Joe, Just my take on him...

I don't believe it is complex. Joe as a teenager was never serious about anything and got sucked into a situation with an older woman, which as we know led to the tragedy. Joe felt so guilty that he had to run away, and his amoral adult life wasn't because that is really what he always wanted, but a reaction of an emotionally desperate man who probably even felt guilt at being alive. No standards, no boundaries, not happy, nothing to look forward to. The death of his friend, and then finding out the older woman was also dead, signalled the end of his former life and the possible beginning of his new one that might bring him happiness as he becomes a better person. The reactions of all those back home were normal, they had stopped caring about Joe many years earlier. The rest of the story (untold) is not about them, it is about Joe. Their reactions just helped Joe realize how far he had slipped.

TxMike
Make a choice, to take a chance, to make a difference.

Ah well.. Joe.... a total bastard.

There's 2 ways of looking at it, and I'm not sure which one is the most likely.

The nice one: Joe falls in love with Ruth, obviously, and she with him - they feel not just first love, but true love. Then its all shattered and Joe flees with his guilt, fear and loss on his shoulders, and he keeps them there for 20 years living in a "nothing matters" way, just existing from one party to the next drug sedation to the next girl.

Until he hears of the death and comes home, only to find all the guilt and fear is gone - Evelyn's dead, no-one can know what he did, and its all over. He writes the letter to Ruth to say "I remember you and what we had" and obviously she remembers too.

But, of course, he then leaves for LA so I think the above is not the best explanation.

Instead:

Joe has his first love with Ruth, and Ruth really falls for him, but he screws things up and leaves. He still spends his time wasting his life in parties, drugs and girls but this is because of his guilt and fear that he'll be found out for "causing" the death of the little girl. When he is forced to return (as he has nothing to live for in LA) he finds that Eleven's death means all the worry he's been hiding from is gone - he gets to start again, all that fear that he'll be found out has disappeared. He obviously remembers Ruth and still has some feelings for her, but they're old and now irrelevant. So he writes the letter that tells her he remembers her and what they could have had, and unfortunately, she still feels for him - hence the line about the marriage where she can't cry, she mentions how it was an ordinary marriage, no true love story, and that's because she is still in love with Joe. she married his best friend as the 'next best thing' to having Joe. She still remembers him being late at the arcade after all those years (shows she still thinks of him), and when she gets that letter, she realises all that could have been.... The cheque is a way for Joe to 'pay her off', his way of saying sorry for the missed years and missed love (rich people have a way of thinking donating money is the way to solve all their guilty problems).

Joe, of course, sods off back to LA with a renewed view on life that he can now actually start living. Selfish bastard, in short.

So why did he have no remorse for Evelyn - because she didn't mean anything to him, she was just a quickie with terrible consequences. If anything, he showed a stunned relief at the graveside.


Now a proper chick flick would have them both rekindling their initial love at the end, but fortunately this was a proper film, not some happy-ending fluff. I think it did well to do that.

I think the film was all about the Roxy Music song. The song comes in 3 parts, is all about reminiscing about the past, and its no coincidence Ruth was growing potatoes at the end.