MovieChat Forums > The Loved One (1965) Discussion > "with red protruding eyeballs, and black...

"with red protruding eyeballs, and black protruding tongue."

posted 10 years ago by edwardholub
1 reply | jump to latest

I think this was to show what a *beep* poet Barlow really was. When he was composing a poem for his dead uncle, he's shown walking around Whispering Glades improvising the poem, not writing anything down. And it turns out that this is exactly what he gives Sir Ambrose to recite at the funeral. That's what so funny about it. He sincerely wrote that crappy poem for the funeral in all seriousness.

There is no "off" position on the genius switch.

[–] melora72 9 years ago

He was not composing a poem. He was making up an ugly parody of an old poem.
His uncle was a very nice man and I didn't see any reason why he would do that.

I rememeber thinking by the end what a total bastard the poet had been. Maybe he was like that all the way through and I had somehow missed it.

I think it was from a very old Greek poem
It was a poet's elegy to a dead friend.

They told me, Heracletus
They told me you were dead
They brought me bitter words to hear
and bitter tears to shed.

I wept as I remembered
how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking
and sent him down the sky.