It seems that Sam and Pilar are half-brother and sister. In most places, sex between people related that way is illegal. By contrast, many places do not consider sex, even marriage between a step-brother and step-sister as wrong,or illegal (good for the Bradys).
Should Sam and Pilar be arrested. They are not blind to the situation. If not, when should people be arrested?
Well you are lucky that people can't be arrested for being bone stupid. Here is the most poignant and profound mediation dealing with the complexities of memory, how knowing/forgetting the past can be both a liberation and a burden, and you fixate on peripheral matters.
share1.) I thought they broke up at the end. So what's the problem?
2.) The fictional Rio County wasn't exactly strict with it's law enforcement.
3.) Even if it was strict, Sam Deeds WAS the law in Rio County. He's not going to arrest himself or his half sister girlfriend.
4.) I'm not sure they would be arrested for incest with a half sibling, even in the toughest jurisdictions, especially since they were raised in separate households and didn't know about their relationship beforehand. If their had relationship continued, maybe Pilar's mother would cause trouble, but no one else knew or cared.
The answer t6o the original questiuon is no. And no, they do NOT break up at the end...
"Thus began our longest journey together." To Kill a Mockingbird
I have to agree, I didn't get the impression they were ending anything. It's been years since I have seen it, but I recall her mentioning she could not have anymore children, which I interpreted that as her saying, "no need to worry about inbreeding." I personally loved that ending.
shareThey ain't breaking up, they shouldn't break up, and as for being arrested, gimmie a break...but all you can do is say, "that's my personal feeling," because there are people who are permanently and completely horrified by ANY kind of incest, and their minds will NOT be changed...
"Thus began our longest journey together." To Kill a Mockingbird
"I'm not sure they would be arrested for incest with a half sibling,"
sure you would. That's not your stepsister, it's your half sister, as closely related to you as your mother (or father) is. Most places won't allow sex closer than somewhere around second cousin.
The answer is no. They did not even know they were related until the end of the movie.
Anybody want a peanut ?
- Fezzik, " The Princess Bride " ( 1987 )
I think the "can't have children" ending was a device of convenience put in to preemtively placate the North American market. The comments in this thread give a hint as to what the reaction would have been otherwise.
Thank you for not discussing the outside world
Actually I think it is more to say they are not hurting anybody else. Nobody will suffer from the truth.
And btw the idea that siblings only spawn retarded or malformed children is completely ridiculous.
I don’t think siblings would get together. These characters are drawn together by a certain connection most never experience. The only reason that would be a bad thing is if people like on this board found out and made it their business, like you know they would in real life.
That's kind of like asking when should people be arrested for sodomy. It's still on the books as illegal is some places, but geez... no one is going to prosecute.
shareThey are half brother and sister, but as she stated to him when they found this out, that she can no longer have children, so no harm can come from them being together, since they re-found one another and always loved each other and only they and her mother know (i guess, but who knows, the town seemed to know everything about everyone) why not be together, real true love is usually a once in a lifetime thing, I say let they have that.
“Do not fear death... only the unlived life.” - Natalie Babbitt
Buddy was not on Pilar's birth certificate as the father, so there was no legal connection between her and Sam...hard to prove unless they did a blood/DNA test...
"She thinks she's a mystery to all/ but I know what's behind those eyes."
Unless I missed something, it was never stated he was Pilar birth father.
shareYes, you missed something -- the big bombshell of the movie. It is made quite clear in that final scene with Sam and Pilar, when Sam explains that Buddy was her birth father. He tells her:
* The man she thought was her father died a year and a half before she was born
* Buddy and Mercedes (Pilar's mother) had a relationship
* Buddy paid the hospital bill when Pilar was born. Her mother always called Pilar "our beautiful daughter" in the letters she wrote to him.
It makes all the rest make sense too. Like earlier when Pilar said she remembered Buddy watching the kids on the playground and she felt he was watching only her -- now we know she wasn't just imagining it. And now we understand why their parents kept them apart.
