “slow down” on the booze. Selena says, “Trust me, I know my limit.” Dolores says she’s heard that before, from her husband. Selena angrily justifies her father’s drinking by saying, “What did he have to be happy about.” Dolores says that Joe was happy when he made other people miserable. Selena then directly accuses her mother when she says,”Is that why you killed him?” She goes on to say that the few memories she has of her father, she would like to keep. This is an ironic statement, because she has been successful in making herself forget many disturbing memories about her dad.

It is at this point in the movie that Dolores feels she must fill in those parts of their history that either Selena has repressed or of which she was unaware. The flashbacks that follow reveal what a brutal and humiliating man Joe was. There was the time that he came home and Dolores urges him to sell some old machinery because they have money problems. He fights her on it, and she says if he hadn’t lost his fishing boats, they wouldn’t be desperate, and she wouldn’t have to spend so much time working for Vera. When he bends over he reveals a split in the seat of his pants. She laughs. He deceptively laughs with her, then takes a chunk of wood and slams Dolores in the back. He blames her for provoking him, saying, “Why do you make me do it?” He thinks she is acting superior to him because of where she works. He later piles on his verbal attacks, saying that she should look at the women on the television beauty pageant to see what “a real ass should look like.” He tells his pals that Dolores didn’t look so bad when he decided to marry her because he was too drunk to know better. The abuser of women usually has low self-esteem, and refuses to do a self-assessment of inadequacies. So, he builds himself up by blaming the female for everything, and refuses to take any responsibility for his violent and demeaning actions.

Dolores is in severe pain after the attack, but hides it from the young Selena, saying she is just tired. However, Dolores is no pushover. When she drops a plate, Joe says it better not be one that belonged to his mother, who said Dolores couldn’t cook and would get fat. Right then, Dolores smashes a bottle over Joe’s head. She has a hatchet in her hands and now Joe is scared, because bullies are really cowards at heart, hiding their fear behind an intimidating cover. But, she drops the hatchet in his lap, and dares him to kill her, because if he doesn’t, and he hits her again, she says, “one of us is going to the bone yard.” He backs off as Selena enters the room, and Dolores shields her, literally and figuratively, from what has happened, blocking her daughter’s view of Joe. In the present, Selena yells and cries, sarcastically shouting, “Thanks for sharing!” to her mother. She does not want to believe Dolores, who is establishing what kind of man Joe was, and that hits too close to home to what Selena has worked to forget.

A flashback to Dolores’ first days as Vera’s employee shows Mrs. Donovan as a domestic tyrant. She has endless rules on how Dolores should take care of the house, even on the number of clothespins that have to be used to hang up the washed linens. “Six pins, Dolores. Six pins, not five!” she shouts at her maid. In her narration to Selena, Dolores sums up the suffering involved with working for Vera when she says, “Hell ain’t somethin’ you get thrown into overnight. Nope real hell comes on you slow and steady as a line of wet winter sheets.”

But, Dolores has that ability to see both sides of the situation. She says that Vera was a prisoner of these rules herself, having to feel compelled to insure their enforcement. Also, she observes that Vera’s husband, Jack Donovan (Kelly Burnett) ignored his wife, not even acknowledging her remarks to him as he practiced his golf. The man was also dismissive of Dolores as she interrupts his swings because she must hang the clothes out to dry. He only would visit his wife once during the summer stay at the island house. So, even though Vera may lord over the premises, her husband, the man, still is the ultimate ruler. However, Jack Donovan dies in a car accident, and Vera, not a grieving widow, decides to move into the summer home permanently. Dolores agrees to work for the exacting Vera all year round to save money for Selena’s education.

In the present, Mackey comes around to gather evidence. He needs one of Dolores’ hair follicles. Dolores lets him pull it himself from her scalp, in a scene stressing how men use force against women. Dolores admits that she threatened Vera regularly because the invalid woman became more and more nasty toward Dolores as Vera’s illness progressed. But, Dolores points out to Mackey that saying something and doing something are very different things. Selena questions why her mother is so nasty toward Mackey, and Dolores must again remind Selena of her past. Mackey ruthlessly grilled the young Selena, implying that she conspired with her mother because the daughter was not at home on the day of her father’s death, thus removing herself as a witness. In fact, Selena was working at the hotel because of the additional visitors there to witness the solar eclipse on that day. Mackey, like many men, likes women to be demure and submissive, and Dolores is the opposite of that type of female.

