I just finished watching
Indecent Proposal with
Robert Redford,
Demi Moore and
Woody Harrelson.
Wow. Just wow. I haven't been enraptured with a film in quite some time but this one was simply amazing. Given that it's 20 years old now and that I've never seen it, nor seen any clip of it until now, I admit that I had the premise of this film completely wrong.
The title while vaguely accurate and yet clearly vague is deceptive. For the past 20 years whenever I would come across this movie in various settings I would not give it any thought to watch because I had assumed, embarrassingly so, that it was just another Hollywood smutty flick with no plot and no real story to follow. That it was a movie for the moment, to capture some revenue with a young and beautiful
Demi Moore and nothing else.
What made me decide tonight after 2 decades to watch it is totally random and on a whim. I watched a movie the other day, I forget which one now, and this was at the bottom of the page on Netflix as a related movie and I said,
what the hay let's watch it.
What the movie is really about is good, old fashioned love and the struggle of finances and absolute trust in a relationship with the inevitable self doubt and what if's that entail those rare chances of fate and how a couple navigates the pitfalls of life.
I was totally enthralled with the mood of the film and the way the score tugged on your heart strings and made you feel like you were the one wrestling inside with the proposal.
David & Diane were a young couple truly in love with each other and living a modest life together when financial troubles came about. Desperate they made a last ditch effort to get some money to pay off their debts and went to Las Vegas to chance it all after borrowing $5,000 from David's father.
Diane while window shopping, dreaming of a dress she could never afford catches the eye of a billionaire who fancies her immediately while she shuns and evades his charm. Later when their luck runs out and they have lost all the money they won and what they arrived with, David and Diane, by chance bump into John at the high stakes table where the story begins to take off.
The struggle of such a proposal for a couple down on their luck, in desperate need of money must have been agonizing. They have their marriage and unwavering love for one another at stake up against financial security for the rest of their lives. One night with another man for $1,000,000 would set them off on financial freedom, but at the same time could end up driving them apart.
Part of the deal between David & Diane was that they would never talk about that night after it happened. The emotions David felt and endured were too much for him, and probably for any man, and when he would think about it, it would eat him up inside. Asking Diane about it would break the deal and put her in an impossible position with which anything she said, whether true or false wouldn't satisfy David because he lost trust in her - through his own feelings, despite her unwavering love and affection.
Just by his asking and not trusting her answers drove them apart. She tried to avoid it and not talk about it, but the bitterness of that one night got to be too much for him and it turned him against his only love, his reason for living.
How can such an impossible situation arise and not wreak havoc in the lives of those involved?
From John's perspective, he saw a beautiful woman he wanted and he had the money and the power to get what he wanted. He set the stage and put the pieces in motion to get her and drive her and David apart. Buying their house and property two days after they were too late on payments ensured she would go after him for it and no doubt cause tensions at home with David.
John played his game and played it well. He succeeded in his goal for a time. But in the end, the money she left David from that night proved to each of them that after all, it wasn't the money that kept them together, but it was in fact, love for each other. John realized this when he saw how she looked at David and knew that she would never look at him the same way no matter what.
That was an exceptional film and I am glad to have finally watched it because I was just taken in by the whole thing and captured by it. I was surprised to see that it only got 5 of 10 stars on the IMDb though.
, I do have these all in DVD/iTunes video format too.
