MovieChat Forums > Normal (2003) Discussion > Why I love this movie

Why I love this movie


It contains this bit of dialogue:

ROY: I want you to treat me with respect.
IRMA: Roy, I've given you my youth. I've given you your kids, I've given you my full and undivided attention for twenty-five years and I'm now giving up everything I believe in so you can feel complete. Tell me, what more can you possibly want from me?
(A beat.)
ROY: Is that what it feels like to be my wife?
IRMA: Yes.
ROY: Oh Irma. How awful.
IRMA: It's not awful, Roy, it's what it is. And when I look at it hard enough, you've done the same for me.

In just about any other movie ever made, that scene would go more like this:

ROY: I want you to treat me with respect.
IRMA: Roy, I've given you my youth. I've given you your kids, I've given you my full and undivided attention for twenty-five years and I'm now giving up everything I believe in so you can feel complete. Tell me, what more can you possibly want from me?
(A beat.)
ROY: Don't you get it? Don't you understand?
IRMA: Understand what?
ROY: Don't you understand that I have done the exact. Same. Thing....FOR YOU?!?!?!?!
(Irma sits motionlessly, but her eyes are wide open. Finally understanding Roy for the first time, she is unable to speak. The music swells.)

It's unbelievably rare to see a film like this that genuinely depicts the way that adults who love each other actually talk to one another. On a movie or a TV show, when a husband or wife says something as powerful, and potentially hurtful, as Irma's list of what she's given up for Roy, you'd completely expect the next thing to come out of Roy's mouth to be a rebuttal. Maybe an argument about how he's given up just as much as her, or how she didn't give up as much as she's claiming.

Instead he just says that he hopes that their marriage hasn't actually been as painful as she's describing it. Which is the way that someone who's as compassionate as Roy, and has as much love for his wife, would actually act in that situation. It's sad that it's shocking to see a scene that portrays a marriage in such a healthy way.

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This may be over a year old, in replying, but I completely agree! The very first time I saw the film I thought Roy was going to have a comeback as well. And I was shocked to see that instead, like you mentioned, he just says how terrible he feels about it. A wonderful scene indeed, to a wonderful film! Jane Anderson really understands how human beings actually talk to one another.

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