Quit typing from your phone,
@europe1. No one understands what you're saying
I'm pumped to write about this, so gather round yonder hearth children because it's time to spin some tales.
Closer is a film that is predicated on a few assumptions about people and the relationships they create with one another. First: people are complex, and have multifaceted desires. Second: these various desires often conflict and demand contradictory behaviours, and three: every person depends on other people for satisfaction and to help forge a more complete sense of self.
The straightforward conclusion to draw from these is that people will naturally be compelled to form different relationships that cannot co-exist, and will be deeply affected by the dilemmas that emerge, which is what we see in the film. I find these assumptions refreshingly realistic, but if you don't and you are uncompromising in your disagreement this will be your first speed bump when it comes to digesting the film.
They can co-exist, if one can control their sexual urges (granted, that's not always possible) but I agree they will be deeply affected by the dilemmas, unless they're just a heartless horny brute (and plenty of them exist)
I'm not sure if Alice was deeply affected by the dilemma though. She was mainly affected by her partners inability to trust and love her. Often teens and adutls who were abused/neglected as children desperately want to be loved, to make them feel like more than an object. It can cause them a world of problems.
Did any of the characters have connections with their parents? i think Alice was definitely traumatized during her youth, they all might have been in one way or another.
As a sort of methodological aside, any film study group should be able to analyze a film without thrusting their own morality upon it, and not being able to effectively manage that emotional distance is another hazard to watch out for here. However I won't say we should remove subjectivity from the discussion completely, because (i) the bulk of my film criticism in general is subjective in nature, since I know little about the craft as a whole, and (ii) this film demands an emotional reaction that depends on some personal investment in the characters and the events that unfold between them. So maybe tread carefully and observe from a distance before jumping right in with the judgment and whatnot.
The way we judge things are shaped by our political and spiritual views. Even if you try and remove your politics, morals, and personal opinions, if you speak honestly about the movie then your political or spiritual opinion will be transparent, based on how you received the film. For example, if someone loves the transformers movies then they're probably not into science very much.
You can't always gauge people's beliefs from their opinions but often you can.
The first thing I'm going to do is give a very brief breakdown of each character, and then I'll go through the film as it's presented to describe how the interactions between them unfold. There are very important pairings to make here but also some characteristics unique to each character.
Dan - a native Brit, Dan locks eyes with Alice in the first scene of the film to get the whole train moving. He's an aspiring writer who makes a living writing obituaries, sometimes even for people who are still alive. He is clever and sensitive, and his communication style is playful, witty, and expressive. He's naively romantic, though not unwilling to act against the interests of his current partner (remember when he first becomes interested in Alice he's already dating a girl named Ruth). He's very good with words and perhaps better acquainted with his world of linguistic abstraction than with the more base human motivations. Dan loves Alice because she is cute and simple and loves Anna because in her he recognizes a more familiar emotional complexity.
It seemed to me that Dan was all about "love at first sight". He fell in love with Alice instantly, just from looking at her. For the most part it was the same Anna, they barely talked and he was obsessed with her that was (loudly) insisting that Anna see him again, while Alice was in the bathroom a few feet away. He knew how to say all the right things but he didn't really believe them, he was just obsessive that way, he saw a girl he liked and he was going to try and get her, no matter what.
He said Alice was great and he loved her, he didn't have anything bad to say about her, he just loved Anna also, and she was new, and the cheating aspect made the sex hotter, there was a thrill to it, like fucking in public. People who fall in love at first sight always have problems, because they love so many people they can never decide and are always unhappy about their partners.
Alice - an American hailing from New York, Alice tells Dan that she left America because of problems with a "male". More than any other character Alice gives the impression that she's been hurt in the past, possibly traumatized, and her personality acts largely as a shield against those deeper wounds. Her youth is attractive but keeps her from a certain sophistication, which manifests as very black-and-white relationship commitments: she's either with you or against you. As a stripper she's been exposed to a darker side of humanity, but she's comfortable in that darkness and refuses to be shamed for her participation in its activities. Her insecurity keeps her hyper-attuned to the body language and intentions of others, and she's not afraid to use that knowledge against them as she enters and exits their personal lives and spaces. She loves Dan because he represents a brighter ideal of partnership that she prefers but doesn't really believe in, and she recognizes Larry's struggle to deal with his own brutish nature.
Good observations on all the characters, here's my take (which I covered a bit at the start of this post)
I think Alice was neglected or abused as a child, and as a result she seeks total commitment and love from her partners. She doesn't like to socialize, she just wants to be with him and no one else. She craves the devotion and love that she never received from her parents as a child.
Originally Alice liked Dan, but after she saw how quickly he was willing to get over his wife, she realized he was too cold and calculating for her, he would never be able to love her blindly, which is what she needed.
