Originally Posted by Karen 14th November 2005


What do you think Rochester meant by that line? "Life is not a succession of urgent nows."

Johnny liked it so much, be asked to have it returned to the script and had it put on a t-shirt.

Ellen


IMHO, I think it means to just take life slow and easy. There's no need for everything to come at you all at once. It's too hard to enjoy things that way. Maybe the meaning is deeper than that, but that's what I get from it.

Lufirel


I think this line goes back to Rochester's feeling that life is fairly arbitrary. For him there is the idea of having to do something is absurd because as far as he's concerned what he does doesn't matter. Rochester seems to me to be commenting on the fallacy of believing that our choices have some sort of greater cosmic importance. We already have heard Rochester say that only in the theatre are there consequences, and his comment here seems to be an extension of this belief.

Captainjacksparrow

Ellen...I like what you "get from it"....to take time to stop and "smell the roses" so to speak....thank you for this insight

JDFan


I think that Wilmot has gotten to the stage in his life that he knows nothing is so urgently important that it must happen now, on schedule, urgently, immediately. He has realized that life goes along at a slow inexorable pace. He is very pessimistic in that he feels nothing much really matters and nothing will stop the flow of time, no matter how hard one tries.

Hibblette


I have to agree with Lufirel on this.

But want to add is that not a part of being an Aristocrat? They are so removed from the rest of the populace that to them to be concerned with the consequences of their actions is unheard of.

The Aristocrats of the USA actually helped get a war going because they couldn't be inconvenienced with losing their slaves. They never once thought of the young boys who would die that had never lived their lifestyle.

So to me full prove that Rochester was an Aristocrat. Hey-he was raised that way.

Mairimaih


Wow so different from my take.. I took it as referring to earlier in the film, when Rochester explains the theatre is his drug, and to me its so telling he falls for Barry, as part of that drug being fed, however as he gets sick and is dying, he changes his view on the theatre, rejecting it as an articifical pretence at life, that real life is not as its played at in the theatre, not the urgent succession of 'now's' of prompts and lines and acts that need doing.. tied up neatly for the audience.
Rochester is moving away from that, he before could only enjoy his drug, as if it were a 'life' the imortant thing, a truer pleasure, now he sees real life as that, he tells Barry she has made him love life, part of that might be that he is losing that life, and is dying , as well as feeling love for her, but thats how I saw it.