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I agree with @elange about the emotional resonance of Paddy’s confrontation with Mateo. The skills required in having one’s expression melt away completely on camera, as Paddy Constantine does, is a very difficult task to perform, and it involves specifically understanding your facial muscles and how they automatically relax or tense up when you’re either understanding or angry.
The scene that I found to be a clear turning point for the film would be the one in which Paddy Constantine confronts Mateo Kuamey, over whether he’s been having an affair with his wife. I find the scene to be such a clear change for the film because Paddy is confronted with the realization that he and Mateo are inextricably connected, on a variety of levels ranging from as neighbors, to immigrants, to members of New York City’s underclass, and on the deepest level as human beings. This differs from how Paddy likely conceived of Mateo leading up to this point, as a man who’d ruin all that matters in his life, as nothing more than an enemy. This might seem like paranoia, however within the context and upbringing of Paddy’s life it makes sense. Having to emigrate from his home country, and then settling in one of the most poverty stricken places in America, he outright says in the scene that life has been all but fair to him. “I’m a fucking ghost, who don’t exist. We can’t think, we can’t laugh, we can’t cry, we can’t feel!” All this is just the genuine expression of his worldview. My life has been hell, all the things that make one human I have sacrificed, I barely even see myself as alive. With an outlook like this, it’s hard to see how Paddy would react to his neighbors attitude with anything other than anger and contempt, catastrophizing that next his wife will leave him, the family will be broken and soon he will have nothing. But when Mateo displays instead that he really just loves the family, boldly proclaiming that he sees a human being as human, Paddy instantly understands. His first reaction, “You’re tired,” is him seeing in Mateo himself, and that he is not alone in this arduous journey of life thus far. This is an alien reaction for Paddy, given a life of suffering, which further explains that, despite his understanding on a deep level that Mateo is a friend and worthy of trust, he is at a loss for words, the idea of human embrace is very much not something Paddy would be used to. Overall, the scene here represents not just a turning point in the film but also one in Paddy’s life, where, for once, he’s been given human compassion in response to anger.
Ash,
I agree with all of your observations and would like to point out the difference between the late 70s and the early. Late 70s actually marked the concrete beginning of the cities new ruling class, mostly that of financial capital, due to the handing of the cities economic controls over to the banks after NYC’s fiscal crisis. This type of change of power had massive implications that can already be seen in the film, namely in the early growth of HIV/AIDs, which was unrestrained partially because many politicians ignored it in the 80s, and a new New York City, already slashing budgets for public services, would somewhat do the same.
I would agree with the idea that Tillie was of some wicked cycle, whereby her mother was a prostitute, her daughter was and, had it not been for the crash, her grandchildren would have been prostitutes too. However, I think the reader finds empathy with her not because she acknowledges that by many standards she’s a screwup, but because we get to see, face to face, how pre-determined her life would be, how essentially impossible it always was to break out of the family business. Recalling her life, you can tell most of the time she’s on auto pilot, just going through the motions of a woman who didn’t have any other options in life besides sex work. This is only possible if you get her full, unbridled perspective, which is something Solomon cannot get, which explains his, Ciaran’s and likely many readers (initially), anger and hatred towards her who, to them, just saw her at that point in her life, and not burdened by all of the soul crushing context that led her to that point.
I definitely agree with you perception of Corrigan as a sort of odd man of faith, and want to build on it with a detail I noticed early in the book. When we are in Ciaran’s perspective, he notices on the floor of Corrigan’s apartment a copy of a book written by Dorothy Day, a name I vaguely recognized at the time, and searched later to find she was a far left anarchist, in addition to her devout faith to the Catholic Church. I think the addition of her novel is a little easter egg, meant to point out to the reader that Corrigan is much like the late Dorothy Day, both very faithful despite their odd circumstances and/or politics.
