Hello I just watched this beautiful movie but my english isn't my mother tongue, si I am a little bit confused with Ned's final words. Can somebody tell me what he means by saying something about not copo his greatest achievement.
Thanks in advance
What I got from his words was that all through their lives, Bruce never realized that Sally (the youngest daughter) was in fact his greatest achievement. She always cared for others and even still now is caring for a community. I think it mostly is also for Sally's benefit since she earlier stated Kate was Bruce's greatest achievement.
shareEarlier in the film, Kate was referred to as Bruce's greatest achievement and had been for the last 20 years since her death, most likely because of her fun and outgoing personality, and being his first daughter, i suppose fathers favour their first born princesses.
Ned however saw it differently and believed his younger sister to be their fathers greatest achievement, due to Ned, Kate and the older brother Cliff being mischievous and fornicating with one another, plus Bruce's failed attempt at being a decent father and politician, he failed at those as well. Meanwhile Sally was the good sibling, helping the community, helping the father for so many years, and forgiving Ned for his incestuous past without even questioning him over it.
She loved her family, the good and the bad.
So yeah, Sally is Bruce's greatest achievement.
Well said (written) iEssy
shareThanks a lot guys for the insightful comments, now I get it :)
shareThe terminology included a bit of Australian slang, so I'm not surprised it was difficult to grasp.
Ned said "It's funny, you know. A man can live his whole life and never cop to his greatest achievement................ you."
To 'cop to' something, means to 'realise' it or 'become aware' of it.
It's also possible that the original poster was confused by earlier use of the word "cop" in the film:
"to cop a feel" = to grope somebody
Just to put the non English speaker at ease, I never thought I'd need subtitles for an English language movie. But the Aussie accent got in the way of understanding the dialogue at times (I'm a USA English speaker). Perhaps my only minor complaint of a pretty damn good film.
share