In the first two acts everything points to Beatrice being a saint, but then she arrives in New York with the monster and morphs into an oversexed hottie.
Can anyone explain this? I'm sure it's supposed to mean something, but I can't figure it out.
That surprised me, too. I guess the message could be that no human is a saint, we are all corruptible, and perhaps humans are a disappointing race like the monster says.
Another possibility is that she was a slut all along, but we form prejudices based on her cute appearance in the beginning so we assume she's chaste. Contrast this against the monster who is a foul-mouthed brute so we assume he's an immoral character, but actually he stays true to his word until the end.
Overall it was an unexpected twist which was intended to wake us up, I'm sure. Maybe, if nothing else, the writers wanted to deviate from the predictable 'Beauty & the Beast' love story.
Any other ideas?
Sarah looked pretty hot in that outfit so I'm not complaining. Just joking, sort of.
I have some feedback on the issue but I'll have to write back; it's Christmas.
I lean toward the "no human is a saint, we are all corruptible" position and reject the "she was a slut all along" view because the first two acts of the film painstakingly make Beatrice (Polley) out to be a saint in the making:
Early in the film we learn that a monster has killed her fiance, Jim, and two other journalists, in Iceland. The fact that he was her fiance is our clue that she's still innocent, pure. She volunteers to go and investigate, meets resistance because she's so young, but prevails. We find out that her mother has recently died, and she has no other family. This establishes her as free of normal human connections. Setting out, she can't get a cab because of a bomb scare at the airport; she can't take the subway because of a nerve gas attack. She gets a ride in the back of a truck belonging to men who destroy things for a living - demolitions experts. Her plane crashes into the ocean and she's the only survivor. She's rescued by a fishing boat and ends up in a hospital in Iceland, which was her destination. You see, NOTHING can stop her. It's pointed out to her that she has nothing - but she refuses money for the story of the plane crash, as if it's filthy lucre. When asked how the other passengers behaved, "who was brave, who was a coward?" She quietly responds, "They were people." She's given a choice: have an agonizing operation or remain crippled. She chooses the operation so that she can carry out her mission. During the surgery we see her doctor wincing and covering her ears in response to Beatrice's screams (covered by the soundtrack). When she's up and about she dumps her walker for a cane, and as her doctor drives her north the next day, in search of the monster, she ditches the cane at a cafe along the road. By the time the road runs out she's able to mount a horse and ride into the mountains. She's fully healed. The residents of a village who've been paying tribute to the monster drug her and leave her unconscious, wrapped in a shroud, as an offering to the monster. But he doesn't hurt her. He proves to her that he killed her fiance; she cries but won't get angry at him. In an act of saintly forgiveness, she brings him back to New York to search for Dr Artaud, the one man who can kill him, granting his wish to die and put out of his misery.
As you can see, the film goes through all this time and effort to establish Beatrice as a saint and then utterly destroys it in the final act. This comes out of nowhere and is perplexing. The "no human is a saint, we are all corruptible" position is one possibility, as Beatrice succumbs to the "rock star syndrome." What I mean is that when Beatrice comes to New York with the monster her boss plays up the beauty and the beast angle for publicity and Beatrice suddenly attains celebrity status, at least for the moment, and this naturally corrupts her.
Any other inights?
Wow, it's the 21st century and the whole "virgin/whore" dichotomy is still in use. How sad.
shareYeah, because it's a blatant aspect of THE FILM and this is a message board devoted to discussing THE FILM.
shareWhy not that she has recovered from grief,a plane crash, terrible injuries, horrific surgery, and is doing the normal human thing of celebrating being alive. Human contact, sex is often the way that people do celebrate life.
And to second the other poster, WTF! Do people really still think virgin/whore?? How about just an adult human being, which has nothing to do with whether they have consensual sex with another person.
If you are still thinking virgin/whore, take a really good look inside your head because it is an extremely offensive mindset.
The purpose of IMDb boards is to discuss films, including their themes and the questions they raise. The question in this thread is: Why does Beatrice morph into a oversexed hottie in the final act after the first two acts clearly establish her as saintly, that is, sexually conservative.
