![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Movie: Big Eden
I so shouldn't be starting a discussion now, because I'm taking off tomorrow to visit family and I'll have very limited Internet (and frequently no Internet at all), and yet I just watched Big Eden and I'm full of THOUGHTS (and warm fuzzies and squee) and I want to see if any of my flist has seen it because I want to talk about it!
And yes, I totally watched it because Tim DeKay was in it. XD But it was such a sweet, heartwarming movie ... by no means the greatest movie I've ever seen, especially since romance is not really my thing in general, but "small town in the north woods full of weirdos" is SUCH an easy sell for me, and the characters were adorable and I loved them. ♥ (Even when they were being idiots and breaking my heart a little bit.) It just pushed a lot of my buttons for characters coming together and forming weird little families and loving each other.
In particular, not surprisingly, I want to talk about Dean, Tim DeKay's character. Which I can't do without spoilers, so ...
I really wished we'd gotten more closure between Dean and Henry, since the last one-on-one scene they had in the movie was the breakup scene in the pantry. The later group scenes seem to indicate that they've salvaged at least some of their friendship, and that Henry was still close with Dean's kids and potentially with Dean as well, but ... the scene in the kitchen was so acrimonious and painful that I guess I wanted a little more than the movie gave us. Everybody got a happy ending in the romance department, but I wished that the movie had been more overt about how things worked out with Dean and Henry.
... at least in part because I never could really figure out how the movie wanted us to feel about Dean. I really couldn't tell for the longest time whether he was deliberately flirting with Henry or not, and finding out that he knew how Henry felt about him and still acted the way that he did -- come on, Dean, this is REALLY NOT ON, because he was totally leading him on, or at least taking advantage of Henry's feelings for him to get the closeness and emotional support that he wanted. But he really did love him, there's no doubt of that, and Henry, with his lack of communication and tendency to evade intimacy except when he wants it, is not exactly a saint in that relationship either (yes, okay, he waited for him twenty years, but that's not Dean's fault). I guess that as thoughtless as Dean often was with Henry, as much as he took him for granted, I could really relate to Dean's wanting him in his life so much that he was willing to try to be what Henry wanted him to be, in order to avoid losing him -- or at least, stringing him along so that he never had to give him a definite "no". I've absolutely been there with guy friends who had crushes on me (and it, er, ended really badly, and I knew it was selfish even at the time. But I can relate.) And I was also just glad that the movie went a completely different route than the homophobic freakout that I was half-expecting when super-macho Dean found out that his best friend was in love with him -- my reaction to the kiss in the kitchen was basically OH THANK YOU MOVIE FOR NOT RUINING DEAN FOR ME with a side of OH, DEAN.
And yet, he knew how Henry felt about him for all those years and still kept stringing him along ... and maybe stringing himself along as well, judging by the scene where he breaks down crying in the truck.
I don't think there were any good guys and bad guys in that situation -- they both had issues, they were both a little messed up and both using each other a little bit -- but I'm not entirely sure whether my sympathy for Dean is completely warranted, or is just a carryover from my warm fuzzies for Peter Burke.
In any case, as heartwarmingly satisfying as all the happy endings for the couples were, I was a lot more invested in Dean and Henry's (weird, hard-to-quantify, conflicted) relationship than in the more straightforward comedy-of-errors romance between Pike and Henry. I have a huge thing for relationships that defy categorization, where the characters clearly care about each other but things don't fit together in a neat and tidy way, and they really hit that button hard. And I want to talk about iiiiiiiit.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/378367.html with
comments.
And yes, I totally watched it because Tim DeKay was in it. XD But it was such a sweet, heartwarming movie ... by no means the greatest movie I've ever seen, especially since romance is not really my thing in general, but "small town in the north woods full of weirdos" is SUCH an easy sell for me, and the characters were adorable and I loved them. ♥ (Even when they were being idiots and breaking my heart a little bit.) It just pushed a lot of my buttons for characters coming together and forming weird little families and loving each other.
In particular, not surprisingly, I want to talk about Dean, Tim DeKay's character. Which I can't do without spoilers, so ...
I really wished we'd gotten more closure between Dean and Henry, since the last one-on-one scene they had in the movie was the breakup scene in the pantry. The later group scenes seem to indicate that they've salvaged at least some of their friendship, and that Henry was still close with Dean's kids and potentially with Dean as well, but ... the scene in the kitchen was so acrimonious and painful that I guess I wanted a little more than the movie gave us. Everybody got a happy ending in the romance department, but I wished that the movie had been more overt about how things worked out with Dean and Henry.
... at least in part because I never could really figure out how the movie wanted us to feel about Dean. I really couldn't tell for the longest time whether he was deliberately flirting with Henry or not, and finding out that he knew how Henry felt about him and still acted the way that he did -- come on, Dean, this is REALLY NOT ON, because he was totally leading him on, or at least taking advantage of Henry's feelings for him to get the closeness and emotional support that he wanted. But he really did love him, there's no doubt of that, and Henry, with his lack of communication and tendency to evade intimacy except when he wants it, is not exactly a saint in that relationship either (yes, okay, he waited for him twenty years, but that's not Dean's fault). I guess that as thoughtless as Dean often was with Henry, as much as he took him for granted, I could really relate to Dean's wanting him in his life so much that he was willing to try to be what Henry wanted him to be, in order to avoid losing him -- or at least, stringing him along so that he never had to give him a definite "no". I've absolutely been there with guy friends who had crushes on me (and it, er, ended really badly, and I knew it was selfish even at the time. But I can relate.) And I was also just glad that the movie went a completely different route than the homophobic freakout that I was half-expecting when super-macho Dean found out that his best friend was in love with him -- my reaction to the kiss in the kitchen was basically OH THANK YOU MOVIE FOR NOT RUINING DEAN FOR ME with a side of OH, DEAN.
And yet, he knew how Henry felt about him for all those years and still kept stringing him along ... and maybe stringing himself along as well, judging by the scene where he breaks down crying in the truck.
I don't think there were any good guys and bad guys in that situation -- they both had issues, they were both a little messed up and both using each other a little bit -- but I'm not entirely sure whether my sympathy for Dean is completely warranted, or is just a carryover from my warm fuzzies for Peter Burke.
In any case, as heartwarmingly satisfying as all the happy endings for the couples were, I was a lot more invested in Dean and Henry's (weird, hard-to-quantify, conflicted) relationship than in the more straightforward comedy-of-errors romance between Pike and Henry. I have a huge thing for relationships that defy categorization, where the characters clearly care about each other but things don't fit together in a neat and tidy way, and they really hit that button hard. And I want to talk about iiiiiiiit.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/378367.html with