IKIRU: a film by Kurosawa (1952)

Ikiru (to live) may not be the first foreign film I ever saw, but it's certainly the first one I remember seeing. I watched it over 40 years ago in a small movie theatre on the far north side of Chicago and now have viewed it twice since retiring several years ago. It was also several decades later that I discovered that it was directed by Kurosawa. Ikiru is just one of those films that I rent again and again. I'm now thinking about getting my own copy for my very small DVD collection. Christmas is coming....hmmm. Perhaps a subtle or not so subtle hint?

Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and might have six months to live. The shock of his impending death forces him to take a long clear look at himself. His son and daughter-in-law, who live with him, see him as someone to be used. They have decided to get their own apartment and have no qualms about asking Watanabe to deplete his retirement annuity to finance it. At work, his greatest accomplishment is having worked for almost 30 years without a taking single day of sick leave. That doesn't say much about his presence in an organization for three decades if the best one can say is that he was there every day.

Watanabe looks back and decides he hasn't lived and is going to make up for it now. He samples the night life of Tokyo and discovers this is not for him. He then tries to recapture his youth by associating with a young woman who had worked in his section, for he sees that she has youth and life. Perhaps she may influence him. This doesn't work either.

His third idea is to do something that would make a difference, one that would say he really had existed. It was then that he decided that he could make a difference--not by trying to become what he wasn't but by becoming what he was to the fullest extent possible. He was a public servant, but he had never really served the public. He had been a time-server, one who spent his days, like so many of his colleagues, doing his best to avoid doing anything but the minimum required to keep his position.

He remembered a problem brought to his section by a neighborhood group. There was an empty lot that was being used as a trash dump. It was unhealthy and dangerous for the children who played there for they had nowhere else to go. All that the people wanted was to have the place cleaned up and kept safe for the children. They had been getting the usual runaround--it was a problem for the parks dept--see engineering--see the health dept--see their local city council representative. Watanabe now decides to do something about it.



Warning: I will bring up important plot elements and the endings for both the film and Tolstoy's novella.



The second part of the film takes us forward to shortly after Watanabe's death. It takes place at the memorial for Watanabe, at which we see the deputy mayor, various members of the city government, the employees in Watanabe's section, and his son and daughter-in-law. We learn that, in spite of all opposition and with no help from any others, Watanabe not only succeeded in getting the empty lot cleaned up but also in having it turned into a park with playground equipment for the children.

The park has been so successful and popular with the people that everybody is now busy scurrying about, claiming credit for it, and dismissing Watanabe's own role. At the opening ceremony for the park, Watanabe had sat in the back row of the section for city employees and wasn't even mentioned by any of the speakers. All, including the deputy mayor, have forgotten their own initial rejection of Watanabe's plans and now insist that only the parks dept., the engineering dept., the health dept., or the deputy mayor's office could have been responsible for the park.

Kurosawa, in a stroke of genius, then brings in the people of the neighborhood, and their honest grief and respect for Watanabe provides the great possible contrast between them and the hypocrisy of the self-serving city officials and politicians. When I first watched the film, I focused, of course, on Watanabe and his struggles and accomplishments. It was only while watching it several days ago that I realized that Kurosawa had also strongly and effectively indicted the wastefulness and the indifference of the city government employees and officials.

Kurosawa had commented in an interview that Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilych" was the inspiration for the film. "Inspiration" is probably the best term for it certainly is not an attempt to transfer Tolstoy's novella to film. There are similarities: both Ivan Ilych and Watanabe Kanji are government employees--Ilych in the Russian judicial system and Watanabe in city government in Japan. Both learn that they have a short time to live, even though both are lied to by their physicians. Moreover, both are perceived by their respective families as obstacles to their families' happiness. And, both are forced to face the truth about themselves: they have wasted their lives in trivialities and the deadening routine of work.

However, there is a most significant difference between the two, one that may reflect differences between the East and the West.

Ilych's struggles after he realizes that he is dying are singular and solitary. He must accept that his life has been not been a good life. His salvation comes at the end when he finally admits to himself that his life has essentially been a failure. Once he accepts this, he is able to die at peace with himself. His insight is singular, known only to himself, and affects no one else.