Anna - another American, Anna is a photographer whose art exhibit is one of the key settings of the film. She's a divorcee who expresses a profound maturity on the surface that extends from a deeper sadness, perhaps a depression. Her artwork puts this sadness in the faces of others on display and makes them beautiful, as hers undeniably is. She expresses her own desires probably the least of any of the four characters, but gets caught having to choose between Dan and Larry. She loves Dan because of his intelligence and sensitivity and she accepts Larry for his straightforwardness and effort.
Anna was the toughest cookie to crack. That statement implies I was able to crack said cookie, but I'm not sure I was able to.
I think she was your typical "desperate housewife" case. She lived through her art, but artists always want more, and they're always troubled inside. Their art comes from their soul, and is therefore representative of their inner most desires and passions. This is why you can often tell a lot about people by their musical tastes.
Larry - a Brit like Dan, Larry is a dermatologist who moves into his own private practice through the course of the film. As a medical professional Larry is clearly financially and intellectually adept, but his language betrays a subtle compensation - he's trained himself to live in the higher world and is not a natural denizen as are Anna and Dan (this is revealed when Anna calls him out for his middle class guilt and he corrects her - working class!) As a natural member of the lower order Larry finds himself uncomfortably in touch with his baser sexual and violent instincts, but employs this familiarity to better channel that energy toward his own interests. As a raw cynic he pairs well with Alice, but the self-loathing he has for this part of himself causes him to see Anna as a saviour who can raise him up by accepting his affection.
To become a doctor one has to go through years and years of intense schooling. The devote their youth to education. For all their intelligence they're still often unable to relate to regular people after all that. They think in clinical terms, they have to block out their emotions to do their job properly. In doing so they must be losing some of their humanity.
Anna told Dan that she was staying with Larry out of guilt. Larry said Anna likes being miserable... She's the tortured artist, if she's happy then she can't create her art. She craves misery because it fuels her desire to be an artist. She's caught between rebelling against society and giving in to it's charms. Dan writes "propaganda", she's an artist. Their attraction was purely physical.
I think the artist in her was attracted to Dan's passion for love and life maybe, or maybe she was just bored and lonely and desperate for the naive devotion that only a younger man can provide. I meet lonely neglected housewifes everyday, they love getting attention from younger men, even the ones who would never cheat on their husband. It just makes them feel young again. Any decent looking teenager/young girl gets hit on a lot and they get used to it, when their looks fade they miss that attention.
Dan was too comfortable, he didn't even suspect she was cheating until the day when she was acting weird because she was about to tell him. He just trusted her and took her for granted... or maybe I'm wrong and he did suspect she was cheating, which would be worse in her eyes because it would meant he doesn't care, he just doesn't want to be alone.
Perhaps she stayed with him out of guilt, perhaps she was attracted to his misery for the same reason that she likes to photographs miserable people. It speaks to her. I've known several girls who gave guys pity dates/sex and then just end up stuck with them, they miss the romance but they like the power it gives them over the desperate ones. Dan would've broken her heart when he got bored and met someone new that he would instantly fall in love with and need. Larry was the safe choice, Larry wasn't going to leave her, no matter what, he represented safety and comfort to her maybe.
Now here are some pairings: Larry and Alice are cynical and physical, while Dan and Anna are artistic and romantic. Larry and Dan are men and concerned with competing over physicality, while Anna and Alice are concerned themselves more with issues of emotional commitment. Dan and Larry are Brits, Alice and Anna Americans.
Why do you consider Larry to be physical, wasn't Dan the one who slapped Alice? Larry was outraged that the women thought he was going to hit them.
I didn't consider Dan to be artistic either, I'm pretty sure he said he was taught how to change the wording around in the articles. He could follow orders, but what indication was there that he was artistic or even of high intelligence. I thought he was just a naive, foolish, but confident and attractive young guy who was thinking with his dick. I suppose he did know how to charm the ladies well, but was this a sign of intelligence or was it some kind of moral deficiency? I can go tell a lonely woman that she's the most important person in the world to me and that I can't live without her, and get lucky, but it would be dishonest and mean, I have too big of a heart to do that to them. Dan didn't mourn Anna for long, he was more than happy to go back to Alice, he just wanted to be with someone who turned him on.
Larry was able to understand people on a deeper level. He raped Dan's mind and ruined his relationship with Alice.
I think when Larry told Anna off he was making her understand why she wanted Dan. Because the sex was more passionate. He made her realize that their relationship was hollow, and he would leave her once he got bored of fucking her. I don't think Dan even realized what he was doing, he couldn't control himself. Dan's emotional outlook on life made him attractive in the short run, but the brighter you burn, the sooner you burn out, right. He wasn't the kind of guy you settle down with to raise a family. It could've been disastrous for Anna had she not gone back to Dan.
Anna had to lie about the divorce papers. She didn't trust Dan, she did trust Larry.
I think the message was you can be a young stud and get laid, but the real way to a woman's heart is to earn her trust, which can usually only be achieved with honesty.
