Hey guys, it's been really interesting reading your opinions on the movie, I read through this thread in a couple of days. I was really happy to find it because I first saw the movie back in like November, the DAY the first torrent with English subtitles came out. I have watched it so many times since, and have never found anywhere there was really in-depth conversation going on about it until now. There is so much I could reply to in these 49 pages but these were the things that stick in my mind now after finishing the thread.
Thanks so much to the person who translated the deleted scenes and the other person who linked to the video of all six of them (although in Russian, I was glad to see them anyway). The thing about the condom is weird. They obviously did not use a condom their first time. I thought, well maybe he was just like... rubbing up against him? But Kay's face was showing pain that was obviously meant to imply penetration was happening. And it made sense later to put that scene (with his mom finding the condom) in the context of his mom discovering them in the hospital, and her asking him how long it had been going on. She would have put two and two together, at that point (as well as the night shifts).
I don't think Kay and Britt had anything going on except a friendship that maybe she hoped would go somewhere, and it worked to hide Kay's sexuality from his colleagues. In the confrontation scene Kay said he wasn't sleeping with anyone else, and I don't really think he was lying. Besides that I think he is gay and doesn't have any problems with it, unlike Marc.
The people saying that Marc isn't gay or bisexual--I really don't get this and I never have, and people say that about almost every gay themed movie that has a closeted man in it, including Brokeback Mountain. I will never understand the people who say that Ennis isn't gay, when his incredible self-loathing surrounding his sexual orientation and how it totally stunts him, ruins his life as well as his family's lives, and renders him completely unwilling to do anything that will actually make him happy, was the entire POINT of the movie. It was not just a "love story" about a straight guy who fell in love with another guy. It's weird to me that people always want to fall back on that. It's like, even if their protagonist is having a gay affair, they still want him to be straight. Not talking to anyone posting here, by the way.
I like the review that somebody posted--about the color red signifying Marc's shame about his sexuality. Obviously, his shame doesn't approach Ennis's (we're in much more tolerant times, and Ennis's shame was as others have said, central to his character). But it is still there. We don't get enough of Marc's backstory to know if he's gay or bi, really. How many girlfriend's he's had or if Bettina was his only serious one, how their sex life was. We don't even know how old he is. One review I saw said he was 36, but I don't think that can be right. I thought mid/late 20s when I saw the movie, and lots of people only even start to question things at that age. Even today. Like others have said, he was relieved, he thought he had escaped Kay. It could be that he had been having gay feelings for a while, or Kay awakened them in him. I definitely think that, again as somebody else said, if Kay had never gotten transferred to his unit, he still would have eventually explored his gay feelings. Maybe 5, 10 years down the road. I don't think Kay pursued him SO aggressively for no reason--he knew that Marc had feelings for him.
One thing that I only saw get mentioned for the first time in the last couple pages is Marc's jealousy. I wonder how much of his being a total mess in the confrontation scene was due to his half pretend reason for being there, which was to accuse Kay of trying to out their relationship, and how much it had to do with him being mad that he thought Kay was sleeping with other men. Also it was just an excuse to see him again, as the scene follow the blue paint cleanup/'I'm suffocating' scenes which clearly implied that he was missing him. When he got to that accusation, I thought, oh, maybe that's what he's really mad about. I'm not sure. Notice his breakdown in that scene happened right after Kay said, "I'm not sleeping with anyone else." And it really shows the depth of his feelings, to me. Why would he be jealous about somebody who was just a 'one off.' I also liked the character development of how they showed he was immediately regretful after punching Kay, and then in that scene when he gets mad again, he turns around and upends the table instead of hitting Kay again.
Well this has been extremely long. And that's only a fraction of my thoughts about it. I'm just glad that there are people who are as interested in the movie as I am!
Topic: Free Fall - Freier Fall (Read 1230916 times)