On the other hand, Watanabe's salvation comes through helping others, by standing up for the people and getting the park built. His salvation benefits not only him but also the neighborhood residents and their children.

Does this difference suggest the more individualistic aspect of Western society and the group oriented Eastern society?

I'm not certain about this, for I sometimes wonder if Kurosawa had been "inspired" by two of Tolstoy's works--"The Death of Ivan Ilych" and Resurrection.

If one puts together the two stories, one then gets a much closer approximation of Ikiru. In Resurrection, Nekhlyudov, a nobleman, decides to help a woman whom he had, years ago, seduced and abandoned. She is in prison awaiting transportation to Siberia. He visits her, and, while there, is asked for help by another prisoner. He agrees and visits various government agencies where he is shocked to learn of the cruelty and indifference of the officials. On each subsequent visit to the prison, another prisoner asks for help, and much of the novel is spent following Nekhlyudov as he visits various government officials and discovers the extent of corruption and cruelty and indifference that exists. This is similar to the way Kurosawa portrays Watanabe as he goes from office to office and encounters, and therefore exposes, the same attitudes among various city officials.

I wonder if Kurosawa combined the death sentence and struggle for salvation found in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and the attempt to right a wrong which results in exposing the indifference and corruption of high officials in various governmental agencies in Tolstoy's novel, Resurrection.

One last comment about the film: the most striking scene in the film is Watanabe, sitting on a swing in the park, with the snow falling about him, quietly singing his favorite song. While one character said that it was terrible that he should die there alone like that, freezing in the snow, it seems obvious that Watanabe himself chose this death, with his monument about him.

Overall Rating: One of the best.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XIX

From the roses and hyacinths of the last quatrain, we move to another and more prosaic plant, or so it would seem, in Quatrain XIX--grass.


First Edition: Quatrain XIX

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!



Second Edition: Quatrain XXV

And this delightful Herb whose living Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!



Fifth Edition: Quatrain XX

And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!



The changes, though minimal in number, all occur in the first two lines of the quatrain.

"Delightful" in the first two editions now becomes "reviving" in the final edition. The change from "delightful" to "reviving" makes grass more important in that it no longer is merely "delightful," or something pleasant to the senses, but it now has a healing role: grass is a "reviving" herb, an herb that could restore energy or even bring something back to life.

The second modification is the substitution of "living" for "tender" as a modifier of "Green" in the second edition. However, Fitzgerald reverts back to "tender" by the fifth edition. "Living," to me, suggests a colder, more factual perspective whereas "tender" conveys a more positive and sensual response to this "Herb."

The third and last change is that from "River's Lip" in the first two editions to "River-Lip" by the last edition. The difference is very subtle, so subtle that I can sense something but am unable to spell it out precisely. One difference that I do note is that "River-Lip" is shorter and more abrupt than "River's Lip." Perhaps you may be able to comment on the subtle nuances of "River's Lip" and "River-Lip."

According to my dictionary, "fledges" means "to cover with or as if with feathers." This definition supports "tender" far more than "living," I should think.

The quatrain flows from the previous one which suggested flowers above the bodies of those who went before us. The first two lines bring in the idea, if I'm not mistaken, of the Islamic concept of Heaven, which is frequently portrayed as a Garden laid out along a flowing river with abundant grass and flowers, a Great Oasis in fact. The last two lines carry on the theme of a covering for those who are buried beneath.

After the flowers of the last quatrain, I was surprised to find something as common or prosaic as grass. However, after thinking about it, I realized that this wasn't the only reference to grass as a burial shroud.


Grass appears in an haiku by Basho with exactly the same connotation:

Here, where a thousand
Captains swore grand conquest...tall
Grass their monument.

This also suggests the glory and dreams of past heroes, much as did earlier quatrains (see VI, VIII, IX, and XIV example). And what remains? In the haiku, grass is the only monument to their grand ambitions.



Carl Sandburg gives us the same imagery, perhaps more brutally expressed than the others--grass that covers all.


GRASS

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg.
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor;
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.




