This is a great film but

just to add onto Disarder's fine reply, Wade also was still trying to be as tough or tougher than his old man so that visit to the dentist would have seemed like something a "welp" would do rather than what a real man (like his father) would do ... if he'd had the tooth fixed properly the rest of the story i am certain would have been very different (tho perhaps not significantly) ... the tooth keeps distracting him from thinking clearly and in the end leads him to ruin ...

also you have to consider the level of pain (physical and psychological and spiritually) Wade has lived with throughout his life ... surely there were plenty of beatings from his father as he was growing up (we see one such beating in a flashback scene when he stands up to his father who is about to take out his anger on Rolfe and the boys' mother) and it leads me to think that Wade doesn't realize that the amount of pain he has been hauling around with his all his life ISN'T NORMAL ... growing up as he did, the pain he constantly feels on all levels must be what he considers normal ... what else would he have to compare it against? so the pain from the tooth is like all the other pain in his life and is simply something he never considers as abnormal, thus he never seeks out "professional" help from a dentist just as he never considers seeking professional help for his alcoholism, for his psychological damage, etc ... it is normal to him so why would he think he needs help from someone else? ... and you can add on the fact that "real men" can handle all their problems themselves and never need to seek out help since it would show others that they are weak, that they are, in the words of Wade's father, a "welp" ... earlier in the flashback scene when the father raises a hand to smack Rolfe with, Rolfe runs and seeks protection from his mother, something he is mocked for by his father ... we can be certain this mocking was more common than the physical beatings tho the psyhcoligical damage that was inflicted was just as deep and the scars left just as heavy ...

no matter how bad a role model Wade's father is, he is still Wade's role model and Wade takes this role model into his own personality becoming much like his father no matter how bad it is ... remember the father's rezction to Wade's knocking his daughter down near the end of the film and bloodying her nose and Sissy Spacek rescues the daughter and "escapes" ... the father comes outside bursting with pride at how Wade has finally stood up to the women in his life, showing them thru physical abuse who is really in charge, showing them he is a real man like his father ... the father brags and boasts and congratulates Wade on how Wade finally turns to the only way the father sees (and the only example his father ever set) of how to deal with the women (or anyone else you have a disagreement with for that matter) in your life, that is, thru physical abuse ... it was probably the ONLY positive reaction Wade ever got from his father for anything he (Wade) ever did ... his father's view on Wade's handling of his personal life or indeed on Wade himself up to that point was constant berating, beating, and belittling until Wade finally handled a situation just as his father would have handled it ... what other kind of human being could Wade ever have become when the only praise he ever received from his father over the course of 50-odd years of his (Wade's) life was when Wade bloodied his daughter's nose? ... Wade could only become his father with a life like that ...

Wade might have received the praise earlier if the father had witnesses Wade extracting his own tooth ... that is how a "real man" deals with problems ... only "weak men and welps" ask for help ...

i've rambled on long enough but this is a truly stunning film with many layers to consider ...


take care,
cormac


"One star in the sky
so I named it Otis Redding"
-- John Hiatt