Why not that she has recovered from grief,a plane crash, terrible injuries, horrific surgery, and is doing the normal human thing of celebrating being alive. Human contact, sex is often the way that people do celebrate life.
take a really good look inside your head because it is an extremely offensive mindset.
I'm not objecting to sex, btw, but rather sexual immorality. Sex is awesome, but context means everything. There's a time and place for dressing sexy and having hot wild sex, even for the most saintly and noble of individuals, unless of course they choose to be celibate. That context is a committed relationship.
If Beatrice was a man, this thread wouldn't exist. That's the problem.
That's your personal view of sex, many of us are ok with those who choose to have casual, consensual sex and don't see that as a slight against their morality.
If others believe there should be no morals (wise parameters) with sexual activity and that people should have sex with anyone, anything, anywhere, anyway; what's that to me? It's their choice. We all have the power of volition.
Still, I very much doubt that in 5-20 years this kind of sexually loose mentality/practice will bring them the lasting satisfaction they crave.
If you are still thinking virgin/whore, take a really good look inside your head because it is an extremely offensive mindset.
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why is that an offensive mindset? There are good girls and there are whores and some women are a bit in-between.
Take your pinche color-coordinated sponsored chingada and take a flying fck
I completely disagree with this reading on Beatrice.
While I didn't love the film, I felt that the sequence in NYC was to show that while Beatrice is a truly good person, she is not a damsel-in-distress boring (virginal) saint, but instead a living young woman who enjoys sex. And no, this does not make her a whore.
I mentioned this above in my main response, but it was one of the little things I felt the movie got right -- the monster doesn't need to be saved by a virginal girl (i.e., sex=bad) but by a caring and good and loving young woman -- everything Beatrice is.
I definitely don't agree that the fact that she had sex means she is now "corrupted." In fact, it's the opposite -- it had nothing to do with whether she was a good or brave person and in fact occurred as something with no bearing on the plot at all.
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I keep thinking I'm a grownup, but I'm not.
It just seems so random. I can actually see Polley "acting" in the third act
and thereafter. The monster saved the rest of the movie for me.
"Sluttish?" "Whore?"
I'm not a fan of slut-shaming, much less for a fictional girl who has sex ONCE in the film. And no, she was not paid, so -- NOPE, not a whore.
We saw Beatrice meet and then consensually sleep with one guy -- a guy she was actually hopeful of a relationship with, until she realized he was too much like the jaded media people around her. She wasn't exactly hitting the club scene here. There was nothing whorish at all about her decision or behavior.
I didn't love the movie, but I added a whole star to my score just for the fact that the film went out of its way to subvert the tired "maiden and monster" trope. It was one of the little things I felt the movie got right -- the monster doesn't need to be saved by a virginal girl (i.e., sex=bad) but by a caring and good and loving young woman -- everything Beatrice is.
I also thought it was key that she was excited about the guy she was with, until she realizes he's as shallow as everyone else around her, at which point she simply asks him to leave.
For me, the point is that Beatrice is a grownup -- grownups date, have sex, have relationships. I thought it was smart that we saw that she isn't just waiting on some 'prince' of a guy to save her from virginity (much less a monster who murdered her fiance and left his body to rot just feet from his home on the beach).
It also weirdly made the final scenes more meaningful to me -- they are about more than sex or even romantic love, but simply about love and acceptance. She cared for the beast and was able to love him in the end and to forgive him. The final moments were kind of lovely for me that way.
None of those things above has anything to do with Beatrice's sex life. (And I certainly don't think her sleeping with one guy turned her "sluttish" and I'm still befuddled that you actually called her a whore for it. Seriously?)
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I keep thinking I'm a grownup, but I'm not.
I'm not a fan of slut-shaming, much less for a fictional girl who has sex ONCE in the film. And no, she was not paid, so -- NOPE, not a whore.
The primary definition of the word 'whore' is of "a woman who engages in sexual acts for money" (per Webster's).
The degradation of any sexually active woman (which you seem to interpret across the board as "promiscuous") as a "whore" is wholly cultural. I do not agree with this definition, and as with the word "slut" I disagree with its usage as it's uneven and not applied to evenly to both men and women. Are all men who have sex whores? Just something to think about.
