As for the picture of the bully. Paul looks at that bully's face right before he looks at the picture of him and Karl. That's just showing us the kid's face so later in the film we can connect that they put that picture there. Or maybe it was just an accident in editing or whatever.
I totally believe it was an accident. We're coming at it from watching it on television and probably on dvd and have probably have all seen the film more than once, so we notice it's the wrong picture. I'm not so sure an audience at a screening would given the picture was shown very briefly quite early in the film. More to the point, this movie tells us
everything about the people in this film; we learn Kim's boss has never had a relationship, we get all this information about Kim's sister/brother-in-law/nephew and they are quite minor characters in the film. We also learn Kim is the brains behind Prentice selling the story to the press - so the movie should let us know they deliberately chose the bully's photo out of revenge but it's never mentioned.
The whole point of going to the press was to make money. When you give an authorized personal story and are paid in the media you have to sign a release that your information is accurate and true and they would be setting themselves up to be sued by the guy (and perhaps the paper) when he would discover they used his photo. I think what may have happened is when the mock-up of the newspaper page was made, either the wrong photo was accidentally submitted or picked and this was not caught until all those copies had been printed so the movie producers may have just decided to go with them thinking not many people would notice. If it was deliberate that the bully was chosen they really should have commented on this in the screenplay to make it clear.
I also suspect the scene where Prentice looks at the photo was shot after the ending with the newspaper copies. Prentice has pulled the photo out to get a look again at what Karl used to look like - why would he look at the bully first in the photo? I'll bet most people think at first in this scene that is supposed to be Karl but then suddenly the camera scans over to "Karl and Prentice" on the edge. And don't forget we never really get a good look at the bully in the first scene in the shower and then he is hardly acting alone in tormenting Karl, there's a whole bunch of boys there. I'm not even sure the "bully" in the photo is the actor who snaps Karl with the towel! I think the only reason we are seeing this other guy in the photo's first scene is because that's the photo that's ultimately (accidentally?) in the newspaper story in the end.
The irony is that the bully does indeed look more like Steven than the guy who plays the young Karl which may the reason the picture was chosen if mistakenly done so. The guy who plays teenaged Karl is frankly way too good-looking to have grown up to be Steven - and the young Prentice is not handsome enough to have emerged as Rupert, after all we are talking about a jump of a mere seventeen years, between 17 and 34, people don't change much in their looks in that period unless they gain weight or lose hair. Another thing that may have caused the photo confusion is young Karl has a playful smile in the class photo one might expect more on Prentice, seeming nothing like the worrisome Kim. Of course even the most sheepish, neurotic person smiles at times but it's just not good continuity for a film use a picture that is so out of character for the personality developed in the movie.
reply
share
NukeIt2
10 years ago
My theory, though I could be wrong, is that the bully at the beginning is Karl/Kim and the effeminate boy in the shower is just another boy we are led to believe is Kim for most of the film. When Kim testifies that Prentice has protected her before, she was referring to the fact that when she was a boy Prentice stopped her from bullying and picking on another boy with similar issues to her own. Which would also be why Prentice stares are the photo of the bully before moving on to look at himself, where we see the other boy simply because he is next to Prentice and at this point in the film we are supposed to wrongly assume this is Kim, but in a shock twist Kim is in fact the bully.
Again, my theory
reply
share
KatrinaW
9 years ago
No, totally wrong! The kid showering in the beginning is Karl. Prentice comes to his aid. They use the bully's picture later as revenge. That's all there is to it.
reply
share
NukeIt2
9 years ago
How can you be sure? They never cal that kid Karl... the rescuer is without a doubt Prentice as they do say that, but they never call the boy showering Karl
reply
share
KatrinaW
9 years ago
Because it just is. The movie was about Karl/Kim and Paul. Why would they show Paul rescuing some other random kid? Plus, the bullies were picking on Karl because of the way he was standing while showering, and 'tucking', etc.
reply
share
NukeIt2
9 years ago
It makes no sense for them to use a different classmate's photo in the "before" half of their article about Kim, and the film doesn't even hint that they did. I honestly think in a shock twist, Karl was bullying the effeminate boy (going along with 'the boys', denying his/her true feelings, taking it out on another kid). When Prentice digs out his old school pictures he stares at the bully's face for a while before looking at himself and the boy he rescued
reply
share