Perhaps to end this post a bit more gently, I will quote a short stanza from Walt Whitman's most aptly named work--Leaves of Grass. It is from "Song of Myself," Stanza 6, which begins:

"A child said What is the Grass? fetching it to me with full hands,
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

. . .

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breast of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps.
And here you are the mothers' laps.

. . .

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"


I guess I've wandered a bit from where I began, but I think that is an attribute of great poetry or great fiction or great prose--to begin at one point and end somewhere else, someplace unexpected, if one is lucky.

John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar

John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is his wild book. I have this theory that writers have one wild book inside them, one in which they let go and break all the rules. Frequently they aren't received well by critics and scholars, and the general reading public doesn't appreciate them to any great degree either. Melville wrote one called Mardi which only critics and scholars are aware of and generally ignore. On the other hand, Brunner's wild one seems to have been accepted to a much greater degree by critics and the reading public. While I haven't read everything by Brunner, I don't remember any of his other works resembling this one to any extent at all. If someone knows of another by him that resembles this book, please let me know. I will definitely go look for it.

To begin with, its structure is unlike anything I've seen in Brunner so far. It is closest to John Dos Passos' USA trilogy (1930-36) and Fred Pohl's Gateway (1977). Brunner, like Dos Passos and Pohl, avoids providing the setting in long narrative prose sections. Instead they use headlines, advertisements, and brief short news items to convey the significant cultural and social issues prevalent in the USA at that time. While this doesn't provide the in-depth coverage that some writers and readers feel is necessary, it does give the flavor of those times and perhaps does it in a more interesting way for those readers impatient to get on with the plot and care little if anything for the background. It's not immediately evident, but Brunner first introduces and then provides significant information about his characters, especially the secondary characters, in the inter-narrative portions of the novel.

While Pohl, in Gateway, restricts his narrative to one major character, Dos Passos has at least 3 or 4 major character lines, and Brunner has two, with several important secondary characters.
Dos Passos' structure is more traditional in that, by the end of the first novel, The 42nd Parallel, his major plot lines have converged.

Brunner attempts something different. His two major characters, Norman Niblock House and Donald Hogan, are roommates at the beginning of the novel and events conspire to force them along separate paths to very different destinies. But, in order to keep readers happy, Brunner has several significant secondary characters--Chad Mulligan and Elihu Masters--whose separate paths eventually converge. Mulligan is a best-selling, rogue sociologist who has dropped out, while Masters had been a highly respected member of the US diplomatic corps who requested a post in the small impoverished African country of Beninia. He is thought to have ended a potentially brilliant career in the State Department by his action.

In addition, Brunner also provides several sub-sub plots that involve two families who are victimized by the major problem of the day--overpopulation; another minor plot focuses on a gang of young toughs on their way down into the underworld, and yet another on a young man who has just been drafted into the US military, and even one that gives a picture of the lives of the rich and powerful, and those striving to reach that level.

Norman House is an Afram who works for General Technics (GT), one of the largest, if not the largest, corporations in the world. It is large enough and rich enough to buy up small countries if it so desires. That's the major plot line which House becomes unwittingly enmeshed in. The problem is the small African country of Beninia, which has been ruled for decades by Zadkiel F. Obomi, its only president, since it emerged from its colonial status. Obomi knew he hadn't long to live and feared what would happen when he died.

Beninia, although one of the poorest countries in Africa, has a magnificent natural harbor which his neighbors coveted. He could hear the official statements that would emerge after his death. Each of his neighbors was not invading Beninia for conquest but to "protect" it from those other greedy neighbors.

Obomi and Masters work up a scheme in which General Technics would invest heavily in Beninia to realize certain commercial objectives. The Beninian government would rely on various advisers provided by GT. The US State Department would monitor the situation to ensure that GT lived up to its promises of building the educational, medical, governmental, and transportation infrastructure that would vastly improve the lives of the citizenry of Beninia. The only real problem is Shalmaneser, the super computer that comes close to running GT and, therefore, a powerful influence in the US.

