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Can you betray someone and still love them? SPOILERS

posted 9 years ago by Satantangoandcash
11 replies | jump to latest

Again, SPOILERS BELOW.

The Nazis give Johnny a Sophie's choice, forcing him either to inform on his wife or to risk death or prison, positing the question - can you still love your wife if you cause her death in order to save your own life? I think this question is what drives Nelly.

In the final scene, Nelly sings "Speak Low," but is she trying to destroy Johnny or to find out if he loves her? It was a great way to get revenge, but I don't think that's the only reason she sang it. The song was written for the play "One Touch of Venus" in which a statue of Venus comes alive. When Venus sings the song it entrances people and makes them fall in love. (It made me fall in love with Ava Gardner.) Nelly knows that when she sings the song it will expose her real identity to Johnny, but I think she also sings it in order to play Venus and try to rekindle their former love. He really thinks she died at Auschwitz, a logical conclusion, so maybe he won't be so mired in guilt if he finds out she's still alive. Nelly was hoping throughout his modeling of her to pass as his ex-wife that he would eventually recognize her and want her again. Her knowledge of the divorce doesn't answer the question since he was forced to get it through coercion. At the end I don't think either of them still knows if he loved her when he betrayed her, or if he still does, but the myth of the titular Phoenix is a hopeful one. We are left to answer the question and to imagine if they have a future together ourselves.

[–] pjpoconnell 9 years ago

Very interesting and intelligent post.

[–] SnappinTurtle 9 years ago

Speaking in general; yes, I believe you can love someone and betray them. Most of my knowledge on this comes from studies in Stalinization and the gulag, more so than Nazi Germany. However, all throughout history there are accounts of spouses betraying each other, parents - children; friends - family....Most of us will never know what it would be like to be threatened or tortured to the point that we start coughing up the names of loved ones, but it is not uncommon. ( besides the USSR and Germany; think European witch trails, the state engineered Ukrainian famine, the Armenian genocide, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, the nightmare in Syria right now). Any time a brutal regime wants names, they will get them, and sometimes they will get them from people who love the victims the most.

On a lesser scale you can even see this in child abuse cases where a mother or a sibling will slink off into hiding while one particular child is being beaten. That is not exactly the same thing, but philosophically it is the same mental anguish, sacrifice the unfortunate one.....

Now that I have thoroughly depressed myself. Within the context of the movie, I agree that there are still many questions. I do think Johnny loved Nelly to a point, because he is very private with the information he gives "Esther," almost like he was holding on to something just for her memory. He isn't cold or calculated, he is protective of her pictures, the stories of special places, he even gives out the hand writing samples slowly. Why, of all things would he have still had a grocery list in her hand writing if he didn't love her.

Nelly was apparently willing at one point to forgive him if he betrayed her, but I could not figure out why she didn't press harder to find out why he was so convinced she was dead. How hard did he try? There were people all over Europe for years trying to track the fate of loved ones, Johnny just seems to have accepted on the laws of probability that she was dead.

[–] jmj-13870 9 years ago

Other reviewers have described Johnny as "a monster." That description seems a little harsh to me, but likely he did not "love" Nelly. Nelly, however, DID love Johnny. Her love for him is evident in her many eloquent facial expressions, which also identify Hoss as a really excellent actor.

Nelly allowed Johnny full freedom to do with her his will (her true love). She went along with his ruse/lie in a believable state of shock. Initially she suffered the effects of denial of his betrayal, but after the divorce document, she became determined to expose Johnny's guilt. (Like the old saying,"Give him enough rope, he'll hang himself.")

The end of the movie serves as Johnny's own trial of his guilt, played out in front of an audience of witnesses. His guilt becomes undeniable to all present, self included, and this shock of recognition which condemns him becomes the natural consequence of his crime. He must live with his guilty conscience. Nelly had given him every chance to aknowledge her love for him and re-new his love for her, but he refused to be saved by love.

Nelly turns around at the end to begin her new life, to move away from her past, having brought at least one evil perpetrator to justice. She rises like a phoenix from the ashes.

