THE RAZOR'S EDGE

THE RAZOR’S EDGE

Spoiler Alert

The 1984 version of the film The Razor’s Edge opens on a lavish Fourth of July Celebration in Lake Forest, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago.  It is a lovely summer day with people playing baseball, riding bikes, and throwing horseshoes but the primary focus of the gathering is a fund drive for the American Ambulance Service which has recruited new college graduates as drivers to help out in the World War I effort in Europe.  As Gray (James Keach) gives kids rides in one of the ambulances, Larry (Bill Murray) and his fiancé Isabel (Catherine Hicks) discuss the future they will enjoy after they wed, and he goes to work as a stockbroker for Gray’s wealthy father.  Included on Isabelle’s wish list are a six-figure income, a nice house, and a nanny for their babies. Other revelers include Isabelle’s uncle Elliott (Denholm Elliott), who lives in Paris and makes his living collecting and selling fine antiques to the rich and powerful of European society, and Sophie (Theresa Russell) and Bob (Joris Stuyck), a young couple who have recently married due to Sophie’s pregnancy.  Sophie is not from the same upper echelon as the others, and Isabel makes little effort to hide her disapproval of their situation and impoverished lifestyle.  Larry, who has known Sophie since childhood, on the other hand, openly welcomes her and praises her talent as a poet.

The picnic ends with a brilliant firework display that morphs into artillery fire on the battlefield. The novice drivers are delivered into the care of Piedmont (Brian Doyle-Murray), a veteran who warns them that although America isn’t officially in the war, the conditions are nevertheless precarious.  The young men are immediately introduced to the agony and suffering of the wounded and the terror of having bombs exploding all around them. Larry quickly becomes close to Piedmont and is traumatized when his mentor is killed by an enemy soldier’s bayonet.

Larry and Gray both manage to make it back home in one piece, but while Gray resumes the carefree existence of one who has never witnessed the ugliness of war, Larry is changed.  He separates himself from his former friends, choosing instead to read.  After three weeks of this, Isabelle confronts him about not resuming their social life and failing to begin the high paying job that will allow them to get married.  Instead of caving into her demands however, Larry tells her he can’t marry her right then because he needs some time to go to Paris and think.  When Isabelle whines to Elliott about this, he tries to sooth her by saying that it is reasonable for a young man to spend some time having fun before settling down and that he will pay for Larry to travel first class on an ocean liner and introduce him to the right people when he gets to France. But Larry turns down Elliott’s generous offer, choosing instead to work his way over on a trawler.  Once in Paris, he gets a job packing fish and moves to the poor sector of town. 

When Larry fails to return home, Isabelle and her mother come to Paris in hopes of talking sense into him.  They stay at Elliot’s sumptuous mansion which Isabelle will inherit someday and Elliott confides to Isabelle that her fiancé has been avoiding him.  She is clearly shaken, but when her young man unexpectedly appears and offers to take her to see the Paris that he loves, she immediately accepts.  They spend a joyous day together meeting the bedraggled people that Larry calls friends, but that night while dining in his favorite restaurant she begins pressuring him to come home and accept a position working for Gray’s father. He refuses, countering with an offer for her to live with him and join him in his travels.  Knowing that she will never be satisfied with his lifestyle, she refuses and tries to return the engagement ring.  He insists that she keep it as he explains, “I got a second chance and am not going to waste it on a big house and a new car every year...”  Even though it is clear that they are not getting back together, Isabelle spends the night with Larry in a cramped room that is stacked to the ceiling with books.  In the morning when she awakens to the crying of neighbor’s babies and sees cockroaches crawling in the bed and rats digging through the trash, Isabelle runs back to Elliott’s, packs her bags, and returns to America without even telling Larry goodbye. 

At this point, life splits the friends apart.  Isabelle and Gray marry, have children, and enjoy the lavish lifestyle that they have always anticipated.  Larry leaves Paris to work in the coal mines where he saves the life of Mackenzie (Peter Vaughan) who encourages him to read the Upanishads and go to India.  There he is befriended by Raaz (Saeed Jaffrey) who takes him to Tibet to study in an ashram with the Lama (Kunchuck Tharching). Sophie’s husband and son are killed in a car wreck and she begins drinking to ease the pain; eventually she becomes such an embarrassment to her class-conscious in-laws that they ship her off to France where she becomes an opium addict and prostitute.  Just as each of the characters has settled into some semblance of a routine, the 1929 stock market crash occurs, and Gray’s father kills himself leaving Gray financially and emotionally ruined.  He and Isabelle move to Paris to stay with Elliott about the same time that Larry, who has been studying for years, concludes that he has gained all that he can from solitude and contemplation.  Deciding that what he has learned only has value if he has others to share it with, he leaves the ashram and returns to the slums of Paris.

One day he runs into Elliott and learns not only of his friends’ move to France, but that Gray suffers from such severe migraines he cannot work.  Larry stops by and uses a mystical form of hypnosis to cure his old friend, then, to celebrate, the three go out to a tawdry nightclub.  There they encounter a clearly inebriated Sophie who lives upstairs with her pimp.   As always, Larry is glad to see his childhood friend and when the pimp offers him a chance to have a date with her, he accepts.  While Isabelle jealously watches, he follows Sophie upstairs to her room.  Instead of having sex, however, Larry sneaks Sophie out to the car and takes her to his place where he helps her dry out.  They fall in love and when he asks her to marry him, she accepts.

