Tuesday, December 12, 2006

[indecent proposal] money buys everything

This is not a film review but a look at what we were discussing today over a coffee or three. You remember the 1993 film with Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson? It had a plot right up Demi Moore’s alley.

Spoiler warning: Using real forenames, the plot went something like this: Woody and Demi are childhood sweethearts who marry, travel to Vegas to win a pot to finance his real estate gamble. They lose all. Just then, along comes billionaire Robert and offers a million if she’ll stay with him one night. The married couple have an agonizing ‘discussion’, she goes, it’s done, Woody gets upset over the next time period that she’s drifting away, they separate, Robert reappears, Woody realizes he must have her and at the showdown, Robert sees the lie of the land and bows out - the rest is speculation.

The one someone raised today was a little different. It starts with a penniless couple, the billionaire appears and makes the offer of a weekend away, she’s all for it but the husband’s not. However, he concedes they need the cash and she says that without it, they couldn’t get a home, couldn’t raise a family and so on. This cash would secure the yet-to-be-kids for ever. You know the score. He concedes the point after she assures him it’d be strictly one weekend and that’s all.

Needless to say, after she is flown back, she’s changed a bit and he has the angst, as in IProp. They’re able to finance a beautiful home, cars and so on but as he looks around his ‘kingdom’, he seriously questions what she’s about and all the rest of it. I have my opinion and one of the ladies today had a similar opinion but one took the opposite point of view. I don’t want to telegraph my opinion too early. What do you feel about this situation? Was she right to go? Are there any issues or is it all straightforward in your eyes?

7 comments:

  1. Well, money worries are awful and can spoil your relationship anyway so I can see the temptation to go. But I'd want my husband to fight for me!

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  2. "but as he looks around his ‘kingdom’"

    But that's the crucial point. At best it's HER kingdom. At worst it is a constant reminder of her infidelity.

    Fundamentally this will feel a little like a life on the welfare state - you come to resent money that you have not really earned.

    We can at this stage get into a tricky debate about inheritance as unearned money and the inate chauvinism of man as breadwinner in the above comment, but I shall leave that for your other readers...

    PG

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  3. I'd be sad: the notion for me, of a relationship as two people fighting their tiny corner against the odds would be gone. I sort of like the fact that money is against us, because we're together. If she won the lottery: excellent! If she or I had to be unfaithful to earn the money, even at the cost of penury, that would be the end of the relationship because we know we'd never trust each other again; we'd never think of the other in the same way again.

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  4. Yes, the boys appear to have one point of view here and the girl the opposite. I think a woman is going to understand the girl's position more and yet they're the first to talk about 'trust'in a relationship.

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  5. My late wife and I had this discussion after watching Indecent Proposal on DVD one night. She, like Welshcakes, said that she'd rather hope I'd object but, since we'd both know it was a straightforward business transaction -- which, it's true, it would have been -- she'd also hope I wouldn't forbid a deal that would enable us to spend our lives as we wanted rather than wasting time earning money when there were so many more interesting things to do.

    Trust really was never an issue with us -- we both knew very early on that it just wasn't a question that would ever arise because neither of us would let it. I realise that's probably pretty unusual in a relationship, but I'd never believed in love at (almost) first sight before.

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  6. I'd like to say that I've never been lucky enough to find that but in recent years I've come to realize it was most likely my own character faults and my bad judgement in women.

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  7. The trick is, I think, James, to have the astonishing good fortune to meet someone whose character faults and errors of judgment ideally complement your own. And certainly had neither of us made all the mistakes we'd both done beforehand, we probably wouldn't have been ideally suited when we finally did meet.

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