I know. I kept waiting for some poignant reveal or something at the end...maybe it was all in Susan's head, a wishful thinking kind of thing? She was an insomniac and losing touch with reality? But then, they made a point to show the butler reading the ex's letter on the book too, so someone else saw it (the boo). So, he really did do the book, and the end was just Edward making a final grand stab to her, 10 years later? Standing her up just to be a dick? That didn't exactly fit with the personality we saw for him earlier. That seemed underdeveloped.

They made us sit through that fairly tedious movie for nothing, I felt. I feel like they were trying to make it ambiguous at the sake of it being any semblance of a satisfying movie to watch. I get it, not everything has to be spelled out all the time. But this movie just didn't have much substance or direction.

@blacknyellowsquid said:

I know. I kept waiting for some poignant reveal or something at the end...maybe it was all in Susan's head, a wishful thinking kind of thing? She was an insomniac and losing touch with reality? But then, they made a point to show the butler reading the ex's letter on the book too, so someone else saw it (the boo). So, he really did do the book, and the end was just Edward making a final grand stab to her, 10 years later? Standing her up just to be a dick? That didn't exactly fit with the personality we saw for him earlier. That seemed underdeveloped.

They made us sit through that fairly tedious movie for nothing, I felt. I feel like they were trying to make it ambiguous at the sake of it being any semblance of a satisfying movie to watch. I get it, not everything has to be spelled out all the time. But this movie just didn't have much substance or direction.

I have nothing to add. You've done an excellent job of summing up the entire mess. Oh... there is one thing... Michael Shannon's part actually began to feel like a story worth watching and then 'poof'. That mirage quickly vanished and the reality that I remained in pretentious drama hell, once again, became apparent.

@RoidDroidVoid said:

@blacknyellowsquid said:

Oh... there is one thing... Michael Shannon's part actually began to feel like a story worth watching and then 'poof'. That mirage quickly vanished and the reality that I remained in pretentious drama hell, once again, became apparent.

I largely agree with this, but I would add to Shannon's credit, he was the one actor in the piece who seemed to get whatever Ford was aiming for. There is a strangeness to Shannon's performance that the film could have used more of.

Standing her up for dinner is there for the audience to realise that the story is about her... To give us time to process how she destroyed their love and their family due to his weakness to fight for her...

The book's story is his message to her... There is no need for him to ever meet her again as he is dead inside (as was how the story ended)...

To have him meet her, to face her, would be to make a mockary of the whole idea of writing the novel... It's like a post-credits sequence, it devalues the movie that preceeds it and only sets up things, as an ad, for what follows 😉 ... It would defeat the purpose of this movie and of his novel...

I'm happy to have watched a pretty unique film, but I had major issues with the fact the book was established as being an overtly fictional book from the outset. So why should I care about the characters in what is clearly shown to be a work of fiction? I couldn't engage with any aspect of the book scenes because I knew it was all in JG's head.

The film would have worked far better if it was somehow revealed to be a book much later on, or if the book sections of the film was curtailed.

In terms of the ending, I felt it worked but was contrived. The 'revenge' would have been pitifully lacking in impact if Susan was happily married. There is no way JG can have known Susan had just found out she was being cheated on and would be emotionally fragile and desperate for a reconciliation. The most likely scenario was that she was happily married, a successful artist and was willing to see an old friend who had travelled far to see her. So in that regard the ending was horribly contrived. Plus the book was a bit rubbish, so JG risked Susan saying it was woeful and that she was using it to stabilise a shoogly table leg.

I did however like that a man being annoyed at being cheated on and having his child terminated without his consultation or knowledge was grounds for a mild revenge. It was all kind of understated in an era where Michael Bayism seems to creep into every corner of filmmaking. Most directors would have made the film end with JG blowing up the restaurant from a helicopter gunship OR JG leading Susan into a drive in the wilderness and stopping at some creepy shack with a bed.

So despite all the failings, I cut this one some serious slack.

6/10