And in that scene Sam and Pilar discuss what it means that they are half-siblings. She can't get pregnant any more if that is what the rule is about, and he says if he met her today, he would still want to be with her. They decided to "start from scratch" and "forget all that history". Basically, to ignore the fact that they had the same father, which they never knew before now, and continue their relationship.
The "can't get pregnant anymore" bit felt a bit too forced to me. If she hadn't already done it, she could do it now, so it's unnecessary to make it explicit in that kind of "feel good" way. A simple "we'll figure it out" would have worked better imho.
Just nitpicking anyway, it's a very nice film.
The "can't get pregnant anymore" bit felt a bit too forced to me. If she hadn't already done it, she could do it now, so it's unnecessary to make it explicit in that kind of "feel good" way. A simple "we'll figure it out" would have worked better imho.
Just nitpicking anyway, it's a very nice film.
It is indeed a great point and a great observation. However, in my opinion "Don't worry, I'll have an operation that will make me sterile." doesn't make as good dialogue as the original. The writer probably felt he had to address the anxiety of some of the viewers that Sam and Pilar's offspring would have three heads.
shareAll that evidence said was that Buddy took care of Pilar's mother and maybe even adopted her. Nothing (unless you infer it, and inferring is just guessing)that says that Pilar was blood related to Sam. The film makers intended for you to assume they were blood related but i see no conclusive evidence of it.
shareI think you're right in a literal sense, ddrman, but all the same I think we're getting close to "beyond reasonable doubt."
shareThe film makers intended for you to assume they were blood related but i see no conclusive evidence of it.
It seems that anything less than a DNA test is not "conclusive evidence" to you.
But you see evidence that Buddy "adopted" Pilar? Huh? He supported them on the sly, but never anything public like adoption. (And why would he do that anyway if she weren't his daughter?)
So to your way of thinking, the movie doesn't rule out Pilar's mother having a relationship with some other man at the same time she was having an affair with Buddy, got pregnant by the other guy. Yet Buddy pays the hospital bills, she calls Pilar "our beautiful daughter" in letters to Buddy, and years later they go to great lengths to keep Sam and Pilar from having a relationship.
So yeah, that could have happened, but it just doesn't make sense. The only thing that makes sense is that Pilar is Buddy's daugther, making Sam and Pilar half-siblings.
Sam and Pilar assumed they were blood related based on all the information at hand. You really feel they reached that conclusion on less than conclusive evidence?
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Just watched "Lone Star" for the very first time, and as I use captions when viewing a movie, can assure that Sam stated that Pilar's mother always called her "a beautiful daughter", not "our beautiful daughter" as you have suggested.
The relationship is inferred, but not clarified.
It says "our beautiful daughter" in the script.
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Lone-Star.html
I would certainly believe that over captions which are not very reliable.
And "our" is what makes sense in the context of the scene. Sam is telling Pilar all the proof he has that Buddy is her father, which includes her mother calling her "our beautiful daughter" in letters to Buddy. If the letters only said "a" beautiful daughter, then Sam wouldn't have mentioned it in the same breath as telling her that Buddy paid the hospital bills when she was born, and that Eladio couldn't have been her father.
The relationship is inferred, but not clarified.
I wonder if knowing that he really said "our" clarifies it for you. Taken with everything else in that scene, it is certainly meant to be clear. Like another poster wrote, it's at the point of beyond reasonable doubt. Sam and Pilar certainly understand and have no doubt that they are half-siblings. That is the whole point of the scene: Sam telling Pilar, and then their discussion about what that means for them.
I occasionally use closed captioning or subtitles when watching a movie because I am very hard of hearing. I can assure you that captioning is NOT always totally correct and there are frequent errors. So to say that the transliteration of "a daughter" as opposed to "our daughter" is conclusive because of the captioning...isn't necessarily so. Sorry.
shareSubtitle captions are oft-times wrong. I wish they would subtitle from the script (although I recognize the script may change in the spot creating even more discrepancies).
