No one thought the main character (Robert) was a bad guy?

Once he tried covering up his murder, he stopped being the hero for me. Sure, we saw the movie through his eyes, so we were stuck empathizing with his anxiety and suffering. But I didn't particularly pity him. He just got more and more selfish and unprincipled. They were right at the end when they said he was "their man." He'd become just like one of the hypocritical townspeople, inflicting their own twisted sense of justice while covering up whatever they found unpleasant.

I think normally, you couldn't suffocate someone that easily, but remember she had been beaten to hell, and was probably high on those drugs as well. Not exactly in peak physical condition.

That's the wonderful screenwriting of this film. Because he gave us a WHOLE PERSON. You wanted to hate him, to see him as a creep, an awful person. But he showed the humanity. So we are torn when we watch him we want to like him, but he's done this awful deed. Most of the time in society we see things in black and white when someone is on a trial for a terrible deed. We don't get to see the whole person, the goodness in them. So this screenwriter shows us the goodness in this person, that is why we are torn.

Also, a note on the suffocation. I think this was brilliant in that they offered several reasons why she may have died... you start to wonder if he really DID kill her. Did she actually suffocate? Or was this one more thing on top of being beaten near to death and the fact that she had taken so many pills? Maybe it really was cardiac arrest... she was on a lot of pills... an overdose. If her heart was erratic and he was putting the pillow over her mouth... I don't think it was supposed to be convincing. I think it was supposed to leave doubt in your mind. If he hadn't held the pillow over her mouth would she have died anyhow of overdose and beating? Or did holding the pillow over her mouth, was that the final stake in the chest? It left room for wonder and rationalization that maybe our lead didn't really do it.

The suffocation is just a movie shortcut. I saw an interview with a real murderer one time and he was joking about how in movies and TV shows they just have the killer squeeze the neck for a few seconds and the person is dead. He said in real life it takes minutes of choking for the victim to finally die.


"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

i think it's brilliant how you still see him as the protagonist. goes to show that protagonists can do bad things and retain what makes them compelling.

something that i rarely see mentioned is that his brief relationship with ingelise is majorly *beep* up. we get the impression that it is her goal in some way to pit robert against jorgen. when jorgen calls for her and she makes sounds (which prompts the suffocation) i felt like, unconsciously or not, this was a situation that she wanted.

now, that doesn't excuse the murder, but we should put it in context at the very least.

I didn't hate the guy...but I didn't like or empathize with him. I stopped rooting for him when he started doinking Jorgen's wife with Jorgen right outside. After that I thought whatever happened was his own damn fault.