Identity

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I know that this 2003 film was not well received by critics, but I believe it has some interesting psychological elements, as well as being a thriller with some intriguing plot twists.

A killer is being brought in a raging rain storm for a last minute plea for a stay in his execution before a judge. It is the defense's argument that the dissociative (or multiple personality) killer, Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince), after being treated by psychiatrist Dr. Malick (Alfred Molina), should not be given the death penalty. We then switch to Ed (John Cusack), a chauffeur, driving a movie star (Rebecca De Mornay) in the storm. After being distracted by the actress, he runs over a woman who is with her husband and a child, Timmy (Bret Loehr), who is mute following the accident. Cell phones are not working in the storm, and Ed drives everybody to a dilapidated motel.  There he meets Larry (John Hawkes), who is the manager. It is curious that Ed has a gun.  He is able to stitch up the mother's neck wound, but she lays prone in a reception area. A young man and his wife show up, as does Rhodes (Ray Liotta), flashing a badge. He is transporting a murderer, whom we believe is the one who is to show up at the late night hearing. When Ed drives to get help, he meets a young woman, Paris (Amanda Peet).  Since the roads are washed out, they return to the hotel. Larry immediately slanders Paris, saying she is slutty looking. Paris finds out that Ed was a cop, but he left the force after not being able to give a pregnant AIDS infected druggie suicidal jumper a reason to live.  (The book on the car seat next to Ed is Sartre's Being and Nothingness, a good indication of his existential belief in the lack of objective meaning in life).

Deaths start to occur. The movie star's head is found tumbling in a dryer, and the young husband is stabbed to death. The murderer, Robert Maine (Jake Busey), has broken loose, and everybody suspects him in the killings. After being captured, he, too, is found dead, with Larry's baseball bat shoved down his throat. Before dying, the murderer states that he believes that Larry is hiding something, and says he also has a secret. We find that Larry is hiding a dead body in the freezer, whom he says was the proprietor he found dead when he first arrived.  He simply took over his position, taking the guests' money.  The others suspect him of the deaths, and when he escapes, he accidentally runs over the father who pushes Timmy away from the oncoming truck. The guests start finding room keys on all the dead bodies, and question how a murderer could have arranged a car accident. Ed tells the young wife to take the boy and drive away. However, the car explodes into flames. Now the story really veers into the unrealistic, because all of the dead bodies are now missing, with no trace of blood at the death scenes. And, we find that Larry, Paris, Rhodes, and Ed were born on the same day.

We now switch to the hearing again, and the real murderer arrives strapped into a wheel chair. It appears to be Ed, but Dr. Malick gives him a mirror, and it is Rivers’ face that he sees. The psychiatrist says that he is just one of Rivers' personalities, and that all of the events at the motel are in his head (thus the same birth date for the characters). Rivers was traumatized in his youth, and one of the personalities he developed was a killer lashing out in anger. Malick's therapy was to eliminate the extra personalities, including the one that is the killer, so Rivers' personality can be reintegrated. Back again inside Rivers' head, Paris finds in the glove compartment of Rhodes' car the dead killer's secret – he and Rhodes were convicts being transported, and there is the body of the policeman who Rhodes killed en route in the trunk. Rhodes pretended to be him. Rhodes kills Larry as Paris escapes. As Malick talks in the real world to the Ed personality, he hunts down Rhodes in Rivers’ mind. We first think that his character will be Rivers' surviving personality, but he is only a catalyst.  He kills Rhodes, but is killed in the process. The only survivor is Paris. She had told Ed that she wanted to return to her home in Florida and grow oranges. The defense convinces the judge that the killer personality is now dead, Rivers' death sentence is commuted, and he is remanded to a psychiatric hospital.

On the way there, with Malick and a policeman driving the vehicle, we see inside Rivers' head. Paris is in sunny Florida, among the orange groves. But, while digging she finds her motel key, the sign of death in this story. Did everyone share the same birthday?  No, not the young boy, Timmy.  She turns around, and standing over her we see the boy holding a sharp tool. We, as does Malick, hear Rivers' voice, and the audience hears it coming out of the boy's mouth. He says that whores don't get a second chance, and he slashes at the young woman at the same time that Rivers strangles the psychiatrist and we assume kills the driver. We see flashbacks in Rivers' head that it is the boy who has done all the killings, including suffocating his resting mother. What was the abuse he suffered as a child? The references to sluts and whores may refer to a sexually abusive mother. It makes sense that it is the child in Rivers that remains as the killer personality, taking revenge for the pain he suffered as a helpless youth.

Admittedly, the dialogue is not sharp here, and the rationale for many of the killer's personalities is not substantiated. However, the film is inventive and different in having a murder mystery take place inside the mind of a character in a movie.

Next week’s movie is Casablanca.

The Graduate

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

I just stated college when Mike Nichols’ film was released nationally. The senseless Vietnam War gave the country a feeling of dread. Many post-secondary school students, like myself, had military draft deferments, but weren’t sure how long they would last. But, there were wars being fought in the U. S., too, at the time. There was the fight for civil rights for African Americans. There were protests at universities against the war in Asia. There were riots in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention waged by people who thought the country was a democracy in name only.

The Graduate tapped into all of the anti-establishment feelings that were being felt at the time, but the film itself is surprisingly absent of references to the current events. There is no mention of the Vietnam War. We do not hear Martin Luther King’s name mentioned. The University of California at Berkeley, the epicenter of student unrest at the time, appears sedate in the overhead shot of the campus. Only actor Norman Fell’s concern about “outside agitators” reminds us of the tumult that was going on there. But it is in the non-specific exposure of the affluent society that created the country’s ills, and the depiction of youth wanting a meaningful and unique destiny, that makes this movie a timeless story.

Even though this motion picture, with its exclusive zeroing in on Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), makes us identify with this young man in transition, Nichols does not exalt him as a generation’s hero. Does he petition against fellow youths being sent to war? Is he at rallies protesting racial discrimination? The answer to these questions is “no.” As was pointed out in a film class taught by filmmaker Andrew Karasik, he is depicted from the very first scene as a passive individual being transported through upper middle-class America. He arrives home on a jet plane. His luggage, like himself, is moved along on a conveyor belt. (Although his exiting the terminal through the wrong doors hints at his future nonconformity). He is given an expensive sports car for travel around his affluent world as a graduation gift. He is like an early version of Forrest Gump, where the focus is on the main character as a vehicle to show the audience the significance of what’s going on around him.

