MovieChat Forums > The Last Tycoon (1976) Discussion > Monroe doesn't lose Kathleen

Monroe doesn't lose Kathleen

posted 9 years ago by chitownblues
2 replies | jump to latest

Let's analyze Monroe a bit. He suffers from the loss of someone he loved earlier in his life. He is purposely deeply involved with his work of movie-making, so much so that it becomes his "reality" (i.e., escape from it). He even says it in the movie, "it's my life". Things seemed to have stopped progressing for him, probably about the time that he stopped having the house on the beach built. Now he's "just making pictures". He doesn't ask Kathleen to marry him, even while she "threatens" that she will marry some other guy. (I think Kathleen really wanted to "have a quiet life" with Monroe, and a continuance of the intimacy they shared at the started beach house, and I think they both were genuinely in love with each other). Monroe doesn't have to take a chance at losing Kathleen, because he can keep her in his heart, and that's exactly what he does. Oh, he'll go on to make more movies, start things and not finish them, live through the movies he creates, and date other beautiful girls, even actresses. She's always the same girl afterall, right? And he's going to keep her, and no one can take "her" away from him--he doesn't lose her, he has found a way to make her his for all time.

[–] joliet_jane 9 years ago

Maybe. But at the end of the film, Monroe's career is gone too. People conspired against him, and his broken heart betrayed him, leading to his professional downfall. He can't control films any more. It's over. Perhaps he's talking to the studio itself. "I don't want to lose you." His creative fire died, his power is gone, and now he has nothing.

The ending is so weird in comparison to the rest of the film. Maybe's about the director, Elia Kazan? He was a groundbreaking filmmaker, but this is his last movie and he lived for decades later. Maybe this movie is really about Elia Kazan dying inside and losing his love for creation. At the end, Monroe just vanishes into a black, empty soundstage. Black as death. The end.

[–] chitownblues 9 years ago

Career gone? Nah. Only if he wanted it to be. People recover, pick themselves up, come back, stronger than ever. What were you thinking when he walked into that stage set building and disappeared into the darkness inside? (<-Asked before I read your second paragraph). I was crossing my fingers that we wouldn't hear a gunshot. And we didn't. :) The director left us without disastrous finality, which he could have easily done for "shock value" if he wanted to. Stop being so pessimistic! Monroe is a tough cookie. He does not have nothing. He didn't make movies to be powerful. His intensity came from deep inside, and nothing and no one can ever take that away from him. The love has to go somewhere--it's the law of entropy or something--and if it manifested itself to some degree in his movies (his "work"), aren't we the lucky ones.