Nocturnal Animals Is Not About Revenge
And Edward is a toxic person
If you open the mail and find a book ABOUT you written FOR you by your ex husband who you left NINETEEN YEARS before, you should burn the book, tell your him to never contact you again and, if you’re filthy rich like Susan, tell your head bodyguard to triple security until further notice.
First things first: Susan might be the protagonist in the movie, but this story is about Edward. He’s the one who gets the ball rolling in the beginning by sending her a copy of his book; the book itself is about him; and the glimpses of the present and past are from Susan, yes, but in relation to Edward and his book. What’s left if we eliminate him from this movie? Almost nothing, which is fitting precisely because this is Edward’s problem: he thinks everything is about him.
For most of the movie Edward is shown as a nice guy: smart, handsome, romantic, understanding, idealistic and sensitive, if a little fragile. Pretty much the same can be said about Tony, his alter ego of sorts. Both are also victims: Edward sees himself as a victim of Susan and of her mom’s poisonous idea, while Tony is a victim of Ray. But in the second half we start getting glimpses of Edward’s other side, starting when he shows her a piece of his writing and she gives him some constructive criticism:
This is when we start seeing his insecurity, which is understandable for a writer or any kind of sort, but here’s a horrible thing, true nonetheless: it’s nobody’s job to believe in you. It’s no one’s responsibility to make you feel good about yourself. People don’t exist FOR you, every person has a life of their own that’s hard enough to take care of, and while we might want and maybe even expect those close to us to support our work, to resent them for not doing so selfish and childish. But Edward doesn’t care about that, he cares only about what HE thinks and feels and believes, all other people are playing roles in the narrative of his life. Susan even says that herself when they break up:
The breakup dialogue is telling. He has an image of her, a role he wants her to play, but she doesn’t fit it and she knows it. There she is, telling what she really feels, but he doesn’t listen to her, he keeps repeating his beliefs about how they’re perfect for each other and how when you love someone you have to hold on to it and blahblahblah. He doesn’t try to understand her side, there’s no empathy, all he can think about is me, me, me, me.
But no scene is more telling than this:
How did he end up there, in front of the abortion clinic? He didn’t go out to get bread and stumble upon them, right? No, he followed them there, and remember, this is after the breakup. He could be in the bar drinking himself to oblivion to try and forget her; he could be anywhere else, but he’s there, stalking them. It’s obvious that this is a guy who can’t let go, who’s clinging to his image of her and of what they had together. But it’s less obvious that he’s a toxic, narcissistic guy who thinks he’s entitled to know what she’s up to and thus entitled to follow her to find out.
Second: why does he show himself? He could have watched from afar and gone away quietly without ever being seen, he could even have gotten mad and started banging on her car and screaming, “YOU BITCH, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU KILLED MY CHILD!”. But he chooses to stand in front of her car, staring at nothing and looking sad and empty… playing the role of a victim. He does this because he needs her to know he knows; he needs her to feel guilty about this so that she takes all the blame.
Again, he never thinks about her side. We, as the audience, see that this wasn’t easy for her: having an abortion is never an easy choice, and it’s especially hard on her because she’s a catholic. But try and do what Edward can’t, which is to think through her perspective: what are her alternatives? Stay married to a guy she can’t stand anymore? Sustain this pregnancy and share parenthood with the guy she can’t stand anymore, each weekend one of them gets the baby? Sustain the pregnancy and give him the baby? I’m not saying she did the right thing, I’m saying a) her decision is understandable given the circumstances and b) having an abortion was preferable to all other choices because all other choices involve Edward.
This is why he needs her to take all the blame, so he doesn’t have to look at himself. “Maybe I have some fault in this” is not something that goes through his head, and “perhaps there’s something I’ve done to drive this woman into having an abortion” CERTAINLY isn’t what he thinks. No, all that matters is himself, so it’s logical and fitting that Susan leaves him for a guy who’s understanding:
It’s great that Hutton feels useless, because it means he understands this is not his burden. The best he can do is be there to support her, to put his hand on hers and tell her it’ll all be fine, and that’s it; she has to deal with it on her own. What Edward would have done I’m not sure, but it surely wouldn’t be this.
Many people seem to think this is a movie about revenge, but I disagree. Revenge implies intention: this person was bad to me, so I’m going to be bad to them to get even. But we have no evidence of his intentions: we know he sends the copy of his book to Susan and then exchanges some emails with her, but we don’t know why.
We can get some evidence in the book though, if we take it as a parallel for his life: Susan is both Tony’s wife and Ray, the wife being the married-to-Edward Susan and Ray being the new her, the one poisoned by her mom’s thoughts, the one that kills their relationship and their child. The book is Edward’s personal account of their relationship and how it ended, and Tony represents himself, which is why both characters are played by the same actor.
In the book Tony, isn’t in it for revenge. He helps the detective, he wants to see Ray arrested, wants him to pay for his crimes. He has many chances to punch Ray in the face or at least scream at him, “YOU LYING MOTHERFUCKER, YOU KILLED MY WIFE AND CHILD, SAY IT TO MY FACE”. But he never does any of that. Indeed, he only resorts to vigilante justice when the system fails him, when there’s no option left, and even when he has a gun pointed to the two guys responsible for his life’s misery he still can’t pull the trigger, and they sense it, and they run away. Right after that he finally says what he’s felt all along, what we suspect he feels but don’t know for sure: guilt.
I should have stopped it! I should have protected them. I should have seen it coming. I should have stopped it. I should have stopped it. I should have stopped it.
I, I, I, I. It’s all about me.
In a way, I empathize. These are the cries of a man in pain, who’s troubled by this thought every single day.
But in another way, I despise him, because there’s absolutely nothing he could have done and deep down he knows it, and yet he keeps playing the victim.
In the book, there’s nothing Tony could have done: he was outnumbered, out-gunned, out of phone signal. There was no way he could have protected his family. In real life, there was nothing Edward could have done: Susan could decide to have an abortion without consulting him, and she did, and he KNOWS that, which is why he wrote a book about a guy that gets himself into a hopeless situation. The same applies to his real life: there nothing he could have done to save Susan from becoming a different person, there’s nothing he could have done to save his child, those were decisions Susan could and did take by herself. Edward is irrelevant, powerless… weak.
That’s the magic work, right. Towards the end, Ray even dares Tony to kill him:
It’s fun to kill people. You of all people should try it sometime.
[…] I remember your fucking wife. I remember fucking your wife.
But Tony does nothing to this. He only does something when he hears this:
You’re too weak. Too fucking weak, you know. You’re too weak to do anything about it.
That’s what triggers him (and his gun): for all this time he could do nothing and now he’s been pushed past the line, he can’t take it anymore, he has a gun in his hand and he HAS to do something. Letting Ray go is the thing a weak guy would do and Tony can’t take being weak any more, he can’t stand feeling powerless, so he does the only thing he can: pull the trigger. Not because he wants Ray dead, but because it would be unbearable to let Ray live, and yes those are different things: in the first case the motivation is revenge, in the second it’s the avoidance of humiliation.
Take this as a parallel for his real life and Edward didn’t write the book to get back on Susan, to prove he’s better than her, to make her regret leaving him or whatever. He wrote it because he couldn’t not write it: the book is his gun, it’s all the power he has, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did nothing with that power. Tom Ford himself talks about this in an interview when asked about the ambiguous end of the movie:
Does he not show up as an act of revenge, or does he not show up because he just literally can’t face her?
There you have it.