Shalmaneser can't accept that such a country as Beninia exists and rejects the plan. Beninia hasn't had a murder in over 15 years and doesn't even have a word in its vocabulary for "angry." "Insane" is the closest word it has to "angry." Beninia has barely a million inhabitants, yet it was able t0 absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees several decades ago without any conflict between the refugees and the inhabitants. Without Shalmaneser's estimate of the possibilities of success, GT will not act.

In the other plot, Donald Hogan appears to be unemployed and apparently possesses a small independent income that allows him to survive without having to work. However, he actually is an employee of an agency for the US Government. His task is to spend his time reading and absorbing information and presenting reports on what he's learned. Those familiar with van Vogt's readings might consider him a sort of a Nexialist, a generalist rather than a specialist.

Much to his dismay he gets activated and has to report for field duty. He is trained in the art of combat--martial arts and various weaponry. He is to travel to Yatakang, a country made up of numerous Pacific islands. Indonesia? Donald's two specialties are the Yatakanga language and genetics. He's called up because the Yatakanganese government has announced incredible breakthroughs in genetic engineering, both in the ability to correct genetic defects and to create "improved" humans--a superman, if you will. Hogan's task is to find out whether this is at all possible, since it is far in advance of anything anybody else on the planet can achieve.

Since my copy of the novel has approximately 650 pages, it must be obvious that I've only briefly and inadequately covered a few of the major elements and almost none of those secondary elements that create the background.

In spite of its diversity and richness and complexity and Brunner's skill in telling a story, I do not include it in my top ten SF novels. The problem is the ending. If you are the reader who wants a neat and tidy ending that wraps up the major conflict and perhaps eventually turns Earth into a peaceful paradise some time in the future, then you will love this novel. If not, then you might be disappointed, as I was. A great novel. such as this is for 99% of its length, deserves a better ending, one that fits, even if it is an ambiguous or inconclusive ending.

Overall Rating: a great novel, but one with what I consider a serious flaw. Highly recommended.

Joseph Wood Krutch: November 25, 1893--May 22, 1970

Joseph Wood Krutch, along with Loren Eiseley and Konrad Lorenz, had a profound effect on my way of thinking. Through them, I learned to appreciate the benefits of reading essays. Up to that time, I had focused primarily on fiction, but they taught me the value of reading directly the thoughts of others. I guess credit should also go to the old and now sadly defunct Time Reading Program, for it was through it that I first encountered Eiseley, Krutch, and Lorenz.

Moreover, they taught me that humans were not alone here and were not the sole owners of Earth. There were and are others here, many of whom also have a claim upon this planet and their own right to be able to live out their lives .

I moved out to Tucson in 1968 and found that Krutch had written several of works about the southwestern desert country. In one of them, I discovered that Krutch had left the east coast and was now living in Tucson. I grabbed a telephone book and found a listing for him. I drove by the house which was set far back off the road in one of the few undeveloped areas near the Tucson Medical Center. It was a huge plot, acres maybe, and except for a dirt road, still much as it had been before "civilization" arrived. I wondered if he owned it all and had kept it undeveloped.

I decided to write him and let him know how much I had enjoyed reading his books. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to write, I read a newspaper account of his death. I felt that I had missed an opportunity, but not exactly sure for what.

The undeveloped area surrounding his house is now built up, and to be honest, I no longer am exactly sure of its exact location any more. It now looks just like any other urbanized area on that street.

Joseph Wood Krutch's works are numerous and range from scholarly works on Samuel Richardson, Miguel de Cervantes, and Boccaccio to Proust. He also has a number of essays on a variety of subjects: Darwinism, behavioral psychology, determinism, Freudian psychology, contemporary views of humanity, any topic in fact which impinges upon what he sees as the human condition today. He has a number of works about the desert southwest and his various experiences there, some laughable, some serious, but all interesting. A good place to start would be a fine collection titled The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch, which includes a selection of essays from his other works.


Some excerpts from the above mentioned collection:

On Autumn

Krutch, prior to moving to Tucson, lived on the East Coast, and some of his finest writings about nature relate to that period. The excerpt below is from that period.

