MovieChat Forums > Hysteria (2011) Discussion > Understanding the father character

Understanding the father character

posted 12 years ago by Rheli
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Find his motives difficult to understand. He's willing to actually spend money to put his own daughter into jail?!? For what reason would an otherwise rational man of science hate his own child so much? If this really happened I think some scenes showing the evolution of his attitude were needed. Maybe they exist and were cut out? This put a big hole in the movie.

It's also odd that he's so resistant to the new technology since again, he's a man of science. He ought to be very open to that. I could think that maybe he's not a man of science, but then how did he come to develop this unusual therapy in the first place.

Where's your crew?
On the 3rd planet.
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[–] DotTheEyes 12 years ago

*Spoilers*

Agreed. He was easy enough to understand at first: a decent man tied in certain respects to Victorian gender roles and therefore reluctant to embrace his daughter's more radical social ideas. I could roll with this. But by the time he's buying the $200 debt and sending dimwitted, ill-tempered goons to her halfway house to shut it down by force, he seems downright...evil.

I s'pose his actions lead into the big court case, though, which I found contrived in general. I half expected a character to yell, "WE WILL PUT THE SYSTEM ON TRIAL!" This film in general goes a bit nuts in the third act. For most of its running time, it's a pleasant enough, if minor period comedy romp. Then it goes in these wild directions at the end: heavy-handed sermonizing for a while, then completely absurd (Queen Victoria and her vibrator).

[–] chefz2 12 years ago

I don't think he's so much a man of science than a man who understands money and profit and social standing. He makes his living by giving bored, wealthy women orgasms. Charlotte's choice to help the poor threatens not only her safety but the family's name and clientele.

Also, if you take into account the events mentioned in the trial, any woman who expressed any dissatisfaction or refused to conform was either considered insane, sick or poor. Just helping a woman out of prostitution was enough to label Charlotte as a prostitute herself. Her father probably put her in the same catergory and thought he was helping her by forclosing on the settlement.

As for the vibrator, electricity was still pretty new at that point. It's a pretty crazy idea for the time if you think about it. You're asking wealthy woman to hook a generator to their hoo-ha and hang-on for dear life. That could have back-fired badly.

"Oh my god you cannot just name an owl Carl!!"-Pottergoose