What Did Simon Do To Gordo In The Gift
What Did Simon Do To Gordo In The Gift - As Criticwire noted last week, Joel Edgerton's "The Gift," whose main claim to fame was previously an advanced ad campaign willing to straddle the line between generating viral buzz and pure and simple harassment, ended up being one of the highest-rated films . in 2015: Currently ranked #28 on the Rotten Tomatoes Cumulative Rankings.
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What Did Simon Do To Gordo In The Gift
And yet, as the opening weekend wore on, it became clear that the ending of "The Gift" struck a very sour note with some critics and viewers, in some cases turning what was previously admiration or delight into seething anger. Edgerton, making his directorial debut, is a sure hand behind the camera and slowly turns the screws as the film constantly shifts audience allegiances and even our idea of who the protagonist might be as deftly as any other.
anything else by David Twohy 'Complete'. He's leaving.” We open with sympathy for Jason Bateman's Simon, who has just returned to the vicinity of his childhood to start a new job, and especially for his wife Robyn, a designer, who is resting while the couple recovers from a miscarriage and tries to conceive
another child. . And we're spooked by Edgerton's Gordon, Simon's high school classmate, who seems to harbor a grudge against a mysterious (or allegedly faked) past. This is a movie to start with what might be the sound of footsteps in a California home , bathed in light, where you are constantly aware of the edge of the frame and what may be hiding outside, it is not afraid of jumps, but it does not rely on them either, it prefers to slowly and even ambiguously build tension, because in reality we never know whether the right
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the threat comes from Gordon, or Simon's reaction to him. then, just as "The Gift" lands its punch, the bottom drops out. By now, we've established that far from being a victim, Simon is and always has been a manipulative jerk: in high school, when he started a vicious rumor about "crazy Gordo" that ruined his life;
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and into adulthood, where he fabricates evidence to sabotage his rival for career advancement. (Though “The Gift” doesn’t make much of it, there is a certain resonance between Simon’s penchant for information manipulation and his work in the digital security industry.) We realize that he reached out to Robyn, and that she may have even drawn him to her mainly because
she is a recovering drug addict and therefore prone to self-doubt. Simon was so close to having everything he wanted: a top job, a beautiful wife who could be persuaded to give up her career and raise the child he was once again carrying in her womb.
But as Robyn reaches the end of her pregnancy, she begins to realize who Simon is and that she doesn't want to be a part of it. Still lying in her hospital bed after giving birth, she tells Simon that their marriage is over, and he returns her the last of a series of gifts that Gordon has been leaving in their house since the beginning of the film - and there she is.
The Gift
these things go really wrong. In addition to the collapsible carrier, the package also includes a DVD showing Gordon sneaking into the couple's house, drugging Robyn and getting into bed with her, implying that he raped her and might even be the father of her newborn.
son. Just as Gordon had to live with the vicious rumors Simon started about him in high school, Simon will have to live with the knowledge that his wife may have been raped, a "poison in your mind" that never goes away. Of course, says Gordon, it really isn't.
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But maybe it is. Our culture of spoilers doesn't allow first-wave critics to discuss the plot of a movie in depth, especially one that relies on suspense and twists as much as "The Gift," but few critics who talked about the movie even hinted that
that its end could be deceived. (Matt Singer of ScreenCrush raised a red flag, and Katie Walsh of The Playlist noted that "Robyn, who is the film's emotional core throughout, is reduced to a battlefield of psychological revenge between two men.") But when opening night was over
The Gift
the gloves are off. Mary Sue's Rebecca Pahle wrote that after maintaining the ambiguity of whether the film's villain is Simon or Gordon, "the twist resets 'The Gift' into the same old territory. Creepy Gordo is a freak. And Simon always ends up being the victim. He might have been
a bully who usually lies to his wife and psychologically manipulates her, but hey, he's never sexually abused anyone! And he's also never faced the fact that his behavior is bad... And Robyn, who has developed the most so far, is degraded to something two guys can fight over. Interesting concept. He gave a compelling and creepy performance. His cast did a wonderful job bringing these deeply flawed characters to life, bringing the tension and drama to dizzying heights. And
then he rocked it with the kind of ending you expect from brainless soap operas. It tainted the entire movie in its final moments, which left this critic appalled. And Flavorwire's Jason Bailey concluded: As far as twists go, it's pretty stupid; as a friend of the critic in the lobby observed after the press screening, the film seems to be deliberately ignoring the existence of DNA testing.
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But even without that objection, it's still a mighty lousy button to hang your movie hat on—yet another example of (usually male) TV writers and filmmakers using rape as a shock, pressing the button too often and too carelessly. In "The Gift" it's not scary and it's not clever;
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it's just cheap. You could say it's also part of the national thriller tradition that "The Gift" seems to be drawing on; 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' uses sexual assault as a major plot point to pick the most obvious example, while the narratives and tensions of films like 'Unlawful Entry' and 'Sleeping with the Enemy' are undeniably driven by the threat (explicit or not)
rape. But these films were made in a different time and culture, and to present such a film as some sort of wretched, crass "gotcha" leaves an otherwise laudable image with a decidedly sour aftertaste. The ending of "The Gift" is a serious mistake, and I wonder if that wasn't the reason why the film was pushed into the August heat wave.
But I don't think it's exactly a disaster. On the one hand, it's abundantly clear that Gordon didn't really rape Robyn. It wouldn't fit the tone of the movie, which is awkward but not completely insane, and it wouldn't fit its purpose, which is to visit Simon with the same kind of fantasy horror that Simon visited him with in high school.
If Simon were a more truthful person, Gordon points out, he might believe Gordon when he says he isn't. But Simon has built his life on deception, and simple trust is beyond his reach. (You can argue, as some colleagues do, that it doesn't matter that Gordon raped Robyn, and that's certainly true when it comes to "The Gift," which uses the fear of rape as a plot point. But at least (some difference in how we understand