"One day the first prematurely senile leaf will quietly detach itself in a faint breeze and flutter silently to the ground. All through the summer an occasional unnoticed, unregretted leaf has fallen from time to time. But not as this one falls. There is something quietly ominous about the way in which it gives up the ghost, without a struggle, almost with an air of relief. Others will follow, faster, and faster. Soon the ground will be covered, though many of the stubborner trees are still clothed. Then one night a wind, a little harder than usual, and carrying perhaps the drops of a cold rain, will come. We shall awake in the morning to see that the show is over. The trees are naked; bare, ruined choirs, stark against the sky."

What follows is an expression of Krutch's attitude towards those who admire autumn. I must admit I'm one of those whom Krutch considers a bit perverse in my thinking.

"To me there always seems to be something perverse about those country dwellers who like the autumn best. Their hearts, I feel, are not in the right place. They must be among those who see Nature merely as a spectacle or a picture, not among those who share her own own moods. Spring is the time for exuberance, autumn for melancholy and regret. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Yes, of course, it is that too. But promise, not fulfillment, is what lifts the heart. Autumn is no less fulfillment than it is also the beginning of the inevitable end.

No doubt the colors of autumn are as gorgeous in their own way as any of spring. Looked at merely as color, looked with the eye of that kind of painter to whom only color and design are important, I suppose they are beautiful and nothing more. But looked at as outward and visible signs, as an expression of what is going on in the world of living things, they produce another effect.

'No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one autumnal face'--so wrote John Donne in compliment to an old lady. But Donne was enamored of death. Send not to know for whom the leaf falls, it falls for thee."



Along with the above cited work, I recommend the following.


The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar for the Country--twelve essays which begin with Spring, of course.

The Desert Year--essays on the yearly cycle of living in the desert.

The Grand Canyon--essays

If You Don't Mind My Saying So--a quote from The Saturday Review-- these essays "add up to an irreverent commentary on muddied thinking in our time." It is a book "not to please mankind, but to vex it."

And to tell the truth, Krutch has vexed me at various times.

Overall Rating: sitting down and opening up one of Joseph Wood Krutch's works is an adventure. Try it some time.

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XVIII

This quatrain continues the theme of the departed glories of the past, but also incorporates a belief about the effects that some special buried human bodies have on their environment.



First Edition, Quatrain XVIII

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.



Second Edition, Quatrain XXIV

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.



Fifth Edition, Quatrain XIX

same as Second Edition



Fitzgerald made only one change. In the first edition, the Hyacinth "dropt in its Lap" whereas in the second through the fifth, we read that the Hyacinth "dropt in her Lap," thus changing the garden from a neuter to a feminine place.

The significant image in this quatrain is death, for both the Rose and the Hyacinth have been influenced by their proximity to a human body, one buried beneath them. Both also hint at a violent death, which may account for their ability to exert an influence even after death--almost a ghost here.

The Rose is never so red except above where some "buried Caesar bled," which I see as a reference to his assassination by his enemies, one of whom was supposedly a friend of his. I wonder if the effect of the blood is stronger because Caesar was murdered.

The hyacinth is a flower which is native to Iran (Persia), and it is sometimes associated with rebirth. However, there is a another story, a Greek legend, which tells the origin of the hyacinth, which also involves a murder.

A handsome young prince of Sparta named Hyakinthos was loved by two Greek gods. One was Apollo, the sun god, and the other was Zephyr, the god of the west wind. One day, when Hyacinth was being taught the art of discus-throwing by Apollo, Zephyr became jealous and caused the west wind to blow the discus back and strike Hyakinthos on the head, killing him. A flower grew where the blood dropped on the ground, and Apollo named the flower after him--the hyacinth. The last line of the stanza clearly seems to refer to this legend when it states it "Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head." Both the Rose and the Hyacinth, therefore, suggest the blood of a murdered man.

Was jealousy the cause of both deaths? Hyakinthos died because of Zephyr's jealousy. Was Caesar killed by those who were jealous of his power?

Friedrich Durrenmatt: The Pledge, novel and film

Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Pledge
Mystery, police procedural?


