(Spoiler) When their child died, it was discovered when their daughter walked in on both parents surrounded by their child in a tub of hot bath water. So my question was did the parents killed the baby by boiling it because it was too sick to survive or did it just appear that way?
shareThe child was suffering from convulsions, which make the baby run a high fever. I know because when I was a child (born in '59) I had convulsions, too. You have to immerse the child in a bath of ice cold water to bring the fever down, and then once the fever has broke you use a warm bath to bring their body temperature back up. I just saw this movie today for the first time and was surprised that it was so simple and yet so good. I only caught the last half of it, so I'm putting it on my watch list. I loved Rip Torn and Conchata Ferrell, as always, doesn't disappoint, either. It reminded me of movies the way they used to be made, and watched.
shareI believe the scene depicted it the movie was of the parents preparing the body for burial since the baby's face was partialy submerged. The steam coming off the water was because the room was so cold not because the water was boiling. There were no undertakers and familys were left to cleanse and dress the body. They even had to dig a grave and make a coffin if one was used. I was surprised to see there was a hole dug. The ground would have been too frozen to be able to dig. The body would have been stored until spring when the ground was thawed enough to dig into. The hole was also not deep enough. Critters would have smelled the rotting flesh and dug it up. As to the earlier burial of a man by a stream, that would not have happened. You can not bury a body that close to a water source; this would have polluted the stream and spread disease!
shareExcellent perspective, gadance! I doubt the ground would have been warm enough to dig during that point in winter.
Regardless, I found the death of the child and the burial very powerful. Death – including that of children – is a popular topic in films, but it is rarely portrayed as honestly and searingly as it was here. The mother's reaction at the clothesline was positively grueling. It was clear she had been holding in her pain, and she had to let it out at that point.
I don't think anyone anywhere ever boiled their baby because it was sick. When I think of this wonderful movie, that is the scene that was the most emotional for me. To try and nurse your newborn back to health and then have to face its death was just so terribly sad. And of course with no one else around, it would be your job to bath your child and ready it for burial. But the birth of the calf at the end showed that life goes on and I think the way she smiled at her husband showed that they would endure.
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