Nichols shows us with biting humor the superficial world closing in on Benjamin. His graduation party is filled with material minded people confronting him who only want to tell Ben how his future can be like their present. There is the famous line of advice about going into “plastics.” Ben can’t break through to anyone else because no one is listening. There is no communication in this world. Mr. Robinson doesn’t listen to him when he asks Ben what he likes to drink, and, at one point, he can’t remember Ben’s name (an ad lib because actor Murray Hamilton forgot the character’s name, and Nichols left it in). The shot of Benjamin looking through his aquarium makes it appear as if his world is claustrophobically enclosed. He looks like a fish in a tank in one of the last scenes, banging against the glass at the top, rear part of the church where Elaine is to be married, trying to escape his prison. There is a plastic (see, everything is made of plastic) frogman in the aquarium in his room, which foreshadows the scene where his father makes him wear the underwater gear. All we hear is Ben’s breathing in that scene. There is no communication again. He is submerged in the pool, underwater, trapped like a fish in a tank. He literally and figuratively drifts in his circumscribed pool that summer, with no direction. When his father asks him what was the point of all his education, his reply is “You got me.” Many of us at that time felt the same way given the type of world the system produced. Earlier, when asked why he is avoiding the guests at his party, he says he is worried about his future. He says he wants it to be “different.” This statement sums up Benjamin’s rebellion, which is a personal, not a political, one.

There is one person at the party who sees right through to Benjamin’s angst. The camera provides us with a telling quick look of a woman observing Benjamin, assessing him. It is Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of Benjamin’s father’s partner. When she asks Ben to drive her home, she throws the car keys into the aquarium, as if offering him a way out of his mental prison. However, the way she allows him to be anti-establishment is through a self-serving act of adultery. Why does she try to seduce Benjamin at this particular point? Is she just manipulative, and sees that he is vulnerable enough so she can use him to satisfy her wants? Certainly there is an argument to be made for this viewpoint. She dresses in animal print underwear, emphasizing her predatory nature. Even her enclosed patio is covered in plants, making it appear to be a jungle in which she rules. But, isn’t she finding a kindred soul whose life is as empty as hers? As opposed to the superficial talk of the friends of Benjamin's parents, she candidly admits to being an alcoholic, a condition that disqualifies her from being a model for the suburban world she inhabits. In a later scene when they are in bed together, she admits to having been an art major, and now has lost all interest in it. She let her youthful passion slip away. Possibly she seeks out a younger person to recapture that feeling of hope for the future. She was a rebel herself, having premarital sex and getting pregnant with her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). But, she capitulated to the world of the affluent suburbs, and settled for a loveless marriage of convenience. However, once she does seduce Benjamin, he is now seen as corrupted. This corruption is symbolized by Benjamin, an athlete in college, beginning to smoke once the affair begins, an act which shows his thumbing his nose at the compliance to the rules had had lived by. She, as the mother figure, in an oedipal manner, has initiated him into defilement. She is already a fallen woman, but she does not want her daughter to be sullied by being romantic with a man with whom she had extramarital sex.

It can be argued that Ben’s anemic act of nonconformity is the unethical decision to have an illicit affair with an older woman. And what kind of rebel winds up with Elaine, who is the girl his parents wanted him to be with in the first place? But Ben is not seeking sexual gratification with Mrs. Robinson at first. He says to her, “Maybe we could do something else together. Mrs. Robinson, would you like to go to a movie?” He just wants to make a connection with someone who is as unfulfilled by life as he is. Since she does not want to have a meeting of the minds, it is appropriate that we hear the song “The Sounds of Silence” in the background during their lovemaking. To blame Benjamin for breaking up the Robinson’s marriage, well, it was a hypocrisy to begin with, a “for appearances only” arrangement. As far as choosing Elaine, she is, as is Benjamin, as are we all, our parents’ children. Do we become duplicates of them, or are we capable of seeking out individuality?

When Benjamin finds something he is passionate about, Elaine, he converts from being passive to being active. He pursues her at college, runs after the bus that is taking her to her fiancée, and runs to the church after his car breaks down. The image of Ben heading toward the camera, however, makes him appear as if he is running in place, getting nowhere. He is depicted as making an effort, but it is almost Sisyphus-like in showing how difficult it is to struggle against society’s entrenched establishment. Nichols depicts him as a Christ figure with hands raised in the long shot of the back of the church, as if crucified by these perverters of freedom. It is at this point that Elaine makes her decision to not give in to her mother’s conformity. In older movies, this type of scene would happen before the bride and groom are married. This scene takes place after the vows. Thus, the defiance is emphasized as Elaine tells her mother, “It’s not too late for me.” Ben literally fights off Mr. Robinson and the others who want to perpetuate their kind of submission, wielding, blasphemously, from the churchgoers’ viewpoint, and at the same time appropriately from Ben’s perspective, a crucifix. Whereas, earlier, doors are used symbolically to show him being closed in or locked out by others, he now closes the church door, locking in his adversaries.

But, at the end, even though Nichols has provided us a momentary feeling of exalted freedom, he then undercuts that euphoria with the shots of Benjamin and Elaine, her in her wedding dress, as the two sit at the back of the getaway bus, a kind of honeymoon conveyance. Earlier, when Ben runs after Elaine on the way to the zoo, he still winds up on a bus, taking him away, without him directing its motion. Here again, the two appearing contemplative, almost sad, not looking at each other, not really knowing each other, seem to be thinking, “Okay, what do we do now?” They are not driving the bus, but are being carried to who knows where? Is it possible to direct our own destiny, or are we just carried along by the currents of life?

Next week’s movie is Network.

Long Day's Journey into Night

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

You might feel like you spent a whole day watching this film. It comes in just under three hours. Well, Eugene O’Neill was not known for being brief. Some critics have criticized this 1962 screen version of the play, directed by Sidney Lumet, for being “stagy.” I would have to disagree. Yes, we are talking about basically a four character story set at a beach house. But Lumet starts the story of the Tyrone family outside, near the water. The first object we see is the sun, its burning rays bearing down on the earth, hinting at the long day to come. To me the use of the illuminating sun as the first image presented is ironic, since this family doesn’t really want to see the truths surrounding their lives. At one point, the son Edmond (Dean Stockwell) says, “Who wants to see life as it is if you can help it.”

Lumet uses close-ups to zero in on characters as they are showcased while going through their ruminations. He says in his book, Making Movies, if you viewed close-ups of the actors at the start of the movie and then at the end, “you’d be shocked at how different they look. The ravaged, worn, exhausted faces at the end have almost nothing to do with the composed, clean faces at the beginning. It wasn’t only acting. This was also accomplished by lenses, light, camera position, and length of takes.” This effect emphasizes the toll this day (which is symbolic of the many days of their lives) exacts on the family members.

