Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

@Harriet132 Great to see someone is thinking about this incredible scene too, and the meaning of the song in relation to the action. For me, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" - as it is used in the ending - reflects the shifts in Geoff and Kate's relationship. Through this one, deceptively simple dance sequence, we come to understand that their love has profoundly changed, moving away from "images" toward a recognition of the impossibility of two people (despite shared histories) truly living up to an imposed idea/ideal of love, further complicated in Kate's realisation of her continuing (and very painful) love for Geoff. The co-ordination of the camera with Charlotte Rampling's completely non-verbal acting here is astonishing - the way Rampling communicates her body coming alive again with desire and "body-couple" memory, the flickers of alternating recognition and doubt on her face, the sudden, ambiguous gesture where she violently pulls down her hand (disgusted, overwhelmed, or a bit of both?), the subtle push-in of the camera, the circling motion, the lighting change... It's both very complex and very coherent. There's a couple of other things going on here too, I think. The sense of the anniversary as one that is highly-staged managed (given the preparations and discussions around the event that is used to create the film's temporal structure) down to the very timing of Geoff's "on cue" crying suggests that, on one level, this is a marriage and a declaration of love-commitment that exists on the level of surfaces, at least for the assembled audience/camera. I think the ambiguity that results - Is it all for show? Is it real love or merely the gesture" of love? - very cleverly parallels the ambiguity that Kate herself feels around these very same questions. I think that, by ultimately aligning us with Kate's perspective (the choices on the level of framing and scene construction subtly privileging Kate over Geoff), director Andrew Haigh ultimately withholds judgement on their marriage. Both Kate and the viewer are frozen in a moment of radical indeterminacy, with possibilities stretching out on either side of this divide. Just as one can listen to the Platters song and intuit/project different responses dependent on experience, mood and bias, Haigh does similarly (and generously) with the ending of his film. Which is why "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is such a perfect choice: it's simultaneously devastating, unsettling and deeply romantic.

@Harriet132 Great movie....I think the love wasn't ruined....it's worse than that...the love was never there...the smoke got in HER eyes, as it was blind love, and at the end the smoke brought the tears. 2c.

@Harriet132 I just saw the movie today 12\13\18, and thought it was one of the most heart breaking movies I ever witnessed; and I felt of all the interpretation of the song (especially in light of the movie "45 years") was the most clarified explanation of all the ones I read this far. <br /> Very insightful.

@Harriet132 It’s certainly by no accident this song about lost love was used in the film. The lyrics throughout apply so well to Kate and Geoff’s relationship, but the last two stanzas are particularly on point for BOTH characters:<br /> <br /> “Yet today my love has flown away,<br /> I am without my love” (for Geoff, this is Katya, and [SPOILER ALERT—SCROLL DOWN]<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> .<br /> [SPOILER] the child that Katya was pregnant with.<br /> <br /> For Kate, its the loss of not only the man that she thought was her true love for 45 years to a memory, but also to a life that could have been. For example, it was Geoff who never wanted children, and now she realizes it was because Geoff had conceived a child, encased in ice and preserved, with his true love.<br /> <br /> “Now laughing friends deride<br /> Tears I cannot hide”<br /> <br /> The party at the end, including tears held back but finally released by both Geoff and Kate, sums this up well, along with their encounters with friends throughout the film.<br /> <br /> “So I smile and say”<br /> <br /> The happy face they both try to put on throughout the week that the film takes place, with each other, and especially at the party. So many dark, tightly suppressed feelings hidden with smiles.<br /> <br /> “When a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes”<br /> <br /> So many things to unpack—the “lovely flame” being Katya and his lost child for Geoff, and the smoke being “settling” for Kate (or at least the false belief he had put the past behind him and moved on. For Kate, the lovely flame is Geoff, but more subtly, her youth and missed opportunities (a child; someone who truly loved her completely and wanted to capture that love).<br /> <br /> As a more minor side note, the fact that Kate and Geoff both take up smoking again to deal with the stress, and the fact that Kate first met Geoff with “a cigarette dangling out of your mouth” was no coincidence either.<br /> <br /> I’m usually not a fan of such contrivances in films, but it works so subtly here it’s almost unrecognizable until you revisit it.