Captioning is done through a stenographer - same training as a court reporter however, the modern technology that allows the steno notes to be auto translated to the screen accounts for a lot of errors. I once saw a news report that subtitled "serial killer" as "cereal killer". The stenographer's machine shorthand (which consists of stroking syllables on a machine that does not contain every letter of the alphabet but instead certain keys are stroked in tandem to substitute for the missing letters, and every stenographer devises their own way of doing it beyond the basics, AND all of that must be programmed into a word processor. If the stenographer must stroke a word she's never added yet to her steno/word processor, it doesn't know how to translate the word into normal English.
The transcription of the dialogue also relies on the stenographer's ear and how well acquainted he/she is with pop culture; knowledge of history and literature, etc. I can tell right away when the subtitles are done by someone that is ESL.
The point being, until films begin giving the scripts (with any changes that might have occured during filming edited/added into the script) directly to the stenographer, then you can't point to the subtitles as absolute proof of inaudible dialogue.
I can testify the subtitle captions can be horribly wrong depending heavily on the knowledge of the person responsible.
I've just watched this movie recorded from a UK TV channel, and the clearly British person who typed the subtitles called Santa Anna "Santa Hanna," and other laughable mistakes that must now be misleading hundreds of Brits who think they're picking up a bit of history. About Santa Hanna. 
For all we know, Charlie Wade was really Sam's father.
shareNo,
cmvgor
"A man does what he has to do-if he can't get out of it. - Bret Maverick's Pappy
I don't think they should be arrested. It may not be acceptable to some but its not a serious crime like murder.
share[deleted]
Luke and Leia never went beyond a kiss in the movies.
As of the end of the movie, no one would arrest Sam and Pilar as they had no idea they were siblings. If they would continue their relationship, as they indicated they would, they could be arrested if anyone found out they had the same father. And yes, the evidence given in the movie would be enough to convict. Sam and Pilar have a chance to go somewhere else as well, since there's a chance he won't get re-elected as sherrif.
No, I don't think they should be arrested, and more power to them if they can work past the history and make a new start together, they both deserve it. HOWEVER, how has it NOT come out before now that Mercedes gave birth to Pilar way way after her husband died? I'm thinking, to be together, they're going to have to leave that town behind, and pray that Pilar's kids never get wind of anything. The fact that she has kids does really complicate the relationship in a nonstandard ('mom's got a boyfriend') way. That creates the only misstep I saw in an otherwise excellent film.
And for the record, I really think that the man who took out Charlie Wade deserved a medal, not a lifetime of hiding the truth. What a .... well, this is a public forum, I won't say it, but y'all know what I'm thinking ...
I think Sayles was also making a point about how the past was influencing the present in the town at large; when Sam and Pilar decide to leave all that history behind, he's saying that the town should sometimes forget about the past - what happened at the Alamo - and do what's best for the people living in it today.
shareI have to say that whilst I don't believe Sam and Pilar should be arrested, some of the comments on here have me worried!! OK, they are consenting adults. They also now know they are related and have agreed to continue sleeping together regardless of whether they can have children.. Illegal, possibly but creepy- Absolutely!!
shareGet over your Puritan self.
h.
This is my *boomstick*!
The final scene between Sam and Pilar is quite touching and is resolved the right way. They had a history and they never fell out of love with each other. They are adults who are dealing with the past and their future and it is clear to me that Sayles indicates that they will keep their love alive, no matter what. Love conquers everything, even narrow-minded notions of what is right and wrong in interpersonal relationships.
For all you folks who believe in God and in the creation story...how do you reconcile the unavoidable fact that there was originally Adam, then Eve, then children of only Adam and Eve? Who do you think may have impregnated the female offspring of the daughters? Could have been a 'holy spirit'...but that is never addressed in the bible. Interesting...
Just so you know, I believe in God and the creation story, but probably not in a literal way.
If they had grown up together in the same household, their relationship would be Jerry Springer fare. However since they were regarded for so long as unrelated I don't see them at any fault or any wrong by continuing their relationship after the fact (in which they both clearly find the most happiness).
"I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" -The African Queen
Ha ha you can marry your half sister in Sweden! They should move there.
share