MovieChat Forums > Reservation Road (2008) Discussion > Did anyone else have no sympathy for Pho...

Did anyone else have no sympathy for Phoenix's character?

posted 8 years ago by Mr_Ectoplasma
2 replies | jump to latest

I don't know if it's because I don't like him as an actor, but his character was despicable to me; the obsessiveness, spending all his time on vigilante chatrooms and ignoring his wife and daughter—I get that it was driven by grief, but he was completely selfish and narrow-sighted. I couldn't tell if the audience was supposed to sympathize, because I frankly couldn't. He disgusted me. I felt awful for Jennifer Connelly's character and their daughter, but he was so utterly unlikable, and all he cared about was vengeance. I felt really strange watching it because I was honestly sympathizing more with the man who killed his son than him.

[–] irishaspaddyspig 8 years ago

I don't think we have the right to judge a man in the throes of dealing with a senseless tragedy.

Ethan is a thinker, a problem solver. He deals by trying to solve this crime. It gives a sense of control in a situation that is out of his comtrol. He feels he didn't protect his son in life, so he will do whatever he can to find the person who ended it.
Unfortunately, a proactive approach requires a suppression of his grief and an emotional distance from his wife's suffering. She also blames herself, but, in contrast to Ethan's withdrawal, she is reaching out for comfort.

Both men have qualities that are redeeming in the end.

"a malcontent who knows how to spell"

[–] Mr_Ectoplasma 8 years ago

I understand that, and I thought the resolution was well done, but I felt the entire film that Ethan's grief was being ignorantly misplaced; by the end of the film at the final confrontation, he realizes how much guilt Dwight has been carrying, and I think finally realizes that the entire event was a tragic accident—it's just that the buildup of it as Ethan's obsession mounts, and then the addition of his vigilante murder plot, makes him extremely unlikable. I couldn't sympathize with his character after the first 10 mins. and didn't feel sympathy again until the end when he walked away from the situation. I suppose I'm not sure we're necessarily supposed to like his character, but I found him emotionally immature and obsessive, which made it hard to sympathize. His wife was experiencing an equal (if not worse, due to her comment about the fireflies) amount of grief, but she was at least trying to deal with it in a healthy/constructive way; he was doing the complete opposite.