 Wanting to share their good news, Larry invites Gray and Isabelle to join them for lunch.  Envious of the couple’s happiness, Isabelle torments Sophie by ordering a bottle of wine that she compares to listening to “music by moonlight”.  Although she is clearly displeased about the engagement, Isabelle surprisingly insists on buying Sophie a new dress for the nuptials.   She takes Sophie to her house, and after purposely upsetting the bride-to-be by accusing her of being bad for Larry, announces that she has to take her children to the dentist.  She asks Sophie to wait for her so they can go shopping when she gets back and, on the way out the door, leaves a full bottle of the wine where Sophie can see it. 

That night when Sophie fails to return to the room she shares with Larry, he goes looking for her, and finally tracks her down smoking opium with her pimp.  Larry insists that she come home, but Sophie refuses, making it clear that she was miserable staying sober for him.  The pimp and his thugs beat Larry up and kick him out; the next day the police show up at his door and take him to the morgue to identify Sophie’s corpse which was found in the river with a slit throat. Crushed, Larry goes to confront Isabelle and accuses her of being responsible for Sophie’s death.  She counters that he killed her fiancé by changing so she simply retaliated in kind. He explains that he originally thought Sophie was his reward for being a good person, but now realizes there is no payoff in life for being good.  He finishes the exchange by stating that he is leaving France and returning to America.  When Isabelle asks if she’ll ever see him again, he answers cryptically that it doesn’t matter, and walks away.   

This film is based on the novel The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham.  The title paraphrases a quote from the Upanishads, a cornerstone of both Hinduism and Buddhism, that states:   

"The path to salvation is narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge."

Although the context implies that the story is about religion, which is true in a way since it portrays Larry’s quest to become virtuous, in my opinion, it is more about values, tackling the age old question, “What does it mean to be good?”  Sociologists consider peoples’ actions as the best measurement of their values.  Using behavior as a gauge here, Larry is a genuinely nice person.  Even before he goes to war, he refrains from judging Sophie for getting pregnant before marriage and loves Isabelle despite her snobbishness and greed.  In Paris, he eschews material things choosing instead to befriend the poor as he strives to expand his mind.  In the coal mine, he risks his life to save Mackenzie, who has been extremely rude to him, and willingly endures the discomforts of ashram life in exchange for gaining enlightenment.  But is being nice, the same thing as being virtuous?

Larry has a more pure spirit than any of the other characters, who are selfish or faithless in their own ways, but differs most dramatically from Isabelle, who repeatedly insists that she is good while consistently displaying attributes like jealousy, greed, intolerance, cruelty, and dishonesty.   People never seem to take her to task for this, however, focusing instead on her beauty, as if appearance is more important than action. The movie ends with Larry telling Isabelle that it doesn’t matter if they ever see each other again.  Why is that?  Is it because she is so horrible, he doesn’t want anything more to do with her, or perhaps, that if they are fated to meet, they will?  Or could it be what he actually is getting at is that it doesn’t matter because it’s not important in the quest to be virtuous?    

Religion, be it Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity, to name only a few, teaches us that our end goal is to be pure enough to attain Nirvana, Jannah, Heaven, or what have you.  Thus, I think Larry means that, at the end of the day, we are all responsible for our own salvation and that the only thing of value people leave behind is the sum total of their deeds.  When Larry perceived Sophie as his reward, he failed in his quest to be good because he made their relationship contingent on her sobriety.  It was almost as if he was saying, “prove you love me enough to suffer”.  Thus, by forcing Sophie to live the way he wanted her to, he was really being cruel.  In that light, although Isabelle’s actions were malicious, they were better than Larry’s because they let Sophie do what she wanted, thereby allowing her to be happy.  That’s just my take, however.  The audience may see things much differently, and that’s ok. 

When thinking about the three dramas I have shared over the last few weeks, a common theme comes to light.  In each film, the lead character suffers from survivor’s guilt as a result of living through an event that took the life of someone he loved.  It is how the characters deal with the aftermath of their tragedies that sets them apart.  Parry and Charlie absorb their sorrow, letting it act as an anesthetic that deadens their pain.  In The Fisher King, Parry rejects his entire past, giving up not only his former career and friends, but even going so far as to change his name, and thus, his identity.  He finds his salvation, however, by helping Jack.  In Reign Over Me, Charlie refuses to discuss his lost family, return to his practice as a dentist, or acknowledge the people he previously called friends while attempting to make up for his offence toward his wife by continually renovating the kitchen.  He only manages to reenter the world when he admits to his sin and teaches Alan how to stand up for himself.  Larry also runs away from his old life, but rather then turning his anger inward, he inadvertently turns it on Sophie.  He only becomes whole when he realizes that he is responsible for his own salvation but has no right to interfere in the life paths of others.

That’s all I have for now.  If you want to catch The Razor’s Edge with Bill Murray, it can be rented on streaming services like Amazon, Vudu, and Fandango.  I wouldn’t recommend trying to buy it new since, once panned by critics, it has become something of a hidden gem and sells for $45 or more.  I would recommend seeing it at least once, however, as Larry’s years in Tibet are filmed on location and the scenery is breathtaking.  While I’m on a W. Somerset Maugham kick, my next discussion will be on the 1964 film Of Human Bondage starring Kim Novak as Mildred.  There is an earlier film with Betty Davis, but I have read the book many times and, after watching both versions, believe that Novak does a much better job not only aping Maude’s cockney accent but also portraying her personality.  Until then, enjoy a bunch of flicks.