Take My Eyes
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Â Luis Tosar Laia MarullDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Original Language), Unknown; Spanish (Dubbed), Unknown
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker
Movie Reviews of Take My Eyes
Movie Review: "I had erased her personality"
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a tremendously well crafted and fast moving movie about mental and physical relationship/spousal abuse. The quote in the title to this review is from one of the husbands, talking about how his constant threats of violence and violent actions effected his wife's otherwise animated personality.
In this movie, Pilar is torn between the love for her husband and the abuse she receives from him. She tries to reconcile the beauty and goodness she knows is in him with his violent actions and threats.
Abuse is used to control. While abuse may be an effective means of control, it often ends up disabling the beauty, artistry, health, and emotional capacity of the controlled person. Ironically, this can lead to a cycle where the abuser understandably finds their victim less attractive in their diminished condition.
Abusive spouses tend to limit their spouse's social contacts by limiting time with friends and family and, as in this movie, limiting even their work contacts - or removing them from the working world entirely - making them more singularly dependent. Sometimes abused spouses can be helped by reconnecting them with more people in general and by giving them the courage to fight back non-violently, calling attention to the specific abusive actions.
There's a smart scene in this movie where the abusive husband is in therapy, and he's instructed to: a) emotionally recognize when he's getting angry, b) create separation and breathing room at that point, and c) get involved in doing or thinking about pleasant other things for awhile. He's asked to tell the therapy group of a time in his past when he was not so stressed and when his world was at peace. The screenwriting is great and revealing because he (Antonio) says, "I can't remember." He is being sincere. His past has few, if any, sustained memories of peaceful, intimate or familial social environments.
Helping certain abusers is very difficult, because they grew up in abusive environments. They've never known patterns that did not involve violence as a part of regular conflict resolution patterns. Conceding this deficiency in some abusers should give everyone working with them more empathy and understanding of their challenges. Creating a world where there is both social peace and positive dispute resolution habits is especially difficult for these men & women. It involves demonstrating for them intimate and socially functioning worlds - worlds they may not think really exist - outside of fictional stories.
Some people reading the title to this movie may mistakenly think this is a macabre and grotesque tale of spousal abuse. It is not. Rather, it shows exceptionally and sympathetically the struggles and loves of different types of people involved in these types of abuses. There are scenes where, even though we despise Antonio's abuse of Pilar, we still understand her love for him. Any movie that can emotionally convey something that complex and real is worth studying carefully.
During the movie's plot, Pilar and Antonio get back together. Pilar, having tasted working and some freedom, wants to take a course on art education to become a tour guide, explaining paintings' histories and mythological roots. Antonio struggles, watching her become more outspoken and independent.
If you don't want to know how the movie ends, then don't read this paragraph. But I want people to know this is a gorgeous and smart movie. Unfortunately, the husband doesn't figure things out, and he returns to his patterns of using violence.
But this movie has a healthier ending. No, the husband doesn't eventually change his ways. Rather, Pilar finds ways to surpass the abuse, outreaches and reconnects socially, and pursues a career in the arts.
This movie doesn't have a "happy ending," but it is important to also emphasize that it is not a "male bashing" movie. I have never seen a more sympathetic portrayal of a male abuser, giving us glimpses of his flawed thought processes and fears. Ideally, I wish Antonio could have found ways to change his violent behaviors & rationales, and I wish both he and Pilar would not have lost the genuine & positive parts of their relationship . . . but that is not the story this movie tells.
Summary of Take My Eyes
Beginning as an edge-of-your-seat noir thriller, a terrified Pilar hastily flees in the middle of the night with her young son as if her life depends on it. Reaching her Sister Ana?s house, Pilar breaks down in turmoil. Banging on Ana?s front door is Pilar?s husband, Antonio who in a fit of rage screams for Pilar to return home. But Pilar holds tight. With Ana?s support, Pilar is determined to save herself from Antonio?s rage. Settling in with Ana, Pilar begins a new career, and finds a greater sense of self. Yet the very passionate Antonio is far from a one-dimensional brute, and the bond between Pilar and Antonio is deep- tangling together love, eroticism, and submissiveness. Their relationship has always been a potent mix of love and anger.Take My Eyes, a drama about a couple entangled in an abusive relationship, proves that Spanish Director Icíar Bollaín has studied the aggressor's mindset in order to portray the violent husband, Antonio (Luis Tosar) with a certain amount of sympathy. The film enlightens rather than enrages. Antonio, who beats his wife Pilar (Laia Marull), is a complex character overcome by his insecurity that Pilar will leave him. Take My Eyes opens on Pilar taking her son to live with her sister, safe from Antonio's uncontrolled anger. Antonio stalks Pilar, warning that he can't survive without her, then signs up for therapy. Conversely, Pilar is co-dependent, unable to see Antonio's cruelty because of her blind belief in the construct of marriage due to her mother's past, similar history with her deceased husband. Pilar's sister's wedding and Pilar's new job as a museum docent acquired in her effort to command independence exacerbates the couple's dilemma. Pilar returns to Antonio but a terrifying incident scares her permanently away from him. Throughout, one senses Pilar's impending danger, but the complexities of her and Antonio's arrangement, including her motherly role in their relationship, sheds light on domestic violence for those viewers who are baffled by it. Take My Eyes also explains how detrimentally far couples will go to stay together for their child. Well-acted and nicely written, Take My Eyes is a smart film about the horrors of abuse. The docudrama extra on this DVD, A Love That Kills, further delves into cruelty in a more educational setting, the counselor's office. --Trinie Dalton
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