How could any woman not remember what her husband looks, sounds and smells like? I could not believe in an instant that a man could take the place of a woman's husband and not be found out within minutes of his arrival. And then, upon the discovery. . actually accept him as her new spouse! What a bunch of horse *beep*. Totally ridiculous concept that never should have left the script page.
shareThere are different ways to interpret this movie.
I also find it unrealistic that Laurel would really think the Richard Gere character is her real husband, so I think she knew right away from the beginning that he's an imposter, but decides to accept him after seeing what a loving husband and father he is. Finally she falls in love with him.
In this context the movie puts a new light on what love is and how love makes you take insane decisions.
I agree that Laurel must have known it wan't her husband, if not at first sight certainly after a few minutes around him. I go along with the idea that she 'wanted' it to be him.
shareArmin: [clears throat] Hello, I'm, uh...[sighs] I'm...
Agnes: Seymour? Is that you?
Armin: [narrating] I don't know why I did what I did. I guess I couldn't
bear to tell her about her son. What I did was wrong, but... I'd
do it again.
Armin: Yes, Mother, it's me!
Agnes: You look different somehow...but you must be Seymour. Yes.
You are Seymour!
Armin: [narrating] As strange as it sounds, deep down I think she knew I
wasn't her son, but a lie made us both happier than the truth ever
could have.
Agnes: You can have some lima beans as soon as you've cleaned your room.
Go! [whispering] Upstairs. Third door on the left. [shouting]
Don't walk on the rugs!
Armin: Yes... Mother.
great reference sceptrel, well done.
shareCan you please tell me how it ended, I got up to where he was walking out to be hanged
share
He was standing under the hangmans noose, but he was upset that Laurel wasn't there so he cried out for her and she appeared then they put the bag over his face, you don't see it but he was hanged- next you see the townsfolk rebuilding there lives and the church gaining a new spire and Laurel tending to his grave that was it.
Of course she knew it wasn't him, like she said in court her real husband although he looked like him was a bastard and never loved her, this man was kind and considerate plus he was obviously a better lover judging from the sex scene in which cries because it is her first orgasm, her real husband was a drunkard and seduced her when drunk got her pregnant then dumped her in a way. so this new " Husband " was the one she always wanted and it didnt matter to her who he was she loved him and that is what the film is supposed to say that it doesn't matter what you do or have done in the past, love conquers all.
shareThe wife not recognising her returning husband as an imposter is not as preposterous as it sounds. It might be helpful to keep in mind that this movie is based on the film "The Return of Martin Guerre." This was in turn based on actual events from sixteenth century France. Legal papers and the accounts of the judge in the case record the trial of the imposter. The story was so compelling it attained mythic status. For an excellent and scholarly retelling, I recommend the book "The Return of Martin Guerre," written by a historian attached to the film of the same name.
shareAs she was shaving him, also, she has the blade to his throat, saying that he could have been the least bit kinder before... Giving him the chance to say he wasn't her real husband, so she wouldn't slit his throat for the man she obviously still bears hurt feelings for..??
shareI thought he was her husband because at the end she said "I always knew it was you" which I interpreted as her saying that he was her husband.
shareShe said in court a wife knows her husband in bed....im guessing his shoe size was not the only thing different. She knew the first time he laid the pipe to her that he was not her husband.
shareok let's get the facts right. He WAS the real Sommersby; do you guys not think that 7 years in a war would not change you, and make you grateful for what you have got!!??
Indded, he was her real husband, and indeed he was Sommersby, that is why he had the pride to fight for his name in court and subsequently resign to death.
For me, the evidence is too strong that he is the real guy, yet i am not narrow minded, an do see ( and indeed relate ) to arguments against his claim of 'sommersbyness' !!
So you watched it on BBC 1 too?
sharethat's what I thought. He convinced her at the end with that story that he was in fact the real Sommersby.
share[deleted]
He was not Sommersby. He fought for the Sommersby name because it was a better name than the one he had. Remember what that guy on the witness stand said about Horace? True, Sommersby may have been an a** before he went off to war, but was a "new" man on his return. That "new" man was the one everyone looked up to to help rebuild their town and lives. He's probably going to be tried (or at least hunted down) as Horace for all his wrongdoings - why not go out the man everyone admired?
