Merlot Commentary and Spoilers Part III

Next she pours the wine and stares at Robert this is where she delivers the line "I had a dream we were married, we had a son, you use to read to me" In reality she was married to him they did have a son and he would read to her. In her fantasy she has kept something that use to bug her and now she wishes she could have it back.

There is the story of a man who would come home from work late and leave his shoes outside the bedroom door. Every morning when the wife left the room she saws these shoes and it drove her to rage. One night the man had a heart attack at work and never came home. After a couple of nights the reality of his death hit the wife when she did not see his shoes there in the morning. Something she hated became something she wished she could have. Much in the same Robert's reading of Poetry would drive Miriam crazy but now she wishes she could have it. Her Yelling Shut up is a great scene for two reasons one is he is reading a poem about his death and she wants him to stop and two him reading poetry drove her nuts and when she yells shut up she immediatly is lost and would not mind if he was there to keep reading.

The music by Richard Temple is perfect here. When working with Richard he provided several peices of music to set moods of tension, or despair. In the end we ended up combining all of those sketches together to make an entirely new sketch. Richards compositions really help set the tone for the emotional state of Miriam.

"I dont want this anymore, I have cheesecake" After Miriams flash of a dream or memory she comes back to the dinner and the mood has changed she starts breaking down, reality is seeping into her fantasy, the fact that her husband is gone is seeping in. We can hear heels walking down a hallway and hear and see images of a fan. The fan.....The fan is actually a fan from the hospital and as she sits there trying to escape the reality of her loss this fan is buzzing in the hallway of the hospital as a reminder of where she really is. Showing the fan with the grate off was one of many ideas Jeff generated. Thank you Jeff. So Miriam finally gets Robert to tell her his story that he has been writing.

Roberts story
A painter named James met a woman named Elizebeth. Her beauty inspired him to paint her. As they would meet and James would paint her, Elizebeth began to fall in love with James and assume James must feel the same way about her. The last time James and Elizebeth meet James fiance stops in to talk briefly. Elizebeth is crushed and feels humiliated for having these feelings for him. In the end Elizebeth kills James.

Robert tells this to Miriam in a poetic way and just like the story we hear Roberts cell phone ring and relize that Robert is actually in love with someone else already. *note mortally blassant - wounded to death
Miriam excuses herself from the table and heads to the bathroom to escape thru medication. The pills fall on the floor, she picks them up and looks in the mirror. This is where she begins the decent into reality, She begins to have flashes of her lost son. Not only has she been humilated in her fantasy that she takes as reality but her reality haunts her. In the end she wants the fantasy to be over and she wipes everything out. You see her come out and the condo is now empty except for Robert and it is implied that she kills him. Bringing to life the story he was writing, and the story he was writing is a bit telling on how she feels responsible for his death and her sons death. Its not as easy or two dimensional as that either her killing off Robert could also be the rage she feels for him doing this to her, or that she is being cold blooded in ending the fantasy to try a different version. Ultimitly she is grieving more for the loss of her son then her husband. In this fantasy she feels as if somehow if they had just been friends and not married they would still be alive. All of this fantasy we have been watching is not the first time she has tried to create this alternate universe this is one of many versions.

more to come ... (but not much more)