Let’s look at the individual characters. The matriarch, Mary (Katherine Hepburn) has been morphine-addicted since the birth of Edmund. She was institutionalized, and her husband and sons worry that at any moment she will relapse (which she does). Gong to the “spare room” is the signal that she is isolating herself from the family (a spare room is not used by family members) so she can shoot up. The drug addiction is a literal and figurative escape from reality. She, as do the others, blame their problems on other family members, instead of taking a hard look at themselves. Mary says it is her other son’s fault, Jamie (Jason Robards, Jr.) for having the measles that infected a third child, who eventually died. She says it was Edmond’s fault for bringing a birth too soon after the death of a child that led to her addiction. She refuses to accept the fact that Edmond has tuberculosis, and slaps him when he tries to make her realize he doesn’t just have “a summer cold.” She accuses her sons and her husband, James (Ralph Richardson), the traveling actor, for having lives outside of the home, leaving her alone. But, she has made the house a prison for herself. The fog at the beginning is symbolic of her inability to see the truth about her life. The fog horn is used repeatedly (for instance when they all are drinking alcohol) to show how the family is like a boat trying to navigate a self-imposed obscurity to the truth. Lumet says in his book that he used longer and longer lenses on Hepburn to show the character’s slipping “into her dope-ridden fog.”

The pretentious father, James, is also in a state of delusion. He was an actor of some note who invents statements about his theatrical abilities. He blames his sons’ wandering ways on their lack of commitment to the Catholic faith instead of taking responsibility as their father. He tries to limit the consumption of alcohol by the boys, but he drinks a great deal stating it is for medicinal purposes. He champions the importance of the family, but he was absent much of the time and was unfaithful to his wife.

Jamie drinks to excess, visits brothels, and generally has no stability in his life. He wants to blame his father and mother for his cynical and pessimistic view of the world, but again, does not take any personal responsibility. Edmond became a sailor to escape the family. He talks of a nirvana-like experience while at sea. He felt part of everything else, achieving self-obliteration, and not feeling at home at any one place. It is appropriate that he is the one suffering from “consumption,” since his individuality has been wasting away. The father blames Jamie for corrupting Edmond, but the latter allows his brother’s influence to take hold of him.

In the end, the characters start to confront the truth about themselves. For instance, Jamie confesses his love/hate relationship with Edmond (which is sort of how they all feel about each other) when he tells him that he wanted to corrupt his brother. He didn’t want Edmond to be the preferred son of the parents. Lumet says, “As the scenes progress and the truth becomes more and more agonizing, the lenses get wider and wider, the camera gets lower and lower, the light harsher but darker, as the whole story of these people gets wrapped in night and the final terrible truths are articulated.”

As I said, a long day indeed.

Next week’s movie is The Graduate.

Rebel Without a Cause

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

Don Maclean writes in the song “American Pie” that Bob Dylan, the “Jester,” wore a coat “he borrowed from James Dean.” In director Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean’s Jim Stark wears literal and symbolic clothing. The jacket we see him wear for most of the film is red. It can signify the passion of rebellious youth. The opening sequence shows a drunken Jim on the ground with a red toy monkey, not the impression of suburban white youth shown in TV sitcoms of the time such as Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver. The monkey is then covered with paper, like a corpse, which is a foreshadowing image in this story. In this one shot Ray shows a person caught between childhood (the toy) and adulthood (the drunkenness). This film, like To Kill a Mockingbird, addresses the inevitability of losing one’s innocence and having to be born again into the compromised and pessimistic grown-up world.

We move to the police station where the three main characters are brought together in the same place: Jim was arrested for his public drunkenness; Judy (Natalie Wood), wearing a red coat, mirroring Jim's attire, was picked up for being a minor walking around at night alone; and John “Plato” Crawford was arrested for shooting puppies. These rebellious youths meet in a place that stands for the enforcement of the rules with which they are at odds. Jim mimics the police siren, a sound associated with imposing order, and a cop says, “that’s enough static out of you.” The word “static” means noise, but it is also used to suggest opposition or criticism, which is one of the role’s of youth. The expression, "a monkey on your back," refers to drug addiction, and thus, a destructive disease. Judy views Jim over her shoulder in her mirror compact, so his rebelliousness is like a monkey on her back.

Jim is no longer a child and must now face the disappointing reality of his home life. We learn that he is the new kid in town, which adds to his rootlessness, and, thus, to his insecurity. His parents always move whenever there has been trouble in the family. Jim accuses them of always blaming him for the relocations, but there are also problems between the mother and father. Jim’s dad, Frank (Jim Backus – yes Mr. Magoo and the rich guy on “Gilligan’s Island) is a wimp, (his wearing the frilly apron around the house is an embarrassing reminder to Jim of Frank’s emasculation) never standing up to his domineering wife (Ann Doran), or showing any decisiveness in general. The family’s moving around suggests the inability to feel “at home” can continue into adulthood.

Judy longs for the affection of her father (William Hopper) that she received when she was a child. She is disappointed that he isn’t the one picking her up at the police station. There is an incestuous subtext at work here. She is a curvaceous young lady now, so when she gives her father a quick kiss on the lips at home, he pushes her away in disgust. It almost appears that he protests too much, subconsciously guilty of his own urges. But, he encourages his young son to be  typically manly, and the boy has a toy gun, a phallic symbol. He is alarmed about any male contact with Judy, even if it comes from his son, who he chastises when he hugs his sister. But the child calls Judy "glamour puss" as his dad did. The confusion over sexual behavior is inserted in what we would expect to be a typical middle-class family. In contrast to Jim's father, Judy's dad is a macho type. His preoccupation with masculinity is shown on the wall of the dining room, which is covered with phallic symbols, such as swords, roosters, and horses. He considers Judy a tramp because she stays out at night with her rowdy crowd of friends. Her mother says when you are starting to grow up, “nothing fits.” Judy also is in-between worlds and also feels homeless.

Probably the most interesting character of all is Sal Mineo’s Plato. He wears clothes a mother might pick out for a young boy going to a family event. He rides a scooter which is a pale imitation of a motorcycle, and looks out of place at the high school. His parents are absent. They have split up, and the mother is never at home. His father is rich and provides him with material things. He sends support checks with no personalized letters to his son. The only person caring for him is the African American nanny, which he is too old to have looking after him. He wants for nothing – except love. So, emotionally, he, too, is caught between childhood and adulthood, and also is without a nurturing home. At the school, Plato opens his locker, and on the door is a photo of the actor Alan Ladd, a handsome man. He then sees Jim in the mirror on the door. It is the same over-the-shoulder view that Judy had, which emphasizes how Jim is that "monkey" on the back. Thus, Jim, although not intentionally, is a threat to Plato. Is Plato gay, like the Greek philosopher, and attracted to Jim, who is associated in this scene with a handsome actor? But, later, Jim is considered as a surrogate father by Plato. The latter says to him, “If you coulda been my dad, we could have breakfast in the morning.” There is a blending of the sexual and the paternal here, as there is with Judy. It is meaningful that all he has of his dad is a photograph, where? - in his bedroom. Why did Plato kill those puppies? They are not full grown dogs, but babies. Perhaps in his life there is a disconnect between an ideal childhood and the one he experienced. It may be he was sexually abused by his father, and he considers the killing of the puppies an act of mercy to spare them the pain of growing up. It is significant that his nickname references the philosopher who believed that this world was made up of imperfect copies of almost forgotten transcendent ideas.

