MovieChat Forums > Miss Sloane (2016) Discussion > Question about the phone call scene

Question about the phone call scene

posted 7 years ago by lucifer800-551-703580
4 replies | jump to latest

When Sloane calls her former assistant, who hangs up on her ("I think you have the wrong number."), she has an emotional outburst. She knocks the papers off the desk and starts sobbing. I didn't understand why she did this. Was it because the reality that the bill was dead was setting in (the subject of the meeting that had just ended)? Was it because she was worried that her backup plan wasn't going to work out after all? Or that her career really was over, now that she had set the final piece in motion? Or some other reason?

[–] samhenderson-26440 7 years ago

She set the plan in place and will go to jail.

[–] Ithilfaen 7 years ago

Or some other reason?

That.

Now seriously. I think in this moment she feels her self-imposed isolation more keenly than at any other time in the movie.

She's crucified in the press, by her former coworkers; benched from the campaign, a pariah. Of course she's engineered the whole situation but she feels the need to reach out to someone who can help her through this uncharacteristic moment of self-doubt and vulnerability... but that fleeting need for a human connection is hindered by the machinery she's set in motion.

There is a lot in the movie that speaks to the loneliness of her life, somewhat chosen, but mostly suffered. This particular moment is the one moment where she actively reaches out and finds herself alone again, because of that choice she made of putting her job before anything else.

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

[–] transcendingpictures 7 years ago

She's staring at the tin with her upper pills in it on the desk. She doesn't want to take them and then rages when she realizes that she can't overcome her addition to work and staying awake. At the end of the scene, after the outburst, she defeatedly swallows the pill. This tells us that she was upset with herself that this is the one fight she can't seem to win - the battle with her own addiction. That her greatest opponent and enemy is within her.

[–] Djrachal (11) 7 years ago

I thought that she made the call to signal that they were ready to go ahead with the plan and then when she hung up, the reality of both the impeding prison time and her addiction set in and overwhelmed her. I also thought that when she called the assistant in the middle of the night and said, 'so Socrates never wrote anything down?' was when the plan was hatched. So basically the assistant was waiting on confirmation via the phone call.