The Crying Game— the Trail Of False Identities

The Crying Game was a breakthrough film that goes beyond the director’s vision.
While the filmmaker can speak to his/her intent after the fact, the audience has only the information that appears on the screen. The material is the material. Per the excellent essay by Na.tash Tr.oop, we see how Jordan attempts to reposition his material in hindsight — twenty-five years worth.
If Jordan were intent on establishing Dil, to use his word, as a “transvestite,” he had all the power in the world as the director to lay these lines somewhere in the script and bring them to the screen instead of the cutting room floor. He didn’t and so we are not forced to accept the assertion. Instead we are allowed to draw our own conclusions.
The story leads us to the mysterious Metro bar, where Fergus works out his obsession with Dil and in some ways ultimately his obsession with Jody. On the lamb in his own disguise as the Scottish persona “Jimmy,” Fergus returns as close as he can to the scene of the crime — the crime being the death of Jody, whose penis Fergus handled. The scene of the crime no longer Northern Ireland but Jody’s roots in England.
If Fergus was not obsessed, he would wisely have slipped into obscurity. But no. He tracks down Dil for his own reasons. While kissing Dil he fantasizes about Jody. Asks about him. Asks Dil if Jody would approve. What would Jody think? Odd for a man to dwell on another man while making out, though Fergus is actively seeking that man’s woman and she is in his arms.
Who is being deceitful here? The director suggests it is Dil, yet the story has more than enough deceit to go around, most of it coming from Fergus, not to mention the setup with the IRA.
And then there is the violence. Fergus strikes Dil and the main dialog was not just when she challenges, “You did know, didn’t you,” but when she asks, “What were you doing at the [Metro]?”
What indeed? Fergus’ secret is nearly exposed at that moment. Instead of resolving this, the scene focuses on his violence toward Dil and Fergus being sickened to the point of nausea. Yet this is not all the violence that Fergus is capable of such as getting into a fight with Dave in the alley.
It is Fergus who has initiated the violence and deception and has an “unnatural” attraction to Jody which then leads him to Dil where he further plays out this attraction in the manner some men who will express latent homosexual desires by sharing the same woman as a proxy.
Dil in the meantime is unaware of Fergus’ part in Jody’s death and takes the punch— “just not in the face” — for withholding her “real” identity, but Fergus keeps his secret.
Withholding the information continues even to the point where Jude appears. Jude who was also deceptive, central in luring Jody away by pretending something that she was not with far more sinister and deadly consequences — also using sexual wiels, but in Jude’s case to a nefarious purpose.
And still Fergus does not come clean as to his complicity when Jude arrives on the scene and all the guilt of Jody’s death is transferred to Jude and Dil conveniently guns her down so Fergus finally stops trying to pass as the Scottish “Jimmy” and ends up serving time in Dil’s place and yet having been complicit in Jody and Jude’s deaths, his finally serving time is more than deserved and not as altruistic as we might be led to believe.
The Director does not tell us the details of Dil between gunning down Jude and final scene where Dil visits Fergus in the prison. For all we know Dil has had bottom surgery, is now as fully a woman as is possible to be, and is planning to marry Fergus. Certainly the claim she is a “transvestite” is a weak one at that point given the material the director has provided us and the ending left this viewer, at least, wondering if the final piece of Dil’s journey to womanhood had already taken place or was about to.
It is interesting that all the violence — two deaths — not to mention the shootout at the knock shop — versus what seems to be the money shot is strongly focused on Dil’s pre-op status and the moment her stalker reacts when he blunders into another man’s life (Jody’s).
As for the other carnage. Well that’s nothing remarkable. Everyday stuff, this. Very understandable. But making out with with a pre-op? Well, that’s something else and worthy of of our collective disgust of the girl who you have been stalking.
