So I'm kind of confused about the Ronnie character...
So he was Gene's son, right? But NOT the medical student that killed himself/"fell" off the building? They looked kind of similar to me but I didn't think that a guy who did drugs and skipped court dates would regularly attend college courses and then at the end Gene says his son is in jail.
Correct. I am assuming the plight of the medical student was used to show the non-emotional state of his professor but I never quite understood the point of the character of the drug addict.
shareI hear you Zee. The character of Ronnie himself wasn't too fleshed out. For me, though, that was ok. In my mind, he was basically used as a device to help create a more complete picture of Arkin's character Gene. Knowing about his son, and his relationship to him, adds to Gene's "backstory."
"What doesn't kill you, defines you."