I've just seen this movie (only because of Colin Firth...hehe) but there is something I just can't understand.
Why did Larry do and say the things he did the night he was kicked out? He did give the farm to his daughters and did he really believe that by insulting them he would get it back?? Why did he say that they had treated him bad? Haven't they been nice to him, helping around the farm and stuff?
I really didn't understand this movie at all.
Bad movie by the way...
The old man was becoming senile or signs of alzheimer's because in the court room he didn't remember his daughter and did not know that she was right in front of him.So because he was losing his memory he did not remember signing over his farm so he became paranod and convinced that they tricked him into it. So he was angry over losing the farm so that's why he called them names.I watched the movie for the very same reason. Colin of course!!!
shareI did get a feeling that he was becoming senile, but nobody did anything with it. It didn't get mentioned and when he did go over the edge they just kicked him out and said that he was crazy. I found that a little bit strange.
And again, bad, bad movie. And I must say, Colin with an southern-accent was not right at all!! But he could have been more involved in the film though...:p
He was a molester!!
what did you want them to do? nurse him to health?
Great movie - nailed how these situations happen and are just intergrated back into memory like they are normal occurances..
This is it. This is the moment of your death.
It isn't a southern accent, it's an Iowan/midwest accent, which many people say isn't an accent at all.
shareAll the reasons luckythecat mentioned plus he was drunk.
I didn't see the movie, but it sounds like they stayed pretty close to the book. In the book it was clearly represented that when Larry was drunk he became out-of-control abusive. That plus the encroaching senility....
(Colin, "Jess", has a Southern accent in this?! Did they not keep the setting in Iowa?!)
(Colin, "Jess", has a Southern accent in this?! Did they not keep the setting in Iowa?!)
That was a midwest accent, not a southern one.
Although this particular incident is partially explainable by his condition, and partially explainable by his personality, and possibly also by his own history, it seemed to me on first viewing that the movie had problems with continuity, probably because of making it fit within the time allotted. It's true that many features of the early scenes were intentionally left unexplained, such as the one referred to, and only later do we discover the explanations, but the main thread of the movie itself (that there were good reasons why "Daddy" didn't deserve the elevated status that everyone gave him, at the expense of the two sisters) didn't really seem to drive the narrative as much as it should have. It's true that we come to understand what is going on in due course, but after the powerful middle part of the movie which presented us with these revelations, it begins to tail off and we are left without a good understanding of why it concludes the way it does. Undoubtedly the book does a better job.
Notwithstanding this, I found the movie to be exceptionally good and thought provoking. I particularly enjoyed the characterizations of the three sisters, each so different from the other.
James
It's been a LONG time since I read "King Lear" but I recall that that that entire scene is very paralleled in Shakespeare's story -- King Lear goes on about how his daughters turned on him and he is "losing it" when a storm is coming. Lear wanders out into the storm and goes truly insane at that moment. I think King Lear expected to be lavished with love and attention and gratefulness for his kingdom, but instead he was treated as if it were nothing to give the kingdom. Perhaps in the original the daughters were indeed clearly "evil" and Lear was just "naive and self-absorbed" whereas in the movie the treatment the Dad imposed on his daughters justified enormously why they weren't more lovey-dovey to their Dad.
I agree too, that the girls did more than right by their abusive father. They just couldn't do anything about it until they had their independence.