I mentioned earlier that the hero of this film goes through something like a mid-life crisis, by which I mean that he does something crazy, making his life over as a result. He finds that he isn't really the person he thought he was (an inconsequential manual laborer), and that he doesn't belong in the confining city of his past.
Here's what I found most interesting about this film:
Danny shares a house with his girlfriend, about whom Jimmy "the Tulip" Tudeski (The Whole Nine Yards, another of my favorite movies--Matthew Perry is hilarious) would say, "She's not a good person."
They live together, but they aren't married (not to mention the fact that she's about to embark on an affair)--and so I am not disturbed when Danny runs off and falls in love with someone else. However, had they been married, I would have found this very troubling.
For instance, in the movie Diaries of a Mad Black Woman, the heroine gets revenge against her cheating husband, divorces him and starts a new life with someone else. While I very much like the movie, I am troubled by the divorce because in the course of the film the husband "mends his evil ways," to use a cliche. This is very troubling to me because of what I believe about the sanctity of marriage, and Tyler Perry admits many of his fans were disappointed in the ending, which was different from that of the play.
In Danny Deckchair the fact that Danny and what's-her-name aren't married does away with this predicament.
What does this imply about marriage?
Michael has some good comments to add to this, by the way.
1 comment:
When we see the chick (who shall remain unnamed, at least until someone remembers her name) is having an affair, hanging around with Sandy, is this the point when she begins the affair or is it just the point when Danny officially discovers what she's doing? I don't think she put much effort into hiding her activity if she just began the affair. Her casual approach to the situation seems to imply something about her commitment to relationships in general.
Another question: is it disturbing that the chick is having an affair? Since the audience is supposed to identify with Danny, and he clearly is troubled by her betrayal, I gathered there was something special about the committed non-married couple's relationship only because Danny was hurt by it; apparently her affair was supposed to bother us (and it worked on me). I appreciate that her selfish nature is the cause of the problem here, and that the widely accepted modern myth that "marriage is the problem" is shown to be false.
On a side note, it seems Danny's running off (not so bad) and finding a new love so quickly (this is the bad part) is somewhat troublesome, even if the film doesn't allude to any problem here. The totally shallow way their relationship progressed and developed bothered me too; he has no way of knowing this new relationship won't end badly also. Is he just shacking up again? Danny tries once to let Glenda know something about him, but other than that they don't seem interested in learning anything about each other, and yet they "fall in love".
At least there was a line saying living with the girlfriend is "even worse"; I think shacking up was being compared to marriage. It was good to see a hint of real love near the end, with Danny repeatedly shouting, in front of everyone else watching them, "what ever it takes!"
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