Who was right?

SPOILERS



All said, the movie offers a hopeful future to all. Angus will likely compete school, avoid military school(and Vietnam, unfair to others but there it is.) They show young women CONSTANTLY coming on to him, so there will be a girlfriend/wife in his future, someone to love him, kids of his own. He won't NEED his mother and stepfather.

And he will probably stay in touch with Hunham and eventually help him, too. I hope.

The third major character -- Mary Lamb the cook -- will stay on at the college and perhaps be consoled by Angus as the months roll on.

If it’s a private facility….they can kick out whoever they want….as long as it’s not for protected class reasons….race mainly.

Can't it be that they're both right, in that they both have valid and legitimate claims that just happen to be in conflict with each other (because different people at different ages and with different responsibilities want and need different things)?

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I feel compelled to respond to this comment -- at odds with my earlier response above -- because I recently re-watched Alexander Payne's "About Schmidt" and found that THAT movie, too(from the same director) took up a "Who is right?" quandry that repeats, I guess, in this Payne movie of 21 years later.

In About Schmidt, the movie opens with Jack Nicholson(looking banal and pudgy and unexceptional) retiring from his insurance executive job and about to take a long RV trip with his equally old wife. But she dies suddenly, leaving Jack a widower and his only child daughter (Hope Davis) without a mother. But the daughter is due to get married very soon. She lives in Colorado now and Jack lives in Nebraska. He takes a road trip to the wedding and -- when there in Colorado tries DESPERATELY to stop his daughter from marrying a dork he finds beneath her. (Later as narrator, he tells the audience he feels the man is "a nincompoop.")

So we are to take Jack's side: these potential in-laws are awful, backwards people and the son is in some ways the worst.

But THEN we are to take the daughter's side: She rages, " I don't remember you ever caring about my life in the years before this!) (A clue that the "unretired" Jack ignored his family when he was a hard working workaholic.)

CONT

Exactly. I don't even understand the question - it couldn't be clearer. in their obnoxious sense of entitlement/evasion/self-justification weaponizing/scape-goating the adverse consequence against their son and, ultimately, his teacher.

The larger resonating question was left only subtly stated - the vast difference between the rich & the poor regarding service in Vietnam. The affluent gave their own, safe harbor in college, while leaving to the working class/poor the chore of 'defending democracy'. Not so benign neglect, either.

I have since seen the film a second time and yeah...the mother and the stepfather come off as villainous to me.

Consider that the stepfather is all too willing to ensure that Angus ends up in military school and hence the Draft. He says something like "maybe the military will straghten him out." Nice way to "get rid" of the original father's troublesome son, "if things break right."

As the mother and the stepfather as a unit, one realizes that they COULD have honeymooned at ANY TIME during the school year when Angus was supposed to be AT school, but they chose to move the honeymoon to Christmastime right when he intended to come home. Neither mother nor stepfather wanted to have to deal with a teenager at home for two weeks -- as most other students are WELCOMED..

Plus all of this from saltfat, all of which I agree with:

BEGIN:
The mom essentially abandoned her kid with a shitload of trauma and thought it was okay because she threw pills and therapy at him. And then the threat of military school (i.e. possible violent death). She was 100% in the wrong. He was\is a child. She failed miserably as a parent. The situation with her ex-husband was largely not in her control, but her treatment of her son afterwards was in her control

END

The movie is open-ended enough that perhaps Angus can reconcile with his mother in the future. MAYBE with the stepfather.

But if not...he has Mary the Cook for solace on campus..and will likely re-unite with Mr. Hunam in future years...perhaps to help out(with work) the teacher who sacrified everything for him.