Since he does not fit in at home, Jim doesn’t want to feel like an outcast among his peers. But the first thing he does is walk on the school’s insignia placed in the cement as he heads for class, possibly a sign of disrespect. He tries to make fun of the planetarium presentation about the end of the world so as to be accepted by the gang of youths. But, he is taunted by Judy’s boyfriend, Buzz, who calls him “chicken” when he refuses to fight after Buzz slashes the tires of Jim’s car. The accusation of being a coward is the one thing Jim can’t stand, because it reminds him of his spineless father. He accepts the challenge of the “chicken run” where two beat-up cars are driven toward the edge of a cliff. The driver who jumps out first is the “chicken.” Buzz dies because of a piece of clothing. The strap on his black leather jacket, a symbol of rebellious youth, gets caught on the door handle and he plunges to his death. Did his nonconformity to the approaching responsibility of adulthood seal his fate?

Jim goes home after the tragedy looking for direction as to how to act. Again, he, too, is caught between the world of the child (he drinks milk at home like a baby) and being forced into being an adult. He asks his father, “What do you do when you have to be a man.” He is looking for a clear moral compass to follow, but his dad basically tells him it isn’t that simple, and just wants him to cover his own ass in connection with the accident. His parents tell him that in ten years none of what has happened will be remembered, as if to say the leaving behind of youthful idealism will fade away as one ages.

Jim goes to the police station to talk to Sergeant Ray (Edward Platt) who was sympathetic when Jim was arrested, but Ray is not there, another absentee father figure. The other members of the gang think that Jim informed on them about Buzz's death, so they go after him. Jim, Judy, and Plato go to a dilapidated mansion to hide. All three are in a sense refugees from their homes. They play at being a family, with Jim the father, Judy the mother, and Plato as the child. But Jim satirizes this action, affecting an adult tone of voice, talking about renting or buying, with Judy chiming in about their budget, and Plato saying it will only cost “three million dollars a month.” With these words they acknowledge the absurdity of the grown-up world. Plato says mockingly of having children, “we don’t encourage them,” and there is dark humor about drowning children. Their words convey what they see as the animosity of parents toward their children. It also reminds the audience about the pessimism of existence depicted at the planetarium, and echoes Plato's killing of the puppies, implying youth has a horrible time ahead of it. At one point Plato lies down and is covered, like a child going to sleep. But he also looks like a dead body, another image of foreshadowing. Their pretending is cut short by the gang members finding them. One of the young men rattles a chain, like an evil version of a baby rattle. Plato has his gun and shoots one of the youths. Jim is able to disarm the weapon, but Plato wants the gun back. He is killed by the police as Jim leads him out of the mansion, since the cops don’t know there are no bullets in the pistol.

Let’s get back to the color red and that toy monkey. The titles at the beginning of the film are in red, and as was said, so were the monkey and Jim’s jacket, as well as Judy’s red coat. One of Plato’s socks is red, a mismatch which conjures up the image of a child but also hints at tragedy, since red is also the color of blood. The "monkey" reference occurs again. When Judy looks into her compact mirror a second time, Jim asks her, “Want to see a monkey?” Jim may be the “monkey wrench” that damages the machinery of society. Plato says to Jim that when it comes to Buzz and his friends, that he shouldn’t “monkey with them,” another omen of the chaos to come.

So, Jim can, in one sense, be seen, inadvertently, as an “angel of death.” At the police station he hums Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is associated with going to the afterworld. He lives on “Angelo” street. He enters the planetarium just as the show explores the eventual cosmic end of the world with an exploding star, and his last name is "Stark." The scientist there talks about how “the earth will not be missed,” and “the heavens are cold,” after our planet’s demise. The youth in attendance are startled by the flash of light that will indicate the end of existence. Why should they not feel that life is doomed and their existence meaningless? When Judy is asked toward the beginning of the film who is Jim Stark, she says, “He’s the new disease.” His rebelliousness is a newly arrived threat to the established order. Jim is a participant at the scene of Buzz’s death, and the other gang members want to blame him for the tragedy. The cliff where the “chicken-run” takes place is called “the end.” After Buzz goes over the edge, it appears as if Judy is contemplating jumping after him. But, a look from Jim stops her, as if he must be consulted in matters about death. At one point Jim’s reaper-like persona says, “I don’t know what to do anymore. Except maybe die.” Plato dies because he still has the gun which Jim allowed him to keep, after removing the bullets, which is a sort of a symbolic act of castration, leading to impotence regarding continued survival. It's as if Jim transferred his rebelliousness to Plato and that anti-social part of him died with the young man. At the end, Jim puts his red jacket on Plato (once earlier he offered him the jacket in the police station – another omen), and zips it up as if he is taking care of his son, but the situation makes it look as if Plato is in a body bag. It is fitting that Plato’s tragedy occurs at the observatory, the place where the young people hear about the end of the world. Plato earlier asks Jim if the earth will end at night. Jim says it will end at dawn – a foreboding statement since that is when Plato’s life does end.

We have to consider that not only are Jim, Judy and Plato justified in their aversion to adulthood, but also that their rebelliousness is a threat to the society around them if it is so self-involved. It is why people are programmed into social roles as they lose the passion of youth and exchange it for the compromises inherent with aging. At the police station, when the family came to pick Jim up, Jim's mother and grandmother dress similarly, even wearing the same flowers on their coats. The depiction suggests that children will become their parents. At the end of the film, Jim’s parents exchange understanding smiles once their son, with his supposed future bride, who looks like Jim's mom, is returned to them. The smiles, given the tragic circumstances, appear creepy and discordant. The father puts his coat around Jim, indicating Jim and Judy will join the ranks of the adult members of society as future replacements as they enter a black car that suggests a hearse since youthfulness must make way for the restrictions of maturity. The last image is that of the director, Nicholas Ray, as the curator of the observatory (a fitting role for a director), appearing as an indifferent spectator to what has happened, walking along, observing the landscaping. The shot mirrors what Jim's mother said about how the experiences of young people are "episodes of little consequence." What has happened here is already being forgotten as the cycle goes on.

Next week’s movie is Long Day’s Journey into Night.

