I finally feel like I can say some real thoughts on the film now that I've seen it three times. The whole thing feels like a symphony, and there's only about 10 minutes of it that doesn't have score. Like it's one movement into another and into another. The editor, Dylan Tichenor, told me he was a little embarrassed by how much music there was, and I understand where he's coming from as music is so often a crutch, but here I feel like that symphonic idea is central to the DNA of the thing, and the music is the loveliest.
One major thing that I clocked onto this time was the idea (shared with THE MASTER) that these are two souls that are meeting again and again in different lives. I mean, I clocked onto that the first time when Alma literally says so toward the end of the film, but I thought about it in relation to the rest of the film, and in particular, with the idea of Alma's impulse to want to take care of Reynolds, and to have him be helpless. There is the scene when he is sick and hallucinating his mother, and Alma walks in and past the mother, and then walks by again and the mother is gone. His mind/heart begins to conflate Alma with his mother, who he misses very much.
Just before Reynolds meets Alma, he speaks of having an unsettled feeling that his mother is near him, watching over him. Then he meets Alma and takes her on a date then to his country home. He tells her that his mother is the first woman he dressed. He then dresses Alma, perhaps much the way he would've dressed his mother. Soon after, on the hill overlooking the sea, Reynolds says, "I feel as if I've been looking for you for a very long time." Alma: "You found me."
Without taking things QUITE literally, I do like to let some part of my brain take these things at face value when a character says, as Alma does here, and as Master does, that they are fundamentally connected with Reynolds/Freddie in past lives and future lives. The two balloons with messages that found their way to their intended destination (the beautiful poetic image from THE MASTER). And so I think about how very probably, Alma was born around the time that Reynolds' mother died, and the thing that he needs in Alma is subconsciously related to a feeling that he has found his mother again. Right after his hallucination of his mother blending with Alma, he proposes to Alma, having been previously so sure that he would never marry.
Their relationship is clearly more complicated than this, just as Freddie and Master's was, but there is this central recognition of each other, something that transcends the visible, moment to moment world.
The second-to-last image is Reynolds with his head in Alma's lap, as he must've done with his mother, this feeling of the ultimate homecoming and sense of peace. The final words spoken, spoken like a child to his mother, "... and I'm getting hungry."
What a lovely film.
An interesting tidbit from
when I talked to PTA at a reception for the film:
People kept asking PTA how Reynolds knew that Alma was poisoning him in the climactic scene. He said he meant for it to be very clear that Alma is doing this in plain sight of Reynolds, so there's no guessing on his part. They both know what's going on, but it's a staring contest ("If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose"). PTA didn't mean for this to be ambiguous. He felt a little bad that this wasn't clearer.