How Selena is also a woman at odds with the male gender is demonstrated in the next few scenes. In a phone conversation with Peter, her love-them-and leave-them boss, she learns that he gave the important Phoenix story to another reporter. She quits her job, becoming even more isolated, like her mother. She then encounters Mackey in a bar, and he is intimidating about how he underestimated Dolores before but won’t let her get away with murder this time. He says that he successfully closed over eighty cases, and Joe’s death is the only one in which he was unsuccessful. Selena then realizes that it was Mackey who sent her the fax, because the detective figured that Selena’s estrangement from her mother indicated that she, too, blamed Dolores for her father’s death, and that Mackey could now use Selena against her mother. Selena now sees him as another manipulative man. When Selena goes back to Dolores’ house, her mother tries to be encouraging about future companionship, despite her negative experiences with males. Selena is pessimistic. Is response to Dolores’ question, “You tellin’ me there’s nobody?” she says, “I’m telling you there’s a lot of nobodies.” Subconsciously, her childhood has prevented her from trusting any commitment to a long term relationship. The current harassment of Dolores by locals resurrects Selena’s memories of the same onslaught when her father died. We see her flashbacks of trying to hurt herself with a broken glass Christmas ball. In the present, Selena storms out, ready to escape the current torment. She takes her pills to escape the mental pain. But, she remains, maybe because deep down she feels a need to help her mother in her world of male oppression.

A visit to the Donovan house to collect Dolores’ belongings causes Dolores to be outraged that the police left Vera’s unclean bedpan, with Mackey claiming it as evidence. Mackey drops a bomb onto Dolores when he says she had motive because Vera left over a million dollars to Dolores in her will. Since the document was executed eight years prior, Mackey argues she must have known about it. Dolores is dumbfounded and swears she knew nothing about the inheritance. The visit triggers another flashback, which shows Dolores became the only person Vera could rely on in her decrepit state. Dolores tells Selena that as Vera’s illness grew worse, she moved into the Donovan home, and fed Vera, helped with her transfers from her wheelchair, cleaned her bedpan, and dealt with Vera’s incontinence. The actions showed Dolores’ caring attention, even if their words were antagonistic to each other. In that verbal hostility was demonstrated how the employer-subservient worker relationship developed into one of equality and familiarity.

Dolores then tells Selena what really happened on the day that Vera died. Vera was a strong woman, and hated the idea of being helpless. She tried to throw herself down the stairs. Dolores was trying to prevent her suicide. However, after Vera was suffering following her fall, she pleaded with Dolores to end her life. So, Dolores chaotically searched for an object to put Vera out of her misery. But, when she stood over Vera with the rolling pin, she couldn’t find it in herself to end the life of the woman she had shared so much time with.

Selena, trying to escape the situation, feels she no longer has to be responsible for her mother since Dolores now has money and can hire a good lawyer. Selena gives her a list of prominent New York attorneys. Dolores wants to know that Selena believes her story. Selena doesn’t understand why, if life with Vera was so terrible, her mother didn’t leave. Selena says that’s what she does, implying that her mother hurt her and that’s why she left. Dolores now realizes the extent of Selena’s selective amnesia concerning the actions of her father. Tired of being accused as the one who hurt Selena, she makes Selena sit and hear the truth. In a flashback, Dolores tells her that she questioned young Selena why her honor student grades started dropping to C’s and D’s. Selena stopped washing her hair and taking care of her appearance, as if trying to look unattractive as a defense against unwanted attention. Selena tells her mother not to touch her. Dolores also noted that Joe gave his daughter a pretty necklace that was handed down from her mother’s side of the family. Men give gifts when they want to seduce women, or money to prostitutes for sex. Dolores voices her realization to her teenage daughter that Joe was sexually abusing Selena.

Once Dolores realized Joe’s incestuous activity, she went to the bank to withdraw the savings for Selena so the two could escape. But, Joe went with a story about how the passbook was lost, and the bank issued a new one to him. He closed the account, taking the savings, and opened up a new one in his name. We have another example of male abuse, only here it is financial. The bank manager is condescending, another man who wants his women submissive and quiet. But, Dolores is outraged, and tells the bank manager loudly that she lost her money because she is a woman. If she had come in and tried to take the money out of her husband’s account, they would have contacted Joe.