The Spanish Prisoner

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

David Mamet again explores the thin line between what appears to be legal and legitimate and the dark side of the human soul that lies beneath that outward, supposedly civilized façade in this 1998 film.

Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), under contract by a firm headed by a Mr. Klein (Ben Gazzara), has developed a "process" which is worth a fortune. The mathematical equations which describe this breakthrough are written down in a binder, which is placed in a safe to which only Ross and Klein have the key. Ross, his words-of-wisdom spouting partner, George (Ricky Jay Lang), Klein, and a newly employed secretary, Susan (Rebecca Pidgeon) fly to a Caribbean island to firm up the deal between the principals. Ross and Susan run into Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin – no joking around in this role) who appears to be coming off of a seaplane with a beautiful Japanese woman. Tourist pictures are taken, and Dell offers Ross a thousand dollars for his camera without giving a reason.  Later Dell meets Ross and says that he didn't want the picture to get out because the woman is a princess who is married. She was sent off to wherever her unnamed principality exists. Susan has drinks with a woman who turns out to be an FBI agent, named McCune (Felicity Huffman).

Dell and Ross become chummy. Dell asks Ross to drop off a gift for his sister in New York. Ross wants something specific from Klein as to how much he is going to be paid for his contracted work, but gets only vague reassurances. Susan, who openly starts to flirt with Ross, plants the seed of suspicion in Ross about Dell, saying that they didn't really see him come from the plane. She also says people sometimes use others as "mules" to smuggle contraband. She says what becomes the theme of the film:  "Things aren't what they seem." Ross opens the gift that Dell gave him for his sister, and sees that it is only a book about tennis, with a broken spine.

Back in New York, Ross gets a new book and drops it off with the doorman at the sister's building. Dell and Ross have dinner at the former's club, but it is a "members only" night, so Ross signs a certificate which makes him a member. Also, Ross and Dell talk about bank accounts and jokingly Dell opens up a Swiss bank account for Ross. When Ross makes known to Dell that he questions Klein's good intentions, Dell says that he should meet with his attorney and bring the process along. Ross begins to suspect Dell when he goes to the sister's home to give another gift and sees that she is not a young tennis player but is really an old woman.  Ross contacts McCune, and she implies the FBI has been after Dell, which is why she was in the islands. She and her agents meet Ross in NY's Central Park for a sting. He brings the process, and they set him up with a wire. Dell never shows up and all the agents disappear. Ross calls the FBI and finds out that McCune was a fraud, and the binder he now has of the process is blank. It was all a scam – Dell's office and club were fakes. The police now suspect Ross, since he spent lavishly on himself, (the money was really from partner George's casino winnings, which he also used to buy a first class ticket for Susan). Ross has a Swiss bank account and the dining club membership he signed was really a request for asylum in Venezuela. Ross goes to George's apartment and finds him stabbed to death.

 

Ross is now on the run and goes to Susan. They decide that he should go back to the island from Boston and retrieve the video surveillance tape of Dell so that the FBI will be able to go after the career criminal.  Before he flies off using the round trip ticket he bought for Susan, he remembers that he has Dell's fingerprints on the first tennis book.  We now realize that Susan is in on the scam because she gives Ross a camera bag with a gun in it so that airport security would arrest him. Ross also sees Susan with the fake McCune. He wants to go on a ferry back to New York, and sees that Susan has swapped his plane ticket for one to Venezuela to implicate Ross further. He grabs Susan and they get on the boat before Huffman and others can catch up. Ross makes known to Susan that he knows she is part of the plot. However, Dell is on the boat. Ross goes to the back and a Japanese man places a microphone on Ross' lapel and tells him to get Dell to tell him where the process is located. The audience does not hear Dell's response which is drowned out by a ship horn. Just as Dell is ready to shoot Ross, a young Japanese woman shoots Dell with a tranquilizer dart. He and Susan are arrested. The Japanese man and woman work for the U.S. Marshall Service, and they have been tracking Dell. Klein was the one setting it up because he wanted the process for himself. (How else would they know what the binder looked like – if the plot were tighter, Ross should realize the fact that there had to be someone working on the inside at the company).

Mamet uses the "appearance versus reality theme" in many ways here.  Dell, Susan, McCune and Klein all appear to be legit, but are really part of a conspiracy. Ross, looking like the clean-cut Boy Scout who has been played, surprisingly is able to sort things out. Mamet has fun with the Japanese motif. Klein paints the Japanese as evil, by saying to Ross not to double-cross him and sell the process to the Japanese. The Japanese "princess" is not really royalty. Japanese are referred to in the Caribbean as being tourists with cameras all over the place. In the end, there are Japanese Americans posing as foreign tourists who are the real government agents who save the day. As the NY policeman says, "nobody suspects Japanese tourists."

The appearance versus reality theme is reinforced by Mamet's words which sound cryptic, using unfinished sentences reminiscent of the Watergate Tapes. He writes the script so that one word, such as "look" repeated differently in a short span takes on different meanings. There are also the repeated times that people are referred to as having the flu. George becomes sick. Dell says his sister can't meet them because she has the flu.  Even Susan calls her place of work, saying she is sick with the flu so she can "help" Ross.  These references tell us that there is something rotten in the state of Mamet.

Next week’s movie is Rebel Without a Cause.

Repulsion

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

“Welcome to my nightmare.” That is what it feels like Roman Polanski is saying to us with this 1965 movie, his second feature film, which explores a young woman’s descent into madness in trendy London.

At the time this motion picture was made, feminism was just a small tributary flowing alongside the mainstream of society. The “free love” idea of the 1960’s, although allowing women to explore their sexuality, was mostly an exploitation of the current anti-establishment rule-breaking by men to gratify their sexual desires. The roles offered women in the context of this film are limited. The main character, Carol Ledoux (a beautiful, thick maned Catherine Deneuve – is she an animal to be hunted, or is she a dangerous lioness?) is a manicurist in a beauty salon. She works in a place whose sole purpose is to make women beautiful for men. She lives with her sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) in an apartment. Helen is having an affair with an insensitive married man, Michael (Ian Hendry), which indicates her lack of fully satisfying relationship opportunities.

Polanski likes to use apartments to illustrate the sensation of sinister forces closing in on people. He does it again in Rosemary’s Baby. Here, how the brutish Michael’s existence invades Carol’s safety is seen by how she is repulsed by his toothbrush placed in her bathroom glass, and his razor takes up space on the bathroom sink area. She is subjected to the loud lovemaking of Helen and Michael in the next room at night. The sound of the ticking clock seem amplified to her (just as it does in Rosemary’s Baby), suggesting the inevitable movement toward one’s fate. In the apartment, she cannot escape the sounds of the world crashing in on her, whether it’s the water dripping inside, or the city’s noises outside. These become amplified as the story progresses.

