Local Hero: whose was the baby ?
n0r...@rigel.tamu.edu
miss something ?) at the end of the movie was, whose baby was that child in
the stroller ? The baby shows up in two scenes, one where Paul Reigert's
character asks "Whose child is that ?" and gets uncomfortable silence in
return, and once again towards the end as the people of the village are
taking the beef sandwiches (w/ and w/out mustard :-)) to the beachcomber's
shack.
So, can anyone tell me, whose child *was* that ? Mucho thanks in advance.
-Raghu
Ellen Evans
>So, can anyone tell me, whose child *was* that ? Mucho thanks in advance.
it being the Cold War and all. Hence the decision not to talk about it.
Ellen
Katie Livingston
>it being the Cold War and all. Hence the decision not to talk about it.
Really? Where did you find this? I had assumed that the point was that it
was such a small friendly village that people felt comfortable leaving
their children to be tended to by anyone who was around. I figured the
parents had left the baby earlier in the day with someone who then in
turn left it with someone else, until nobody there actually knew whose
baby it was. It was to drive home the point to McIntyre that he definitely
wasn't in a "regular" place.
n0r...@zeus.tamu.edu
>The father was the Soviet sub captain who wasn't supposed to be there -
>it being the Cold War and all. Hence the decision not to talk about it.
Thanks for the answer. Now here's the follow-up question :-): who was the baby's
mother ? Also, who was the woman who dropped him off at the shore when he first
arrived (she seemed to not like his going there --- was she his real wife or
something ?).
I guess that's more than one follow-up question. :-)
-Raghu
C. Duff
I think that's the joke: Nobody in the town knows whose child it is,
and consequently, neither does the audience. :)
Carolyn
Antony Helliwell
Sub Captain? I got the impression we was the captain of a Russian fishing
trawler... less glamorous, but more likely...
Antony (who's walked along the breakwater that the aforementioned captain
comes ashore at, no less).
Robert Schaper
: >The father was the Soviet sub captain who wasn't supposed to be there -
My impression from the hemming and hawing of all the hangers-about was
that she was the town (excuse me) trollop and none of them actually
knew who fathered the baby. Their embarrasment revealed their possible
participation. Thus the general corporate responsibility and acceptance
of the situation. In short, it was a gag.
Regards,
Bob Schaper
Linda B. Merims
boat captain? I never saw any evidence that that was so.
My conclusion was that the men didn't answer _because they
didn't know_. The joke being that it was the baby of one
of the town women who bestowed her favors rather widely
and any one of them could be the father. They'd just quietly
worked it out among themselves to be group fathers.
Linda B. Merims
Waltham, MA
l...@avs.com
Ellen Evans
>What makes you think the baby belonged to the Russian fishing
>boat captain? I never saw any evidence that that was so.
tape, so I could easily be wrong. It's just that the question first
comes up just before the trawling captain shows up, and they've
explained he isn't supposed to be there, and then the woman and the
captain, I believe, dance together quite happily at the caile. It
makes perfect sense in the context of the movie that the world order
implied by Houston and international oil and nation states, ie the good
guys and the evil empire, would be opposed to the extremely local order
of the traditional contacts between a fisherman whose people have
probably been fishing those waters for centuries and a small coastal
town some of whose ancestors - northern Scotland did get invaded more
than once - probably were related to some of the fisherman's ancestors.
I'll keep looking for that tape.
Ellen
je...@delphi.com
Nadia Dez
: I recently saw "Local Hero". One question that remained unanswered (or did I
I think that nobody knew who the father was, that maybe a lot of the men
had slept with the women ; they all felt guilty about the fact the
child didn't have a father but were also afraid it could be them.
THis seams to be the logical answer (deduced from the movie).
Nadia.
Sean Murphy
>From: ant...@isltd.insignia.com (Antony Helliwell)
>Subject: Re: Local Hero: whose was the baby ?
>Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 10:38:06 GMT
I would not be at all surprised if there WAS no father, or mother for that
matter - I ran across an interview with Bill Forsyth once in which the
interviewer asked a question he had been plagued by - was Marina really a
mermaid or not? Forsyth's reply was that he didn't know - he hadn't created
her as one or the other, just someone who might or might not be. I think he
does that a lot - creates situations where you're not sure about something -
and leaves it that way, without even having an answer himself.
Just my guess...
SMurph
dbru...@muvms6.wvnet.edu
On the "small friendly village" angle, I thought that was the point, too,
but in slightly a different way: remember how all the men kind of turned
quiet when McIntyre asked who the father was? ...Like it could have been
any of them?
--
"We all have that 'Barton Fink feeling' inside. But since you *are* Barton
Fink I would assume you have it in spades."