Resolving Their Inner Problems

Resolving Their Inner Worst Problems

In Jill Spreecher’s movie, Thirteen Conversations about One Thing many ideas are conveyed throughout the entire film. The pursuit of happiness is one of the key ideas as well as how one is able to deal with problems arising in his/her’s life. Each character each are faced with a problem and attempt to resolve it to help them in both physical and mental ways. Characters such as Gene, Beatrice, and Troy eventually finds ways to make heal themselves but it takes time for each to find a solution that works for them in their situation. Spreecher also presents the character’s innermost feelings in very subtle sense by adding symbols placed randomly throughout the movie.

Gene (an insurance company manager) in the movie faces a few problems, which brought him down. Although he is not hurt physically, he ishurt emotionally which affected the way he acted around everyone near him. His wife had left him when he had gone to get training for the job he currently had to better himself. Not only this, but his son was constantly in trouble with the law and did not respect the help his father tried to give to him. For example, when the son was in Jail, Gene came and paid the bailout of $1,500 only to have his son run out on him without listening to his father’s recommendations to get out of the situation he was in. It wasn’t until Gene had fired Smiley Bowman that he began to feel remorse for the way he blamed everything out on everyone else. After he fired him, he felt remorse and found a new job for him afterwards. It is not until this point that although he’s experiencing hardships in his life, he begins to accept it; as seen in the final scene of the movie when he is seen waiving to Patricia. This symbol...

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...e throughout the movie and we last see him in (what we would assume) a mental hospital, his spirits are uplifted when he discovers the woman he his (Beatrice) was not killed.

Each person has a different way to coping with his or her problems. When a certain event occurs, it caused the characters to realize and accept what has happened and has been given to them. Jill Spreecher presents the characters with symbolism throughout the movie to convey the character’s innermost thoughts and what is hurting them the most. Gene has the red pen leak on his chest near his heart to represent a “bleeding heart”, Beatrice has the doll head which has one eye shut to represent fortune was winking at her, and Troy is seen reopening his cut to allow him to not fully forget what he had done when he got rid of everything that would potentially allow him to duplicate the hit and run.