Her aversion to sex becomes more evident. Carol rejects Colin (John Fraser), a man who appears harmless enough, but who is just another male attracted to her looks. He really doesn’t look at her as a complete person. She is harassed by workers on the street, again showing the one-thing-on the-mind attitude of men. She picks up and smells Michael’s undershirt, and it makes her vomit. She hardly eats anything. Sex and eating are equated in literature and film (remember the dining scene in Tom Jones?). Her rejection of food symbolizes her lack of appetite for sex. She encounters women who do not need men who appear content. She looks out the window at the celibate nuns in a courtyard, who are joyful as they play a game. An older woman who lives across the hall no longer needs sex in her life, and has a faithful, comforting companion in her pet dog. The skinned rabbit that was to be dinner when Carol comes home from work is another reminder of a woman’s role, as it does in the movie Fatal Attraction: the notion that “the rabbit died” indicates pregnancy. She also doesn’t cook, which is another role relegated to women. Is it a wonder that Carol allows the rabbit and potatoes to sit out and rot, indicating her failure as a woman in this man’s world? It also illustrates her mental deterioration.

That she is not mentally stable becomes more and more apparent. She has a glazed over look in her eyes. She is in a distracted state at her job when she injures the hand of a woman during a manicure. Her cutting the client’s finger shows how she subconsciously rejects the objectification of women based on looks. This rejection can also be seen in the way she wishes to dismiss her own beauty by chewing on her hair and swatting at her nose, as if to cut it off to spite her face. It also is a foreshadowing of what is to happen later. After her sister and Michael leave for a vacation in Italy, Carol shuts herself up in the apartment. Helen sends her a postcard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a tilted, erect, phallic symbol, which, is viewed as another assault on Carol’s fragile mental state. The disintegrating food draws flies, and we hear the loud buzzing, emphasizing her madness. Carol hallucinates that the cracks in the walls are getting larger with accompanying loud crumbling sounds. Michael’s wife makes an abusive phone call to Helen, but Carol takes it as an attack on herself, and rips out the phone. She imagines a man is in the apartment who rapes her repeatedly. We get an insight of why Carol is damaged. There is a family photograph which shows her as a young girl, standing by herself, staring away with a sad look on her face. There is an older man in the photo who also appears uninvolved. Perhaps she was abused as a child by an older male family member.

The males in a pub with Colin are also painted as grotesque exploiters of women. Colin is disgusted by them. He goes to the apartment to find out why Carol has not been around. He may mean well, but he still ignores her desire to be left alone, and breaks down the door, symbolically violating her. She bludgeons him with, appropriately, a phallic-shaped candlestick. She nails a piece of wood across the door to barricade herself in. The landlord (Patrick Wymark) also forces his way in, and, after assuming Carol’s revealing nightclothes are a come-on, tries to have sex with her. Carol slashes him to death, again, ironically, with a male object, Michael razor.

When Helen and Michael arrive back at the apartment, they and the other tenants realize the horrors that have occurred. Carol is carried out of the apartment by Michael, which seems on the surface like a rescue from her torment, but can be interpreted as being transported by another callous male to some other place that is not safe from abuse.

Is this film just a portrait of a disturbed woman succumbing to her psychotic demons, or are we also presented with an avenging spirit meting out female justice to male sexual tyranny?

Next week’s movie is The Spanish Prisoner.

Psycho

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed. And, sorry, this is a long post. There is just so much to say about this brilliant film.

I want to start out by thanking my father. He took me to see movies like this one, and Dr. Strangelove, while other parents eye-fed their children a steady diet of cartoons. Don’t get me wrong, I believe moms and dads should monitor what their kids watch. I just think quality should be the primary standard for viewing. And, when it comes to quality, it’s hard to beat Alfred Hitchcock’s works. My father loved his movies and the TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. When I was nine years old in 1960, he wanted to treat my mother to a movie after a visit to the unemployment office after she lost her job. So, we went to downtown Philly to see this shocker.

It seems everyone recognizes Bernard Herrmann’s screaming violin musical score. Even the opening music has a frantic, unnerving tempo as we see lines slicing through the credits, immediately foreshadowing the violence to come. The names of those participating in the making of the movie are torn apart, suggesting the dissociative personality of the killer we will meet. We are told that the story is set in Phoenix (the name of a mythological bird which is reborn out of its own ashes, which resonates with what Norman Bates does by stuffing dead birds and and physically and psychologically resurrecting his mother's corpse). We are given the exact time of day to the minute. It almost feels as if we are about to watch a documentary, or at least a retelling of actual events. This verisimilitude makes the horror to follow more startling. The camera creeps along and enters a bedroom, like a Peeping Tom. But we are looking through the lens of the camera so we are the voyeurs. Our first view of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is in a hotel room on a weekday in the afternoon as she squeezes in time with her lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin). He is leaving for the airport, indicating the lack of permanency in their relationship. She is wearing a white bra and slip. Instead of a white wedding gown, she wears undergarments of that color, emphasizing that she is having sex without the benefit of marriage. And marriage and respectability is what she tells Sam she wants. He says “respectability” is work, which implies that casual sex is easy. So, given the time in which the movie was made, Marion’s premarital intimacy is deviant behavior, despite her desire to make the relationship respectable. We as an audience judge her, but Hitchcock is setting us up to judge ourselves for our darker tendencies. Aren't we, attending a showing of a film entitled Psycho? We are drawn to the underbelly of existence. 

Sam is divorced and must pay alimony. He has to make good on his father’s debts. He has a low income job at a hardware store. He says he will marry Marion (her name implies she is the “marry in’” kind) when he is in a better financial situation to support them. So, Marion's marital investment in Sam is dwindling. After returning to work from her lunchtime rendezvous, her co-worker, Caroline (Patricia Hitchcock, the director's daughter) offers to give Marion tranquilizers that her mother gave her to calm her about her wedding day. This an example of an untrustworthy mother who is meddlesome, which mirrors Norman Bates's situation later. There is a painting of a desert behind Marion’s desk. As was said, the setting is in Arizona. Does the desert hint at Marion’s barren life? Or, does it point to her infertility, thus indicating that her biological clock is ticking since she has no children? Can it be morality has a difficult time growing within her? Maybe the painting points to all of these things. There is a second painting that Marion later passes by which depicts the opposite climate, one with trees and a river. One would think it is hopeful. But, the shadow of Marion's head is cast right under the surface of the water. It is a foreshadowing of what is to happen to her.

