She is, IMHO, one of the most tragic characters in cinema. She is a wonderful young lady who has no clue what is going on and doesn't even come close to deserving what happens to her. The only thing she is guilty of is being the daughter of an uncommonly honest politician. The last thing she ever sees is the man she loves putting a bullet in her father's brain and then turning the gun on her.
The louder UFO "debunkers" argue the more terrified they are it's all true.
Well said. I cannot even imagine what went through her mond as she turned at the bottom of the staircase and saw the unthinkable.
In the novel there is a touching moment after Raymond leaves the house and gets into a car driven by Chunjin. His anguish is so profound, that Chunjin knocks him out bring him momentary peace.
There is a lot of symbolism in this movie. Just one, since someone mentioned it is about the very morally upright senator Jose's father as he is in the kitchen pouring himself a glass if milk as Raymond walks in. He talks to Raymond and the bullet goes straight through the glass of milk into his chest, killing him instantly. This could be seen as an act of " spilling the milk of human kindness" I'll leave the symbolism of Lincoln being in almost every scene of Raymond's mother and stupid stepfather to someone else.
shareThis is in many ways, the most important scene in the movie -- the "core" that brings things together and drives the ending.
Raymond Shaw, the cold man and brainwashed killer, has found love with a sweet and giving young woman. She can save him. And then his own evil mother sends Raymond to kill the bride's father. But the woman is there, too, and he kills her automatically(this possiblility was planted early on with the Chinese handler who told someone, "Raymond must kill any witness.")
For his part, Sinatra's Bennett Marco will be wracked by guilt: he bowed to the wishes of the young bride and allowed the two to go on a honeymoon BEFORE turning Shaw in for "deprogramming." And this happened. (Its a great scene when Sinatra comes home to Janet Leigh with the newspaper about the deaths of the Senator and his daughter, and says "Raymond Shaw killed his wife and her father," and Leigh says, "...but it doesn't say...." Sinatra knows.
The mix of great horror and great sadness inherent in Raymond's "automatic" killing of his beloved bride is key to the mixed moods of The Manchurian Candidate. There is dark satiric humor in the film, but at heart it is a horror movie with a heartfelt tragedy at the core(the film's main title theme conveys this -- Mean Raymond Shaw will be a sympathetic character near the end.)
This scene plays out in the climax. Raymond Shaw kills his evil mother and stepfather, not the intended political target. "You couldn't have stopped them, the Army couldn't have stopped them," Shaw tells Marco before turning the gun on himself.
And we can figure....killing his beloved wife...even MORE than Frank Sinatra's deprogramming techniques(all those Queens) is what likely broke the brainwashing and returned Raymond Shaw to decency.
And vengeance.
CONT
I might add that The Manchurian Candidate followed another Janet Leigh film, Psycho, by two years, and rather continued the shock of that film: nice people -- men and women alike -- get killed in both movies, the Hays Code assurances that good people WON'T die started to come undone as the 60's got underway at the movies. It made for cruel, tragic stories even if.in Psycho and The Manchurian Candidate, the bad guys are finally defeated at the end(it would take to the 70's for the bad guys to start winning.)