To understand Walken’s character, you first need to understand his mother, his sisters, and his father. In childhood, he witnessed his sisters wearing his mother’s clothes, looking beautiful like goddesses. He tells this to their father, and the father violently punished the sisters in front of Walken, to his delight as the newly crowned favourite child. Eventually the sisters get their revenge, setting him up for extreme punishment. These events are why Walken’s character hunts the beautiful Colin, and eventually kills him, only to later be caught and punished by the police, which he assured by spreading rumours about his domestic and romantic troubles, using his name at airport security etc. He goes through life looking for beauty, and gets his gratification from their pain, the climax to which is getting caught. There are more layers of course, mostly around masculinity and femininity (whether it’s the large manly father, Colin’s thighs that everyone is looking at, his submission to being punched etc.) but I need to think about that more as I only finished this film 30min ago. Ultimately though, this is a film about the dangers of beauty, a theme in many of Schrader’s films.
To understand Walken’s character, you first need to understand his mother, his sisters, and his father. In childhood, he witnessed his sisters wearing his mother’s clothes, looking beautiful like goddesses. He tells this to their father, and the father violently punished the sisters in front of Walken, to his delight as the newly crowned favourite child. Eventually the sisters get their revenge, setting him up for extreme punishment.
These events are why Walken’s character hunts the beautiful Colin, and eventually kills him, only to later be caught and punished by the police, which he assured by spreading rumours about his domestic and romantic troubles, using his name at airport security etc. He goes through life looking for beauty, and gets his gratification from their pain, the climax to which is getting caught.
There are more layers of course, mostly around masculinity and femininity (whether it’s the large manly father, Colin’s thighs that everyone is looking at, his submission to being punched etc.) but I need to think about that more as I only finished this film 30min ago.
Ultimately though, this is a film about the dangers of beauty, a theme in many of Schrader’s films.
Crazy! Pow! 🕳️🤨
Don't Look Now it's Chris Walken!