Don't know........those are my thoughts on it.
He simply was not the real husband. There is no debate. Again, this movie is based on a true story from medieval France. See "The Return of Martin Guerre." What is open to debate is whether Guerre's, or in this case Sommersby's, wife was complicit in the deception or not. On that account we may never know the answer.
shareHe was Horace Townsend. I believe he states at the end when in the room with Laurel that he was in a jail cell with Jack Sommersby because he looked so much like him that there was confusion. Thats how he knew the things he knew about Jack. Then I believe he says that the night they killed Conklin, Jack also was killed and he buried Jack, but made people believe that it was Horace that had died. Thus, made people believe that he was Jack.
He fought so hard in the court to be Jack Sommersby because Horace Townsend was a traitor and people would be out looking for him anyway, and he didn't want that. This is not that hard to understand people lol. She knew from the beginning. If you watch the movie it's pretty easy to tell. And at the end she says that, "I always knew it was you.." because thats what Horace wanted to hear to make the hanging easier.
He didn't know who his best friend was, Ham Sawyer. I don't care how much you have been through, you wouldn't forget your best friend who died, maybe at 106 years old you would, but come'on...
The part with the worms on the crops, and Orin helps him is the part im talking about, watch that part again, people tend to forget about it but that is pretty important. That whole part proves that he is not the real Jack.
[deleted]
I don't think he was the real Sommersby and that he fought for his name in court because he didn't want the townspeople to lose their land (Sommersby had to have signed the tile deeds to make them legal) and also he didn't want his daughter to be classed as illigitmate. I think it was the most unselfish thing anyone could have done.
If you watch the court case part again you will see (after he fired his lawyer) that that was what he was trying to get his wife to understand.
Thats how I see it anyway..
ok let's get the facts right. He WAS the real Sommersby; do you guys not think that 7 years in a war would not change you, and make you grateful for what you have got!!??
Hey pea-brain, this isn't an Agatha Christie plot. The whole premise of the film is that he is NOT Sommersby.
JEEZUS H F ING CHRIST.
Listen to d16call, this isn't as unrealistic as you'd believe - due simply to the fact that it's based on real-life - to which there is no fiction stranger. Watching this interpretation of the real-life events makes it difficult to believe the story, but you can probably appreciate that two people can look more alike then the cast (Gere & Pullman) here.
The real-life focus, which really doesn't get any coverage in the film, was the question of complicity on the wifes part. Martin Guerre wasn't necessarily the awful husband Pullman is depicted as - but Arnaud and Gere are similar in the sense that the wife fell in love with them. This is the reason suspicion hangs over here part in the whole debacle.
I can understand why this 'American' movie is brought slightly more up to date (American Civil War) but unfortunately, I think in doing so, they are applying a different social model with obviously contemporary ideas which is the reason this interpretation is so far-fetched from the real-life event.
2¢
Did you even watch the movie? Pullman was not portrayed as the real husband.
shareI liked the movie just the same. I got that he was not the real Sommersby otherwise the premise of the movie makes no sense.
Laurel did say she did not love her husband and she did grow to love this man.
I hated the end of the movie, though I liked the rest of it. I think they want us to keep guessing the truth. There are too many things that contradict themselves. The shoe size change says he's really Horace, but I think Laurel believed him to be her husband because she told him if he had been the least little bit kind when she had the knife to his throat. Yes, there is the part where Orin told him about how he could forget his best friend, Ham Sawyer. But he was willing to die with the honor that said he was who he said he was, he refused to say he was Horace to save his own neck even though Laurel begged him to say he was. The end makes me cry. I think they just want to keep us guessing so people will argue for years about the truth! And she says that he isn't in court because she is doing for him what he refuses to do and that's try and save his life. I think he came back from the war a better man, realizing that he was a tyrant and after seeing so much death and suffering he was better and appreciated what he had before. He seems to know certain things and yet not others.
share.....
It is pretty much stated in the film she knew it was not him.