The description for the film, The Pledge, sounded interesting, so I rented it. It is a mystery story, but the focus is more on the detective than on the killer. A detective, played by Jack Nicholson, takes on the case of the murder of a child the day before he had intended to retire. The cast is also one of the inducements for viewing it: Jack Nicholson, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Shepard, Aaron Eckhart, and Robin Wright Penn.

While researching the film on imdb.com, I learned that the film is based on a novel by the same name by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whom I had never heard of. Some of the comments about Durrenmatt included statements that he was one of the most significant European writers and dramatists of the second half of the 20th century. It was then that I discovered that I had encountered Durrenmatt once before, some 45+ years ago in fact. I had seen his play, The Visit, on stage with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontane.

I have never forgotten the play. A small town is dying. The company that was responsible for its economic life had closed down. A visitor comes to town. She had left this town many years ago, driven out, in fact, in disgrace when her lover denied being the father of her child. She has returned, one of the richest women in the country, and offers financial inducements in return for revenge. Her offer is refused, at first...

The Pledge is a subtly constructed novel about a promise made by Matthai, the police officer. Even though he supposed to leave the next day to take a job as police chief in Jordan, Matthai promises the mother of the murdered girl that he will catch the killer. The story is of that pledge and its effects upon the officer who has no life outside of his police work.

Suspicion falls upon an individual seen in the vicinity of the body. This individual, unfortunately for him, has a past record and is taken into custody. However, Matthai does not believe this man is the killer, so he starts his own investigation. Apparently two other young girls, both resembling the recent victim, have been killed within the past several years. While each was from a different small town in the mountains, there is an intersection in which the roads to each of the small towns meet and, moreover, one must come to this same intersection if one comes from outside the area. At this intersection is a gas station with a few rooms for travelers. Matthai buys the station and waits.

While this does seem to be an example of an excessive commitment on his part, especially since the police and citizenry are satisfied that the killer has been caught, I didn't think it actually had reached the stage of being an obsession. It wasn't until later in the film that I began to feel uneasy about his behavior, for everything he did made sense. His behavior made sense, but at a certain point he crossed the line beyond which no rational person would go.

There are some significant differences between the novel and the film but none that affect the overall theme of the novel. The differences are more about timing, about the presentation of information, and the focus of the theme--just how far should one go, even in attempting to prevent more murders in this case--remains the same.




Warning: What follows is information about significant events.




In The Pledge, like his play which I mentioned earlier, Durrenmatt gives us a situation in which an individual is placed at risk in order to benefit the group. One of the significant differences between the novel and the film is the way the officer sets up his trap for the killer.

In the novel, Matthai, now on inactive duty, goes to an orphanage and attempts to adopt a young girl, but he is refused. He then hires a local woman to clean the place and help him with customers. She has a young child, a girl about the same age and description, even to having blond hair, as did the previous victims. This might be a coincidence, except that now he has the girl always with him out in front, by the side of the road where drivers can't miss seeing her.

In the film, this is handled somewhat differently. One night, a young woman whom Nicholson had befriended in the past, comes to the station, seeking protection from an abusive ex-spouse. Nicholson lets her stay the night and then offers to let her stay if she will help out with the place.
Her appearance here with her young daughter then is a matter of chance. In the film then, there is always the possibility that her unexpected and unplanned appearance gave him the idea, whereas in the novel, he clearly plans to use the young girl as bait.

In the film version, Nicholson buys her a swing and puts it up in front of the station, in full view of drivers. When asked, he explains that it's safer out front where he can see her, whereas if he installs it in back, where there are no windows, anybody could come up out of the woods and he wouldn't be able to see him.

I don't want to reveal the rest of the story, so I'll stop here. That there is a killer who preys upon young children is horrifying enough, but that the detective is willing to use a young girl as bait to lure the killer into a trap is just as horrifying. What is most chilling is that when confronted with what he was doing, the officer is confused, for he doesn't see the problem. The killer is a threat and must be stopped. Nothing could happen to the young girl for she was well protected.

Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive here, but I don't think there's any justification that could justify putting a young child at risk. An adult could weigh the risks and decide whether to allow this to happen, but not a young child.

I wonder--am I being overly sensitive here?

Overall Rating: Nicholson and a great cast give us an excellent film version of a very chilling novel.