Meanwhile, I have to argue because, even by YOUR definition here, in this particular story, Beatrice is not a "whore." She sleeps with one man in the entire film. Before this man, she was engaged to the guy who was killed by the Beast. She is shown as connecting with a man after a whirlwind of media attention, she is launched on a world stage for the first time, connects with a man, has fun with him, and goes to bed with him. (This is presented as unusual behavior for Beatrice, but it also doesn't weigh her down either.)
How is this "promiscuous?"
I would point out that we see Beatrice interacting with the guy she had sex with on the day afterward, and the point of the whole scene is her visible disappointment that he's not the interesting person she thought he was, and that she has made a mistake in sleeping with him.
From that moment on, afterward, she is solely focused on the Beast.
I appreciate your response, and understand that we probably must agree to disagree here. But I would ask you to reconsider your casual use of terms like "whore" for women who may choose to have sex yet do not actually sell themselves for money. It's just not appropriate nor respectful.
Cheers.
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I keep thinking I'm a grownup, but I'm not.
The primary definition of the word 'whore' is of "a woman who engages in sexual acts for money" (per Webster's).
I'm not sure why you're yelling at me, but okay.
So do me a favor and focus on my inquiry about the movie and stop trying to sidetrack this thread into your sociological ponderings about why it's wrong to call women (and dudes) who have casual sex "loose" or "slut" or whatever. I don't care.
I'm not sure why you're yelling at me
She later has a one-night stand while confused and upset, and with a guy she actually seems into -- until he turns out to be a jerk.
How does that make her a loose woman or a "whore?"
it must be a cultural thing.
but if you're just going to boil it all down to "all sexually active women are whores,"
welcome to my ignore list.
I re-watched the film last night and was able to figure out saintly Beatrice's moral failure in the last act. It ties into what the film's really about. This is cut-&-pasted from my review:
***SPOILER ALERT*** (DON'T read further unless you've seen the film)
Imagine if you could live forever, what would you do? Imagine the potential for growth and learning! You could learn how to travel the cosmos and discover the answers to life's greatest mysteries. Now consider being indestructible and imagine the capacity for being a benign force in the world and universe, destroying evil wherever you go, etc. The monster in the movie possesses these incredible gifts and yet doesn't take advantage of them. All he does is mope around in a hateful, self-pitying fog, drinking booze, cussing people out - or threatening & killing 'em - and wishing he were dead.
The monster represents people who are blessed with the gift of life and foolishly squander it on drugs, alcohol and various time-wasters (and I'm not talking about proper r & r, which is healthy); others misuse the gift of life to grumble, hate, slander, steal, abuse, destroy and murder. They're all around us. Now imagine if these miserable, loathsome people were immortal. What would they be like in a few million years? They'd be like the monster in the movie. The media executive (Mirren) is roughly 60 years old and she's on the same course as the creature, as are other individuals in the story.
Beatrice is the Christ-figure who figuratively dies and is resurrected. Like the Messiah, she responds in love to the hate, crime and self-destruction that infects the world. When she meets the monster she observes that there is no hope for him; there's no love in him, no good, no possibility for redemption. The only compassionate thing she can do is assist him in attaining his ultimate desire: destruction.
This destruction is a type of the lake of fire or "second death" where the bible says God will "DESTROY both soul and body" (Matthew 10:28). What's the purpose of this "second death"? The Creator is essentially doing what Beatrice does in the film and for the same reasons.
If Beatrice is the saintly "Christ-figure" why does she morph into a loose woman who has a one-night-stand at the end? Because she's only a TYPE of Christ and, as such, is still wholly human, possessing the potential for moral failure. She falls after constant contact with the irredeemable creature for an extended period. The apostle Paul put it like so: "Bad company corrupts good character." This explains why Beatrice tells the monster she fears him at the end while simultaneously hugging (loving) him: She needed to carry out her duty -- compassionately putting the creature out of its misery -- because his intrinsic evil was starting to rub off!
My 150 (or so) favorite movies:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070122364/
My best guess...after Beatrice escaped death and physically recovered from an airplane crash...she just decided to begin living her life to the fullest. I mean, technically, Beatrice was acting rather loose when she was getting drunk with the Icelandic people as well. And plus, if Beatrice had enough bravery to spend so much time around that monster...I think it's safe to assume that she's "a wild one". Haha, if that makes any sense.
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