Several-Operation879
I know this is an older post, but I just watched and I would love to chime in…
This is all the day-dream, imaginary scenarios/stories of the janitor periodically coming into conflict with reality as well as his deteriorating mental state.
It’s like a self-insert book where he highlights the good parts, and paints over the bad parts. He writes “Jake” to be well-read, sensitive, caring, but also insecure, and vulnerable in a humanizing way. His girlfriend is intelligent, successful, a physicist, painter, poet, doctor. Her name changes because it’s either unimportant, or because his memory is failing with his health.
Jake’s part is like the writer catching himself being insecure. Jake has to know enough and be sensitive enough to catch her attention, and know about his stuff as well as hers. Then reality hits, and she’s way more put together than him. He gets unbelievably angry, but never hurts her. Then he calms, and relents. He caught himself attempting to have more control of the story than he ought to.
The swings at the broken down house. They were there and new when he was young, but gone when he’s old, and the house now a wreck. His memories, reality, and imaginings are melding in his dementia.
The pigs, huddled in the corner and lambs left in the cold are meant to be him. His dad put food on the table (feed in the pigpen) and left. His mom provided no warmth or nurturing. So might look like he’s alive, but he’s not. His parents were terrible. And as a young man, he blamed them a lot. Later, I think we get the gist that he believes differently with age. That a lot of his life’s mistakes and failures are still his own.
The conversations with his mom are so, so painful. She says words wrong. But I don’t think she ever did that, I think the janitor did. He was just a kid, but I think his mom made a big deal out of his mistakes. I don’t think she praised him at all. He “painted over” those parts in his daydreaming. His parents argue loudly in the other room because those are bits of reality slipping through. That’s why sometimes mom and dad look young and sometimes they’re old. It’s his memory clashing. It’s also why this imaginary girlfriend starts talking like his mom. They’re written in the same voice. Heck, he even tries to dress her in mom’s clothes, to show her would take care of her. His mom still hurts him by showing her the truth that he’s an old janitor, something he despises about himself.
The girls (plural) at the ice cream shop. The first two are imagined. They are beautiful, even sexual as they stare at him. He’s turned away from them. He’s said he often feels invisible, but they are clearly staring at him. It’s because he wants his girlfriend to see how desirable he is, but he ignores them. It’s like an incel writing himself as loyal. It’s much safer than just being an incel, I think, because I don’t believe he ever hurt anyone. I think he is just lonely, sad, and missed out on so much of life that he has no idea. I believe that because it’s like he blows up over every perceived infraction on his control, but then he admits his wrongdoing. He IS an incel and all that implies, but even totally alone in his own imagination, he knows it’s wrong.
The third girl at the ice cream shop… I had to look that up. It’s apparently more sensible in the book, where there’s an indication that he’s varnishing floors in the school without PPE. It’s affecting his already deteriorating mental state.
The ice cream cups. There are a million of them in the garbage because he’s imagined these stories as he works alone hundreds of times. It’s why there are so many thermoses in the entry table at the farmhouse, too.
At the school, Jake tries to have sex with her, and reality rejects him. He doesn’t rape her, but he kisses her romantically anyway. Then imagined outrage at being spied on. The janitor has spied on people before, probably a hole in the women’s showers or something like it, based on the brief scene. Jake goes to defend his girlfriend’s honor, to prove he is the hero of the story. His girlfriend doesn’t care at all. She is afraid, and cold, and goes into the school because she just wants to leave. The janitor has begun to hallucinate. He’s finally seeing his imaginary girlfriend. He’s brief, and kind.
I think the dance is a pretty big deal. It’s a perfect romance, idealized love between girl and boy. Then janitor comes in, crushing reality. Reality kills the daydream self idolization, and leaves. It’s two parts:
this is the janitor trying to do away with daydream. He’s destroying the imagined man that he thought a woman would love, and accepting himself. It’s still a daydream, but it’s a more mature one.
this is also a display of the second story running throughout, of people who are controlled and manipulated by people who are never abusive, never disloyal, but who cling to relationships with every terrible thought and act outside that. The dreamy first impression is killed by the harsh truth of who their partner was all along.
Finally: the last song. It’s pathetic. Everyone knows it. His whole existence might have been pathetic. But the audience admires him for it, despite the fact that they shouldn’t. He had one moment of decency towards his imaginary gf, and it had nothing to do with all the heroic imaginings he’d made up, so he claps himself on the back for it.
This story is such a fucking weird place of empathy and revilement. A terribly self involved young man with no/few good traits grows into a terrible old man with a lot of reg