MovieChat Forums > Stoker (2013) Discussion > What's the moral of this story??? (spoil...

What's the moral of this story??? (spoilers)


This is my second viewing. While it's nicely directed, I couldn't shake that none of the main characters had any redeeming qualities.

I was rooting for India the entire time to feel the least bit guilty for killing that cop, but the shocking thing was for me when the credits rolled after that disturbing scene.

The acting was spectacular, but I need my morally bound character(s) on film.

No wonder lunatics watch films like Stoker and act them out in real life.

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I need my morally bound character(s) on film.


Well, "Stoker" is not going to give you that - it's not trying to be morally instructive in any way, it's art for art's sake.

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"No wonder lunatics watch films like Stoker and act them out in real life." - nomade-5


Do you honestly believe that? How strange.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e3tGxnFKfE

http://tinyurl.com/LTROI-story

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Sorry to necro-post but I just saw the film yesterday. The only sympathetic character was Richard, and Jonathan and they were both dead when the story started, and of course Aunt Gin seemed to have a some common decency. Still not every story has a moral. Some stories show instead of teach. This the story of the coming of age of a sociopathic necrophilic teenage girl. The ending was disturbing as India has surrendered to her true nature. She is walking in her uncle's shoes, literally and figuratively. She has her mother's femininity - the silky lovely blouse she wears and it is all cinched together with her father's belt which probably represents control because that is what he tried to teach her through hunting. "Sometimes we have to do something bad so we won't do something worse."

I found the mother/daughter relationship the most interesting in the story. Evie is a middle aged mother but she represents infantilized femininity. She longs for her daughter's love to fulfill her instead of responding to her daughter needs. Evie doesn't take care of her daughter , instead her daughter cares for her just as the maids said while gossiping. Evie makes her mother's coffee. She brings her mother tea when she is passed out in Richard's study, and when India asks her mother to brush her hair and her mother demurs, India instead brushes her mother's hair. Charlie represents both danger and temptation to Evie. The only act of love Evie really shows for India is when she tells Charlie, "Take me instead," she tells him, "....but leave my daughter alone." Remember this declaration is immediately after Evie had added up warning signs about Charlie that she had ignored earlier. So this represents the only mature act of maternal protectiveness that we see from Evie and of course nothing escapes India's attention. Killing Charlie represents accepting the mother and father who made her and in some ways accepting Charlie too.

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