Continuing with her retelling, Dolores says she broke down and cried while in the presence of Vera. After Dolores tells her what has been going on, Vera now tells Dolores to call her by her first name, as their sisterhood in opposition to male abuse becomes more established. She says Selena didn’t want to deal with the situation when she was thirteen, and ran off to work at the hotel so she wouldn’t be around when her father came home. Running after Selena, Dolores found a covered over hole on the property, which was the place where Joe’s body was eventually found.

At this point, Selena doesn’t want to hear anymore because the story is becoming too painful for her to listen to. She gives Dolores the discovery evidence she acquired from Mackey to give to a lawyer, and she packs and leaves. But, Dolores has slipped a tape in her belongings so that she would listen to the rest of the story. Dolores counts on the reporter part of Selena, in the absence of her mother’s offputting presence, to want the facts. In the recording, Dolores relates how she told Vera about her husband’s advances on the teenage Selena. Vera wants to know if he has gone all the way with his daughter, and Dolores says that if he hasn’t already, he soon will. We now discover that it is Vera who initiated the “bitch” line. She tells Dolores, “Sometimes, you have to be a high riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.” She then says, “It’s a depressingly masculine world in we live, Dolores.” She goes on to advise Dolores that the little bit of money she saved will not protect her. It is Vera who covertly suggests doing away with Joe, by admitting that is what she did with her husband, Jack. He says, “Husbands die every day, Dolores … They die and leave their wives their money. I should know, shouldn’t I? Sometimes they’re driving home from their mistress’ apartment and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend.”

After listening to Vera, she realizes how the deep hole she found on their property can be used to cause Joe’s “accident.” With everyone at eclipse parties, including one at the Donovan house, Vera tells Dolores she can have the rest of the day off, to go home and watch the eclipse with her husband. Of course, her words are code for doing him in. Dolores gets Joe a large bottle of whiskey, and in his drunken state, he is slowed down and clumsy. Dolores then tells him that she knows about the money, and persuaded the bank to gain access to the account, except for $500 Joe had taken. She then accuses him of sexually abusing Selena, and says she will get him arrested for child molestation. The taunts work, as Joe goes after Dolores, and she leads him to the hole, where Joe falls to his death. Before he drops, Joe begs his wife by saying “please,” which reminds us of what Vera said. But, this is not a plea that deserves mercy; it is a desperate request from a monster. Dolores looks up at the eclipse, the darkness, possibly representing Joe’s evil and maybe Dolores’ dark deed, but with the subsequent reappearance of the sunshine comes the hope for a brighter life to live. Everyone knew Joe was an alcoholic, and his death was ruled an accident while intoxicated. Dolores says on the tape that she will tell the truth about what happened to Vera, but will not get a lawyer and fight whatever is decided. If she is convicted of murdering her, then it will be payback for killing Joe.

Now, Selena has a flashback of a memory she was not able to face until her mother initiated her rediscovery of her history. She is on the ferry, and she remembers her dad buying her hot chocolate (another bribe), and forcing her to perform manual sex on him. Selena, now understanding that it was the paternal part of the family that harmed her, shows up at the inquest to help her mother. She argues that if, indeed, Dolores knew for many years about the will, why would she endure several years of cleaning bedpans and backbreaking work before she would kill Vera? And, why do it at the time that the mailman showed up at the same time every day? Selena says the two women, despite their arguments, really experienced supportive love for each other. She reveals to the magistrate that the real reason the case is being made against her mother is because Mackey has an agenda because he was angry for Dolores spoiling his all-win conviction record. It is about revenge for a prior case, and Vera’s death should have nothing to do with their shared histories. She tells Mackey that she will get a New York lawyer to tear his case apart if he pursues it. Selena finally shows affection toward her mother, taking her hand and they leave on the ferry.

Selena says that she doesn’t know how to feel about what her mother did, but she knows she did it for her. Dolores is relieved because she is finally understood. Selena leaves her, but Dolores is no longer alone in spirit. When the “bitches” are united, as is the case in Pretty Little Lies, they win.

The next film is The Deer Hunter.