MovieChat Forums > Suddenly, Last Summer Discussion > Why is this movie so hard for people to ...

Why is this movie so hard for people to understand?

posted 15 years ago by ec1979
32 replies | jump to latest

It's not THAT complicated, if a little indirect.

Sebastian isn't just gay, that's only part of why his story is so "scandalous": he's also a sadist (turtles on the beach) and a pervert (or pedophile, as the implication is that he sexually exploits teens and pre-teens). Sebastian lures these starving boys under duress, with the promise of money (he throws money at them outside the bath houses). A lot of this is implied through of the artistry of the film and because of the era it was made. You could argue that the boys don't look young and that there was nothing sinister about these escapades, but the film implies that there was. Sebastian clearly has a dark side, he exploits poverty-stricken boys and Catherine, whom they are initially attracted to.

At the restaurant, Sebastian is made uncomfortable by the boys begging and trying to entertain him with music. He knows they recognize him, his secret life is made more obvious, or perhaps he feels guilty. They attack him, probably initially looking for food, and probably because of what he's done to them, they kill him. They eat him because they are so hungry for food. Cannibalism in impoverished societies is not that uncommon throughout history, and evidence suggests it may even be going on today in North Korea. Catherine isn't crazy, she's traumatized by the unspeakable act she's witnessed...people don't believe something so awful could happen, so they don't believe her. Her aunt is in denial because she wants to preserve Sebastian's legacy and she doesn't want to see that Sebastian had rejected her and was just using her too.

Sebastian is literally devoured by the people whom he devoured sexually (you could argue he devoured their innocence). This is the theme of the story: turtles being devoured, the Venus Fly Trap. The story is great because it presents a taboo subject in a completely unexpected way, with a twist ending.

[–] MovieHunger 15 years ago

People find this hard to understand?

[–] ec1979 15 years ago

Look at the other postings on this board...people are baffled.

[–] ManicMuse 15 years ago

yes it can be hard to understand, and your explanation doesn't necessarily help. everything is vague, until her over the top explanation at the end. doc has the hots for his patient. mom ends up coo coo for cocoa puffs. it's all pretty over the top . why pretend that this is a simply told story? i found myself scratching my head several times, not because i did not understand what was happening, but because I DID.

"WHO'S ON TOP & WHO'S ON BOTTOM NOW, huh?! WHO'S ON TOP & WHO'S ON BOTTOM NOW!"

[–] ec1979 14 years ago

It's not that it's simply told, it's that people seem to NEED it to be simply told. Few people have the ability to analyze anymore. Like a good book, good movies require the intellectual ability of deductive reasoning. People need to be beaten over the head nowadays. This country is getting dumber.

[–] ffordegroupie 10 years ago

What country? You're assuming that everybody here is American, very centric of you.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] MADDOXRJM 9 years ago

ec1979, You hit the nail squarely on the head with your post.

[–] LetThemEatCake01 8 years ago

Get over your fvking self, this movie is easy to understand and it is NOT convoluted, good stories tell things SIMPLY AND STRAIGHT TO THE POINT, usually stories told as a rat maze are a front for insurmountable mediocrity, and it seems that's what you're into, well, wrong film buddy because Suddenly Last Summer is complex for its THEMES, but it's as straightforward as it comes and that makes it good.

[–] ec1979 8 years ago

Um, you're basically agreeing with me.

[–] LetThemEatCake01 8 years ago

No I'm not, you're saying that people need things to be spelled out for them as if that is something bad. Making a rubix cube movie is NOT storytelling, and while there are a lot of movies that are good and their presentation is incredibly complex, most films that use this "gimmick" do so because they are hiding the fact that they really have no story to tell.

[–] ec1979 8 years ago

I'm saying that it's sad how unanalytical the average person has become that they cannot see a movie like "Suddenly, Last Summer" without being confused. It's not a gimmick; this movie was not considered complicated when it came out, but people were smarter then. It's not a confusing movie. Yes, it uses symbolism and allegory. They used to teach that in schools. Now movies are dumbed-down for people. And you don't have to throw insults at me.

[–] cts-6 13 years ago

You have to remember that in 1959 the Motion Picture Production Code was still in force and still as repressive as it ever was. Many of the themes that Tennessee Williams wrote into his plays were forbidden in Hollywood movies. Over the years the writing departments at the studios had developed several euphemistic shorthand images and phrases that they hoped would convey to audiences certain themes that were taboo back then but would be openly discussed in today's movies and TV shows.

For instance, in A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche's dead husband had been gay. In the play, his relationship with other men was openly discussed. In the 1951 movie, Blanche summed it all up in one sentence: "He was weak." There are other examples of this sort of shorthand.

In 1953, when Lucille Ball was pregnant, they weren't allowed to portray pregnancy on TV or in the movies. When her baby bump could no longer be hidden and they were forced to write it into the plot of I Love Lucy, CBS went into a panic. No pregnant woman had ever appeared onscreen in America before. Ever. Yet there was no way they could afford to put TV's number one show on hiatus. So they consulted with various clergymen and others who sought to preserve so-called community standards. In the end they decided that the baby bump was acceptable as long as it wasn't emphasized, and it was OK to say that Lucy Ricardo was "expecting" but not "pregnant."

At the beginning of the 1939 movie Stagecoach, as the passengers are boarding the stagecoach, several middle-aged women are there to help a cavalryman's wife aboard. Louise Platt was not pregnant at the time, but her character was. Since the Production Code prohibited the showing of a baby bump, the writers created this scene with the women doting on her and talking about her "condition" to indicate to the audience that she was pregnant.

