No. I Can’t Forgive You
- Lauren B
- 0
- on Oct 14, 2022
Can You Ever Forgive Me? Is just a circle of causes and effects. It all starts with Lee’s anger and frustration which can stem from her dissatisfaction with her career. She had a book on the New York Times bestseller list and yet no one knows who she is; her books are barely selling and those that are selling are 75% off. This lack of funds also heavily impacted the self-pity she has for herself because in the eyes of others she didn’t matter anymore, so she felt worthless. Quite literally she faded into the background of her own life. Never standing out, causing people to ignore anything she did. Her agent wouldn’t even take her calls because she lost faith in Lee due to the brusque manner she adopted in order to protect herself from the blow that was her writing career.
Since she was essentially a failure Lee needed something to protect herself from the external world and that answer was to become even more brusque than she already was. Not being polite or respectful, stealing from her agent, and drinking away her sorrows and stress. Leading her to also become even more angry due to her failure. This anger also made her desperate for a change, she wanted any bit of money and more importantly to matter for something. Her answer for being important was to become a manipulator. No longer did she sit on the sidelines, instead she put in an extreme amount of effort, trying to perfectly emulate the famous people.
The first letter she forged/added information to was Fanny Brice’s, a woman she not only admired but was planning to write a biography on before her book funding got cut. But this admiration quickly turned into an obsession when she realized the possibility of what she had done. Forging letters to her was the only way to survive and actually have some money. Her apartment could be clean, her cat healthy, and for her to be financially stable for the first time in years. But no matter how closely she wrote to the original style of the person, she was lying constantly not only to the buyers of the letters but herself. By convincing herself that she was almost important because she forged the letters.
You can see this whenever she’s working on the letters, like when she figured out how to exactly copy a person’s signature using the TV or purchased multiple different typewriters in order to perfectly match the original letter. She was proud of herself for being innovative and a problem solver but in reality all she was, was a liar pretending to be someone else. It all leads back to her anger and frustration because once she thinks she’s figured out the best way to make money off the forged letters, some part of her plan is foiled. This causes her to become frustrated with the situation and full of rage because she has to find a new way to make money. She still hasn’t gone back to writing, not even trying any of the tips her agent suggested. It’s like she considers forgery her new career.
Throughout all this struggle Lee’s mental health is fluctuating. At the beginning of the movie her place is a mess. Which often signifies intense mental health struggles manifested through an inability to stick to a routine when overwhelmed with their own emotions and situation. But once she starts making money the apartment is cleaned up a bit and made more livable. But at the very end of the movie when she’s destroying all the evidence you can see how it’s become a pigsty like shrine with information about the people she’s trying to impersonate. Proving that her mental health has also taken a hit since she’s become so stressed trying to find new ways to accurately forge letters and make more money. Nothing ever ends in the movie, it’s just a cycle that keeps repeating itself because Lee can’t and doesn’t really want to find a way out. She holds no remorse for her actions so why would she want to escape the cycle?