She let herself believe it was.
I think she says "I knew it was you ... It was you all along" not because she wants to make it easier on him or because she now really believes that he is Jack but because she loves him. It like saying you are the one I love and I knew it the moment I saw you, no matter who you really are.
Also, in court when he asks her if he's her husband, she says yes because in a way he is ... the love they share, their daughter, the love he has for her son make her more of a husband the the real Sommersby who was a a-hole.
ask the spokesperson, I don't have a brain
*sigh*
The line that's got some of you confused goes like this:
"I always knew... from the very first moment I saw you... and it was always you I loved."
Meaning:
"I always knew you were someone other than my husband. I loved you for YOU, not for who you pretended to be."
There was no confusion. She knew from the start that the man who came home was NOT her husband.
why is it so hard to believe Laurel would not want to give Richard Gere a chance? Her husband was abusive and didn't care about her. I mean, he's Richard Gere! LOOK AT HIM!!!
WATCH MY VIDEO - MICK - SECOND CHANCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcnex-A0O88
Is there another interpretation? If he is Jack, Laurel could want him to say he's not so he'll live. But he'd rather die with the good Somersby name than live with the sullied Townsend name.
I think this is a possibility because when he gives Laurel the necklace (or whatever it is) when they're in the cell together she says, "For better or worse" & he says, "Forgive me the worse." Clearly that's an allusion to marriage vows & could be interpreted as him asking her to forgive him for how badly he treated her before he went to the war. When she responds, "I knew the first moment I saw you...it was always you, my love" you could take that to mean the man with whom she first fell in love, the man he was before he started drinking & being abusive, had "come back" to her.
Just my two cents' worth.
Uh, yeahh... again, you messed up the words. Read them.
"But he'd rather die with the good Somersby name than live with the sullied Townsend name."
Almost all poster when they talk of honor forget that the real Sommersby was a murderer. Townsend has not killed anybody. The real Sommerby has killed a man, is a murderer and that's why Richard Gere is on trial. Sommersby's honor is not existent as he is a murderer and Townsend name is far more honorable than Sommersby.
After 6-7 years of war, starvation, death, people come back different in so many ways from looks, to personality, to speech to everything. My uncle had been in WWII and one day he just walked through the door of my grandparents apartment in Astoria Queens. It hadn't been 6-7 years but it had been at least 2-3 and EVERYTHING about him was different- looks, personality, speech, everything. And a lonely widow who had been married to an *beep* drunk, lonely,
sees the man that as returned is nice, sensual, fair and decent -who wouldn't want to accept that?
I watched this movie last night and wanted to jump in on the debate. To me it was explicitly clear that he was Horace, not Jack, and that Laurel had her suspicions all along.
Evidence to support him as an imposter:
The dog didn't recognize him, but calmed down once it smelled the handkerchief. When Laurel had it burned because it was filthy, the dog mysteriously died.
His personality and demeanor changed completely. While not unheard of after spending time fighting in a war and prison, it is a hint.
His foot was two sizes smaller.
He didn't know the name of his best friend.
His signature was different.
He "couldn't remember how he'd been" with Laurel during sex.
The real Jack drank too much, got violent, and had a thing for card games. This guy didn't drink at all, was gentle, and never played.
In the jail cell he said he couldn't be Horace again. That's about as clear as you can get.
Why I think Laurel suspected early on:
The first night she has to remind Jack they slept in separate bedrooms. I don't care how long you've been gone, you don't forget that.
Early on she started flirting with him and invited him to her bed. The reason I think this matters is that she said when making their son, Jack was drunk, got her pregnant, and then never wanted her after that. This version of Jack is sad because they have separate bedrooms and leaps at the chance to sleep with her. By inviting him to her bed, I think she was testing him.
For those asking why he would rather die as Jack than live as Horace, well it's pretty simple. He was the only person in the town willing to not only show some kindness to the recently freed slaves, but he was willing to sell them land (unheard of at the time). By admitting he was a fraud, Laurel would be disgraced. Their daughter would be labeled as a bastard. The black family wouldn't own land. Everything gained would've been lost. He had no future as Horace.