Wow! I'm not even sure I know where to start in responding to your last message post.
First, I'm not entirely certain of what you mean in your description of how the movie plays out. When you state, "Because he wouldn't have specified EXACTLY WHAT HE PLANNED TO DO. When he spells it out, it's like a summary of the next hour of the movie.", I'm a little confused by what you say because it's only at the end where it is revealed to us the true scope of Chad's plan -that is, his significant other had never left him in the first place.
Second, I'm not sure if you realize this but there really is no law that says if you watch a movie or film you must "identify with" or "take the perspective of any major character". In fact, the implication of either one of those phrases sometimes is a little vague to me - I guess the phrase "take the perspective...character" probably speaks to a method that a movie uses to remotely project an emotional state that a character is experiencing onto the audience. Usually, the best way for a film to do this is to tell the story through the eyes of one of its main characters - I offer "American Beauty" as evidence, but even this film remains out of the narrative tense for such long stretches of time, the audience can easily lose the perspective of the narrator [Kevin Spacey's character]. Usually, however, when a movie or film does this, there is some extraordinary quality of this narrator character's fate within the film that ultimately will be offered to the audience - basically, a remarkable insight of this character's fate. This could either be through a character transformation or a startling revelation or epiphany of sorts that this narrator character has experienced within the timeframe of the story. In fact, the narration-style of telling a story is probably the best device a writer could use to accomplish this.
In the case of LaBute's "In the Company of Men", it is not the fate of any one of the individual main characters that we are privy to in this story. It is the whole story as it is unfolds and is revealed to us that does the trick of allowing us, the audience, to view the entire range of the socio-dynamic forces at work here. It is really not that necessary to feel the pain of Christine's hurt by any of her words to us privately. By her actions and her fate in the movie, all of that should be implied - after all human nature is human nature since we've all experienced at one time or another this type of emotional pain [or for that matter the elation and anticipated power that being approached and then dated by two men would bring if you were a woman in Christine's shoes].
What this boils down to is that this movie has really little to do with how people feel and more to do with how people act and react in certain situations: in short, their behavior. We do get feelings, as moral beings [at least I hope we would], of repulsion at the plan hatched by Chad and then ultimately agreed upon by Howard. But I for one am intrigued and lured to watch more of how the three main characters of the film deal with situations as they arise after Chad and Howard put their deviouis plan to work. Personally speaking, this movie facilitates my perception and embracement of such morally important themes as social responsibility, accountability, control and, more importantly, self-control [why didn't Howard be morally accountable and just say NO! to Chad's plan - or at least be smart enough to say to Chad "Ya know, that's a great idea you've got there to get back at women - but I will go along only if we date SEPARATE women and then compare notes - after all two heads, and ergo two stories where we inflict great emotional pain on women that ultimately sometime down our wretched lives will make us feel better, are better than one!"].
These themes are there in all of their resplendant glory throughout this film. The twist at the end where Chad reveals that on his part nothing had changed between he and his significant other, making this a ruse all along for Howard's sake and torment, for me only drives the knife in deeper and harder, sometimes with a twisting motion, when it comes to make me take pause at how incredibly experienced some people are at controlling and manipulating others - and how vulnerable and spineless other people are at wanting to be controlled and manipulated.
This to me was what the movie was about - and you could take these themes all the way to their rock bottom origins of human nature if you so desired. Now, mrliteral, I concede that whether all of this strikes your particular fancy or not is a matter of personal taste. But to me, I believe what is really unarguable is that, for all the reasons I mention above, this film was a masterpiece of displaying and highlighting these themes simply because there was such a great synergistic and plausible interplay between plot and dialogue throughout its entirety.
Bravo and kudos to you, Mr. LaBute!
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