In Sunset Boulevard, there is a scene where Norma Desmond is recovering from a suicide attempt. Up to this moment she has walked around as if she was in a permanent clench. Joe goes to see her in her bedroom to talk to her. As he's about to leave, she hooks her hand around his neck and pulls him down to her. There is a fadeout and in the next scene she is laying next to the pool, quite relaxed. Joe is in the process of moving his things into the main house. I was in an upper division college movie class twenty years ago, and even back then the students didn't get that this meant that they had had sex and were now cohabitating lovers. And some of them didn't believe it even after it was explained to them.

These are the types of shorthand techniques that ec1979 is alluding to. Many of these shorthand devices seem vague to us today because hot-button topics that were once taboo for TV and movies are now discussed openly. Most moviegoers have lost the ability to understand these old writing tricks because Hollywood writers no longer need to hide messages within euphemisms as they did in 1959.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] singjohn 8 years ago

I love this explanation. The innuendos in SLS are obvious to me but I have learned how to decipher the "shorthand".

[–] jcravens42 14 years ago

I think the movie makes people uncomfortable. And it should! But to get it, to understand it, you have to identify with it on *some* level -- about family secrets, about family power dynamics, about black sheep, about loving someone who engages in despicable behavior... and a lot of people just aren't ready to do that. To understand this movie, you have to accept the fact that the greatest harm, the greatest violence, is perpetuated by family members upon family members, not from strangers, and that's another thing many people aren't ready to think about, let alone watch a movie about. I think people that don't get this movie can't accept that these kinds of things really do happen within some families, and can't face their own families eccentricities (let alone their sins). So they watch this movie and say, "That's just too out there, that's over-the-top, it's not based in reality, and I'm so glad to come from a family that has no skeletons in the closet and no strange behavior of any kind."

[–] netshopper-2 14 years ago

Oh, I don't know. Most people can acknowledge dysfunction in every family exists. It is quite a leap to the plot of this film which is much more than closeted homosexuality. Perhaps if the Breen Code was not so restrictive, the story could have been told with less bizarre symbolism.

[–] sjintexas 13 years ago

there is no way your family doesnt have secrets or the so called skeletons in their closet. EVERYONE does.Everyone has secrets . everyone has strange behaviour. maybe yours are not clinically strange or psychotic. but to have your so called. "perfect family" in itself is STRANGE!.

[–] mfd1213 14 years ago

I'm not sure that Sebastian was a sadist. I think the turtles on the beach was a foreshadowing revelation that there was no mercy in nature. His garden and the Venus Flytrap being fed by the staff suggest an appetite being sated while living in a protective bubble. Some actions lead inevitably to self destruction. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sebastian) describes the St Sebastain/Mann image:

"In his novella Death in Venice, Thomas Mann hails the "Sebastian-Figure" as the supreme emblem of Apollonian beauty, that is, the artistry of differentiated forms, beauty as measured by discipline, proportion, and luminous distinctions. This allusion to Saint Sebastian's suffering, associated with the writerly professionalism of the novella's protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, provides a model for the "heroism born of weakness", which characterizes poise amidst agonizing torment and plain acceptance of one's fate as, beyond mere patience and passivity, a stylized achievement and artistic triumph.

Sebastian's controling, self-centered sexuality was turned on him after the hunted (youth) became the hunters (chasing Sebastian for more than he would offer.)I think he knew he had stirred up something bigger than he could control, that's why he wanted to flee to Scandanavia (turtles to the sea) for the blondes. There were too many of hunters (slings and arrows)and he had no avenue of escape.

[–] ec1979 14 years ago

I still think Sebastian was a sadist because, while the sea turtles were foreshadowing, the fact is that he definately felt pleasure watching them suffer and die.

[–] ciprianl 9 years ago

The cruelty of nature was also a favorite theme of the Marquis de Sade.

[–] stratis1 14 years ago

ec1979, you got it all wrong. This was not a murder....it was an act of performance art, orchestrated by Sebastian.

"My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer."

Both Sebastian and his mother spent time in Tibet, where no doubt, they would have become familiar with the Tibetan Sky Burial, which is basically what happens to Sebastian (although, of course, the birds become the boys in his performance).

[–] ec1979 14 years ago

Performance art??? Uh, ok...don't think so.

[–] Strings101 13 years ago

Uh, err, umm... I think what you're saying is that you are TOTALLY unfamiliar with the works of T. Williams, and the violence always woven into his homo-eroticism.

There was not a single insignificant line spoken in this movie/play, and Sebastian's demise was highly symbolic, and indeed, performance art... (though I'm not sure that particular phrase was in vogue, circa 1959)...

[–] ec1979 13 years ago

Sebastian orchestrated his own death as a form of performance art? I think that's a bit of stretch and I saw no evidence of that in the movie. I've also never read any discussions of the film that mention such a motive. But it's a free country, you can think what you want.

[–] 13 years ago

[deleted]

[–] miriamwebster 12 years ago

Because, as presented in movie, basic premise doesn't make any logical sense. Flip flop story line and say Sebastian was a repressed lesbian instead of a young gay male. Would anyone would have believed that her aged father or handsome young cousin could/would have lured young females. . .who they'd then turn over to the sapphic daughter/cousin? Ludicrous! But it was heyday of Tennessee Williams so there you have it.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] bridget393 11 years ago

You provide an excellent characerization of Sebastian and analysis of the film, ec1979. Spot on!

[–] lige-george1 10 years ago

I recently watched this film on GET TV. Thank you for your incite-full thoughts on a movie that was made before my time. I find it remarkable that is moviews made in 1959 and your comments which ive just read were made 5 yrs ago. The internet is a truly incredible tool.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]