I got some serious vibes from him...especially when the principal (or whoever that was) asked why his daughters haven't been to school in 2 weeks...he was like "did you check out back?" (or something) and walked away all fidgety..there were also several other occasions like that.
...Checking how many f#cks will be given today... Sorry, no f#cks will be given today.
I think his wife was the centre of it all though, he wanted the girls to go to the Prom but he said his wife wouldn't agree. I think he just got sucked in, it seemed to me all the 'punishments' the girls got came from their Mum. It's been a while since I've watched it though, I'll have to re-watch because it's an interesting thing to look for.
Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves - Bill Hicks
he wasn't mentally ill in the way you're thinking no....he was greiving the death of cecilia, and grief makes you do and say crazy things thus is the nature of it. And he was the one who offered to throw a party for her, and to allow the girls to go to prom despite his wife's misgivings. He wanted his daughters to have a good time, and you could clearly see he loved them very much.
I think he was just a pushover and the thought of confronting his wife about keeping the girls locked away made him anxious.
shareI see two things that, regardless of the mental health of the men involved, are all too common in many fathers.
1) Whether he secretly wanted a son, or just thought a girl should be raised primarily by her mother, he left most of the important decisions concerning the girls to his wife;
2) he further showed, in his conversational bragging to the boys about his aviation knowledge and experience, his desperate desire for male company.
Not saying that more involvement would have saved his daughters-but, taking the movie's title into account, it couldn't have hurt!
Best to you all, LegendaryRambler
In the book, he's shown to be mentally ill in a way, but not in the way of his psychotic wife. I think he loved his daughters, but he allowed his wife to wear the pants & tyrannize the family with her nutsy ideas.
He was...whipped basically.
"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."
In the book it mentions him having conversations with the plants he kept in the classroom and it shows this in the movie as well (he asks them if they had photosenthisized their breakfast and called them each by their latin names, among other things) I don't think he was mentaly ill but he was definatly becoming unhinged.
shareThe sad part is if hehad spoke up, maybe the other 4 would still be alive.
sharethere was a short scene in the movie where he talked with plants too.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
See this is what I thought too. Later in the film the fathers mental illness seemed more apparent. In the first half of the film I thought it was just the Mother who had mental issues.
share