Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 17, 2024 13:21:05 GMT
Mar 14, 2024 20:53:36 GMT Guest said:
Phantasm Forgiveness, the final episode, gives us their version of what happened to Answered Prayers.Truman tells Jack that he is finishing Answered Prayers as an apology of sorts to the swans. We see a fictionalized version of the women getting a happy ending, "Kiki" stands in for CZ letting her hair down and having some fun, "Lady Ina Coolbirth" is rewarded with a new love, and he even helps the fictionalized Lee knock off an unwanted husband.
Jessica Lange comes back as the specter of Capote's mother, urging him to take a drink to loosen up his writing. She subtly undercuts his writing as only a mother can do. There's a flashback to his miserable childhood as he's locked in a room while his mother entertains a gentleman caller next door. He's visited by another ghost, Ann Woodward, who tells him that the swans won't appreciate the book and that no matter what he writes. He helped put an end to the swans dated way of life. Truman takes his manuscript and burns it while the ghost of Ann looks on. The scene changes to Truman dying at Joanna Carson's home. Did he imagine all of what came before, that he had indeed finished the book but destroyed it to spare his former friends?
The series ends with the odd but true auction of part of his ashes that Joanna Carson had kept.
I too am ambivalent about the necessity of the last episode, which couldn't ever resolve the question of whether there was a manuscript, of what it may have consisted, and what may have happened to it if it had existed. I think it would have been better to leave the mystery alive instead of trying to wrestle it into submission with such wild speculation. If the intent was to show Truman trying to restore their dignity and reputations, and thus his own conscience, I hardly think positing a murderous Lee Radziwill would have been the way to go about it.
One thing I'm curious about is why Murphy resisted even a mention of Harper Lee, let alone a characterization. If the mother was there, why not Harper, since they apparently had a rivalry and falling-out of their own? Murphy wasn't averse to plumbing Truman's history through his mother, so why not some history from such an early intimate as Lee; he must have at least considered it. The figure of Harper was all over the two Capote theatrical movies and it would have provided another plum role for a mature actress. Maybe pushback from the estate? Or maybe he just wanted to give all the fireworks to Jessica Lange?
I don't think the series has taken much away from my regard for him as a writer since, especially from the era in which he was all over TV, it was obvious how bitchy and negative he could be; he himself obliterated the notion that he was a truly sensitive soul by his public disregard for the sensitivities of others. But we all have dualities within us and that's probably even more true of writers with a calling to probe human nature, like Capote and Williams. R.I.P., Truman and Swans.