When her boss, George Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) gives her custody of $40,000 in cash to put in the bank, she fakes a headache, goes home, and packs a bag, ready to go to Sam with the money that she thinks will bring her happiness. It is interesting that the man, Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson), who brings the money says he will use his wealth to help his daughter get married and settle down. Marion is surrounded by other getting married and who have money, which leads to her committing her crime. Instead of depositing the money the camera shows it in an envelope sitting on her bed, which suggests it will help Marion's romantic quest. By the way, while she is packing, she is now wearing a black bra and slip, indicating her criminal activity. While she is dressing there is the image of the showerhead in the background, another foreshadowing of what will take place. Her boss sees her in her get-away car. She drives into a desert area that resembles the painting over her desk. It's as if she is entering a lifeless place to die. The suspense increases when a policeman, looking scary behind sunglasses, finds her asleep on the side of the road on her journey to Sam. He says it would be safer for her to check into a motel. He couldn't be more wrong. She acts suspiciously, and he follows her to a used car dealership. She is in such a hurry to leave, she almost forgets her luggage. She imagines what the policeman and car salesman are saying about her curious behavior, as her paranoia increases.

Up to now, and we’re not very far into the story, the focus is on Marion. We think the narrative will be about her and the money she took. But, the opening is a red herring. She drives us into the actual center of the story. There is a terrible rain storm at night, which foreshadows the later shower scene. Marion can’t see the road clearly (and figuratively, she is unable to visualize what is the right path to be on). And boy, does she make a wrong turn. She has definitely “gone off the main road,” as Norman says, in more ways than one. She stops at the Bates Motel. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins - how could he have not been nominated for an Oscar?), appears as the boyish, innocent-looking proprietor of the establishment. Compared to her disappointing boyfriend and intimidating men so far, he seems harmless. He tells her that there are twelve rooms and twelve vacancies. Even though he says they moved the highway, the lack of visitors is a reddish flag. He says that it is a “dirty” night outside, not a “bad night,” which adds a repressed sexual connotation to his speech. She registers under a false name. It is at this point there is a subtle hint that there’s something not right with Norman (even though his name suggests the word “normal.” Of course, in the end he is neither woman “nor man,” but both in the same body. And, “Bates and “baits” are homophones – which implies he is trying to catch someone, with his innocent appearance). He turns to the keys hanging on the wall. It appears he will pick a higher numbered key, but he hesitates, and instead chooses number one, the room next to the office. He says that way she can be in touch easily if she needs anything. When he shows her the room, He says it's "stuffy," which also connects to Norman stuffing birds. He points to the bathroom, but is unable to say the word, showing his prudishness. But it may really be his trying to submerge an unconscious knowledge that the place can be a murder chamber.

He invites her to the family house, which looks like a Gothic castle, behind the motel. It suggests the place where Frankenstein tried to bring the dead back to life, which we learn Norman, in his own way, has been doing. Marion can hear Norman supposedly arguing with his old mother in the house. Marion hears her say, “Go tell her she’ll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with my food … or my son!” The writing, especially the dialogue, in this film is so meaningful (again, how could Joseph Stefano not be nominated for his adaptation?). We see here the oedipal connection between Norman and his mother. “She” is showing disgust about satisfying an “appetite” – translate that to mean sex. “She” is also jealous of Marion. So, they can’t eat at the house, and Norman brings the sandwiches back to the motel. One of the film’s great lines is uttered by Norman when he says that his mother “isn’t quite herself today,” or any day, as we learn. Marion offers her room to satisfy, literally, and in Norman’s mind, symbolically, their appetites. His mother’s influence prevents him from “entering” her space. They go to eat in the parlor (said the spider to the fly) behind the office. Norman says it would be too “officious” to eat in the outer room. Wrong word. “Officious” means meddlesome. Is it a Freudian slip, indicating the influence of his mother trying to insinuate herself into his “date” with Marion?

Marion is startled by the stuffed birds, all predatory, like the falsely benign-looking Norman, adorning the parlor. Norman is an amateur taxidermist. Again, we are given another reference to making something dead appear as if it is alive. Her last name is “Crane,” which implies she could become one of the dead creatures, or, is she already dead inside? There are also pictures of birds in Marion’s room. Norman says Marion, true to her last name, “eats like a bird,” which is an ominous thing to say, associating her with the dead ones surrounding them. He points out that the saying that birds don't eat much is a ,"fals-fals-fals -falsity." His stutter almost sounds as if he is reluctant to reveal his connection to hungry birds. Or, it may be another psychological slip, since he sounds as if he might say the word "phallus." But, he says, he would not stuff cats or dogs. Birds are passive, he says. Norman can identify with them in a way. His personality is mostly passive, and he deals with the birds after they are dead. He, himself, looks like a skinny bird. But, when we see Norman outside, his reflection mirrored in the window, he appears dark and mysterious, implying there is a sinister aspect hidden underneath the unthreatening exterior.

The exchanges between Marion and Norman in the parlor are very revealing. Marion admits that she is “looking for a private island … where I can be alone and no one can find me.” Norman responds by saying, “No one really runs away from anything. It’s like a private trap that holds us in like a prison … we’re all in our private traps, clamped in, and none of us can get out. We scratch and claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.” Norman here has great insight into his predicament, admitting that he can’t psychologically escape his prison (like a caged bird?). Marion then reflects on her situation when she says, “Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps,” as she has done getting involved with Sam, and stealing the money. When Marion notes how badly his mother treats him, Norman says, “It’s not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?” To which, Marion replies, “Sometimes, just one time can be enough.” Stefano said in an interview that he saw Marion’s act of stealing as a “mad act.” So, Norman is really talking to the audience about how there is madness in all of us. However, in his brief statement, Norman shows the self-denial of the severity of his illness.

When Marion suggests putting his mother away, we see some of Norman’s madness. He becomes angry at the thought of putting his mother in a ‘madhouse,” and seems to know way too much about these places, suggesting he has looked into them, or that his mother investigated the possibility of committing him at one point. He says he couldn’t just leave his “mother,” either. If he did, in her room, “it would be cold and damp up there like a grave.” This statement reveals what actually happened to his mother and again shows his desire to resurrect the dead. He says, “I don’t hate my mother. I hate what she’s become. I hate her illness.” Which, of course, is his illness. He tries to reassure Marion, and himself, that he is alright, by offering the arrested development statement “a boy’s best friend is his mother.” He then admits that a son is a “poor substitute for a lover.” In these sentences, we have Norman’s oedipal crisis.