[–] TrangPak2 8 years ago

Other reviewers have described Johnny as "a monster." That description seems a little harsh to me, but likely he did not "love" Nelly. Nelly, however, DID love Johnny. Her love for him is evident in her many eloquent facial expressions, which also identify Hoss as a really excellent actor.

Nelly allowed Johnny full freedom to do with her his will (her true love). She went along with his ruse/lie in a believable state of shock. Initially she suffered the effects of denial of his betrayal, but after the divorce document, she became determined to expose Johnny's guilt. (Like the old saying,"Give him enough rope, he'll hang himself.")

The end of the movie serves as Johnny's own trial of his guilt, played out in front of an audience of witnesses. His guilt becomes undeniable to all present, self included, and this shock of recognition which condemns him becomes the natural consequence of his crime. He must live with his guilty conscience. Nelly had given him every chance to aknowledge her love for him and re-new his love for her, but he refused to be saved by love.

Nelly turns around at the end to begin her new life, to move away from her past, having brought at least one evil perpetrator to justice. She rises like a phoenix from the ashes.

I LOVE this post!

[–] mussobrennon 9 years ago

I think you definitely can love someone and betray them but it never seemed to me like Johnny loved nelly.

[–] chuck-526 9 years ago

it never seemed to me like Johnny loved nelly

I got the same general impression (although I wouldn't go quite that far).

The new relationship after the war was definitely "unequal". Nelly was far more obsessed with thoughts of Johnny than Johnny was with thoughts of Nelly. And it seemed to me the film suggested the old relationship before the war had been disturbingly one-sided too. Nelly had moved to a country where she at best was not fully welcome and at worst was in grave danger. Johnny never even contemplated anything similar. And when in describing his former relationship while coaching "Esther", what he describes sounds "unenlightened". I like my wife better when she dyes her hair and dresses in clothes she would never choose herself and tries to be some movie star ...huh?

[–] SloberDon 9 years ago

You can grow to be sorrowful and love them later but not while betraying them or thinking about betraying them.

[–] blanche-2 8 years ago

Well, I agree with most of the posts. But we aren't told that Johnny had to divorce Nelly. In fact, Lena acts as if that is an act of betrayal, that he not only turned her in, but he divorced her. I read two conflicting accounts of the law, one which said Jews married to non-Jews were safe, and then I read that non-Jews married to Jews were given the choice of divorce or going to the camps themselves.

If he betrayed her by turning her in, that's one thing. But if he was hiding her and just decided he couldn't take it anymore, that's another. If he was forced to divorce her as a matter of law, Nelly would have understood. But did that mean he had to betray her as well? He definitely didn't love her after the war, he wanted the money and assumed she was dead. He went to that office to steal the divorce papers. When that didn't work, he had to come up with something else. Because he wanted that money.

The fact is, he divorced her and he had no intention of telling her that. He wouldn't be entitled to her money in any event. When he saw Nelly, he came up with an alternate plan.

So if there was some law that said he had to divorce her, Nelly didn't know about it. Lena's final ace was that he had divorced her.

So after all this, I don't know. I suspect he was a weak man who took the easy way out.

[–] NeverEclipsed 8 years ago

I think that's the whole point of the film, and the answer is no.. He felt guilt, but he didn't love her, or he would have recognized her instantly.

[–] cookiela2001 8 years ago

Frankly, I find the whole concept of "love" to be rather confusing. I think it means different things to different people, at different times. I don't believe there is a universal definition of love.

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[–] jriley555 8 years ago

one aspect that sort of trundles over the subtleties of johnny's character, though his character had them in no small measure, was his business-like approach to cashing in on her inheritance.

which is a point also i feel the film was about - high-lighting the practical opportunism abroad in a german culture which ripped out its jewish citizens with remarkably little public protest.

he was a creep. so were the 'friends', with their glib well-wishing after the fact. whatever his constraints during the war, going after the estate after divorcing & betraying her was not, could not be viewed as anything other than amoral. his lack of, or refusal to recognize his wife a clear devise to demonstrate his spiritual blindness.

this is a harsh appraisal, of course and such are usually suspect, but in this case perhaps amongst the more important of the film.

the tension of not revealing his clear betrayal to the end was a dramatic device to keep nelly (and us) in the dark about his motives/actions.

and then we know.