Was it Marc or the boy? This is also a lovely aspect of this film - you really don't know!
P.S. I think it was Marc...
It was Marc
shareit was probably marc...I know boy did submitted the jar with poison when he turned himself in to the police...BUT, in his letter, Marc says that the irony behind the series of events was that his son was killed by a man(Paul) who was in turn killed by his own son (phillipe)...
shareI think it was the boy, but Marc felt responsable because the boy completed what was supposed to be Marc's murder. This would lead to the boy's "life being ruined" as the cop says, which can be interpreted as him figuratively dying. Since the boy looked up to Marc as a positive alternative for a father figure, Marc did not want to have his "second" son's life also be destroyed, and so he assumed the responsability.
Also, this displays the psychanalytic cocept of 'Versagung', which is the reninciation of sacrifice. Marc made the sacrifice for the boy by claiming responability for the murder, but (aside from the boy who knows the truth) he can not take credit for his sacrifice for that would discredit the sacrifice itself. So, in order for his sacrifice to function (getting his vengence AND saving the boy), Marc must renounce the sacrifice as he does in the letter to Helen, making him guilty, assuming he will be pursued by the cops and letting his life be ruined.
Admittedly, the ambiguity is what makes this film interesting and I am not going to insist on a single, empirical, hard conclusion. The father-son relationships are incredibly mirrored (faithfully, parodically, inversely), desire is mediated, traded, compromised in many intersting ways, and the overall nature of the storytelling's blurring between diagetic (telling) and mimetic (showing) is quite intriguing. What I mean by that is explicit in the diary: if Marc was truly writing his thoughts for himself (and the audience), not wanting it to be discovered, we have a proper diegesis; but if the diary was a ploy, meant to be discovered, it shifts the perspective to a much more mimetic one. Well done.
I think it was Marc.
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Did any of you watch the film? 100% it was Philip, the son. Marc/Charles was out on his @$$ and not able to poison the medicine as his drowning plan had just fell through. Philip found the rat poison in the basement, where was Marc going to get it from? He stayed quite when Philip confessed because he wasn't guilty but changed his mind as he felt a fatherly love for Philip, a replacement for his own son.
shareSPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Philip killed his father.
But he could have put the poison in there earlier. If Philip did it, then why did Marc/Charles say in the restaurant, BEFORE the news came on, that Paul would soon die a horrible death?
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IMO it's impossible to be sure about who did it. That's the point.
First I thought the kid did it and that Marc/Charles blamed himself in order to save the boy. But later, when Charles (Michel Duchaussoy) says at the end of the movie that not only the "beast" must die but also the "man" if he's the same person, and then proceeds to commit an apparent suicide... I wasn't sure anymore.
Choose either option: The son, or Marc/Charles. Or remain in doubt, as many of us are.
Anyway something I have no doubt about, is the fact that 'Que la bête meure' is among Chabrol's finest films.
9/10
There is one reason that leads me to assume Marc did it: when he's having a meal with Helen after the botched murder attempt, as soon as the the TV news announce that someone has died, Marc interrupts their talk, as if he were expecting these news.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
I am sure that Phillippe was the murderer.
Maybe Charles gave suggestions to Phillippe, they were talking and spending a lot of time together. Charles was analyzing Iliad and the Odyssey for Phillipe, but I don't remember that a son murdered his own father in any of the poems.
Phillippe was desperate for love and attention and he could have easily been influenced. He already stated that he wants to kill his own father and Charles only told him that he want's to kill Paul.
At the end, Charles felt sorry for the boy because he already lost a son, so he took the blame.
I have to agree with those who said it was the son. He took initiative in confessing, so he took the initiative in the deed.
I think it was very obvious. It's why Marc had to make a final exit. His final exit is the real clue here. To be honest, even jail wouldn't be as scary as a watery grave, perhaps a slower death than he would plan. So if Marc was the killer, he would know what to say to save the boy.
However, if Marc wasn't the killer, he would have no idea as to the details about the poison, the where and when and how. Careful cross examination over facts only the killer would know. That's why his final exit was only needed if he was innocent.
Don't make a habit of saying that too often, and once more will be too often
They both did it together.
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