Hitchcock tends to implicate the audience in the wrongdoings he depicts on the screen. He indicts the audience for what happens in The Birds. In Rear Window, we join James Stewart in his voyeurism. Here, when Norman surprises us by being a pervert and looks through his peephole at the undressing Marion, the camera is the proxy for the voyeur in each of us. (The painting cover the aperture is "Susannah and the Elders" which appropriately deals with voyeurism and sexual blackmail). If you are attracted to a beautiful woman, you become frustrated when the lens points back to Norman, and we are deprived of seeing the nakedness of Janet Leigh’s voluptuous from. Later when Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles) investigates the house, she is startled because she thinks she sees someone watching her. But, it is only her own image in a mirror. Or, does this image suggest that she should be frightened, since we, the audience, are there, stalking her? Or, maybe the mirror, always a symbol of our “other” self, is reflecting back to Lila that she, like everyone, has the potential to be both victim and perpetrator of dark deeds. Maybe just entering this “haunted” house takes us, as it did Marion, down the road that should be less traveled.

The famous shower scene shows the killer’s face in the dark, since we are not supposed to know the murderer’s identity at this point, even though the suggestion is that it is the jealous mother. But, as we learn later, it is Norman dressed as her, and it is his own guilt over allowing himself to be aroused by this woman that turns him toward the mother part of himself. Marion is a threat that may seduce Norman away from his attachment to his mom. Thus, the only way the matriarchal aspect of his personality allows him to “penetrate” her naked body is with the phallic substitute of a knife blade. A person’s sexuality is revealed in a shower, but also the individual’s vulnerability, stripped of protection, the noise of the cascading water masking any sound of approaching danger. The shower head appears like a cold eye, perhaps another symbol of the voyeur, looking down on its victim. She reaches for the shower curtain, a last-ditch attempt at shielding her vulnerability. But, the quick snapping of the curtain pulling away from the rings as she falls has the ring of a life cut short. Life flows out of Marion after the attack, literally, in the form of blood, mixing with water, an image of fertility washed away, reminding us of the earlier dessert images. The life-sustaining liquids go down the drain, which is replaced by Marion’s eye, telling us that all we have left is a lifeless corpse. The dead eye may be an indictment of us as voyeurs who participated in Norman's visual exploitation of her. It is also ironic that Marion dies soon after she admitted that she was going to return home, make things right, and confess her wrongs. She was going to reveal her crimes, which Norman cannot do. It’s as if the shower represents her desire to “come clean.”

When Norman realizes what “mother” has done, he goes to Marion’s room. He is shocked, and backs into the wall, knocking down a painting of a crane. A crane is a wadding bird, which means it is found in marshes, which is where Marion Crane winds up. The fallen picture, of course, symbolizes another dead feathered creature, in this case a “Crane,” that has to be dealt with. We again are made to identify with Norman, as he cleans up the room. We think at this point that Norman is innocent, and all he is doing is protecting his mentally ill mother. Whereas Marion was symbolically baptizing away her sins, Norman is cleansing away the evidence of a crime, and psychologically covering up his deadly deed. He washes the blood off of his hands, but, like Lady Macbeth, one can’t rinse away true guilt. He unknowingly throws the money, wrapped in a newspaper, into Marion’s replacement car. When the automobile hesitates in its submersion into the swamp, we share Norman’s anxiety. (The license plate shows "NFB," which stands for Norman's initials. The middle name is Francis. It's possible it can refer to St. Francis of Assisi who was the patron saint of birds). The pause in the car sinking hints at the possibility of confronting the crime. But, we, too, want to distance ourselves from the murder and share in Norman’s relief when the vehicle is covered by the muddy pond (clear water and blood have been replaced by the obscuring dense, cloudy liquid of the bog). Haven’t we all done something we felt was wrong, and tried to cover it up, even pretended it never happened, burying it in our subconscious?

Lila joins with Sam to find out what happened to her sister. They encounter Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam), a private investigator who was hired to find the missing Marion and the money by the firm where she worked. Arbogast says they want to keep it quiet, hoping the money will be returned, and there would be no pressing of charges. This is a convenient, one could say contrived, plot device to keep the action focused on the principals, and not involve the police. Arbogast stops at the Bates Motel in his quest for Marion. He catches Norman in a lie about not admitting that Marion stayed at the motel. He asks him to look at her picture “before committing yourself.” This statement is darkly funny, given the fact that Norman should, indeed, be committed to a mental institution. The PI checks out the Bates’ house. We have an overhead shot (again to hide the face of the killer) and we see “mother” come out of her room, wielding a knife. “She” slices at Arbogast, and there is an almost surreal bit of editing that conveys the feeling of the victim’s falling down the steps, followed by the raised knife plunging into the PI. We see Norman soon after at the swamp again, which lets the audience know that Arbogast has joined Marion in Norman’s literal and figurative cover-up.

Lila and Sam investigate after the PI, who told them about Norman’s mother living in the house and who, according to Norman, had talked to Marion, goes missing. They learn from the local sheriff, (John McIntire) that Norman’s mother was dead. She was part of a murder-suicide ten years earlier when she poisoned her lover and herself. Sam and Lila check into the motel. While Sam interrogates Norman, she checks out the house. Norman’s mother’s room has been kept to look as if she lives there, even down to the human indentation in the bed. It shows the extent to which Norman tried to keep his mother alive in his head. Sam’s pressuring about Marion, the PI, and the mother results in Norman temporarily knocking Sam out. Norman goes to the house, and Lila heads to the fruit cellar where Norman carried his mom (“Do you think I’m fruity?” we heard her say to her son – we’d have to give a big “yes” to that one). It is an appropriate place to put his mother. In Gothic stories, there are subterranean passages, because physically, and psychologically, scary actions are hidden from the literal and figurative light of revelation. Lila sees the shape of “mother” sitting in a chair, clothed in a dress. When Lila spins her around, the audience sees mother’s corpse, with empty eye sockets. Lila, recoiling in horror, screams. We hear the slashing Herrmann music, and she hits the hanging light bulb. The movement of the light on the dead woman’s face makes it appear as if the eyes are blinking, alive, which they are to Norman. Bates appears dressed in his mother’s clothes, wearing a wig, wielding a knife. Sam stops him from duplicating the deed on Marion’s sister.

At the police station, the psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) provides what many have said is an overlong, obvious analysis of Norman’s mental illness. He does inform us that it was Norman who killed his mother and her lover. The horrible crime of matricide was too much for the son to bear, and that is why he had to keep his mother alive to escape facing the guilt of his terrible crime. We last see Norman, talking in his mother’s voice, looking motherly as he/she shrouds himself/herself in a blanket. Her internal voice says it was Norman who is the monster, not her. She won’t even harm the fly which has landed on her hand. Norman then stares sinisterly into the camera, as his mother’s skeletal face is briefly superimposed onto his. The last image is that of chains pulling Marion’s car out of the swamp, as if resurrecting the unspeakable acts thought buried forever.

In the end, Norman can represent our reflection as we look at him in the last scene, the way we would look at a mirror. When we really look ourselves what do we see?

Next week’s movie is Repulsion.