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dash1729's Replies
Beyond the other movies that have been mentioned, four such films are:
Black Christmas. There have been three Black Christmas movies--the 1974 original and remakes in 2006 and 2019. I'm referring to the 2006 remake. Here the mother (unlike, perhaps, in Little Boy Blue) is definitely the biological mother of the son. She is very, very disturbed and already has her son imprisoned in the attic since early in this life. Around his 12th birthday she goes up into the attic, has sex with her son, and becomes pregnant.
Incendies. This Canadian film is set in Canada and a fictional Middle Eastern country, often considered to most closely resemble Lebanon. During a civil war in that country, a woman is imprisoned and tortured, and is raped and impregnated by the torturer. She ends up having twins, and later emigrating to Canada. It is later revealed that the rapist was her long lost son, although it is not clear if either the woman or her rapist knew this at the time the rape occurs.
The other two don't involve pregnancy:
Love Strange Love (1982) aka Amor Estranho Amor is a Brazilian film set mostly in the 1930's. The 1930's scenes are flashbacks by a much older man, but almost all the film consists of his flashbacks. In the flashbacks, he is about 12 years old, living with his grandmother, but sent to the big city to the brothel his mother works at for a brief period. The brothel house seems to conveniently have many crawlways which he can use to spy on the prostitutes in the nude and having sex. He spies on several prostitutes, including but not limited to his mother. Eventually he has sex with his mother.
The Savage is Loose (1971) involves a father, a mother, and their young son stranded on a desert island. At first they are very resourceful in learning how to live under primitive conditions. When the son hits puberty, however, he starts to challenge his father for sexual access to his mother--a scenario that does not end nearly so well as the other challenges the family faced earlier in their time on the island.
First of all, this is only a theory, but I think that Kate is actually the biological mother after all. I believe the Knights themselves originally kidnapped the infant Jimmy. My primary reason for saying that is the lack of any maternal interest by Doris at all in actually finding her son. Basic Biblical King Solomon-type wisdom would show us that the woman who shows maternal interest--Kate--is the real mother.
I believe that the Knight husband--the one who was murdered--impregnated Kate with Jimmy and there was then some kind of custody dispute between the Knights and the Wests as to who got custody. Mr. Knight believed he was helping a serviceman (Ray) who couldn't father children himself start a family--note that Mr. Knight is said to especially like doing favors for men in the service. Meanwhile Doris was somehow led to believe that Kate was acting as a surrogate mother, which led to the dispute over custody and the violence of 20 years earlier.
Note that Doris appears to know Kate--otherwise why would she have enough knowledge to say "silence is not golden"? There seems to be still more to the backstory of Doris and Kate that we aren't told.
Additionally, if Kate were NOT Jimmy's biological mother (presumably she can recall if she ever gave birth to him) I think at some point, perhaps in secret, she would have told him to assure him that their sex wasn't an act of incest. However, even if Jimmy didn't actually commit incest, he is certainly allowed to believe for pretty much the whole movie that he is committing incest.
As for the other questions, I think he WAS suspicious of the other kids being his. However he only determines fairly conclusively that Ray lost his penis during the timeline of the story, so at first he probably assumed Ray was having more sex and was probably the father of the kids. He also never runs away, although others claim that he did. He has a strong sense of responsibility to the younger kids, and this never wavers.
I have the impression that the reason Kate hasn't gotten pregnant in awhile is that she and Jimmy haven't been forced to have sex for quite awhile. I'm not sure the exact reason why Ray might not have done this for awhile, but my impression is that the last time Kate and Jimmy had sex was before his relationship with Tracy started. That was 2 years earlier (both of the young sons seem well older than 2). I have the impression because the act of forced intercourse with Kate that night seems to introduce conflicts in Jimmy's relationship with Tracy that didn't exist before.
At one point Tracy asks Jimmy why he hadn't told her about the situation with his mother (or the woman who appears to be his mother) before. There are two good reasons why he didn't. First, until the night depicted early in the film, he hadn't been unfaithful during his relationship with Tracy. His prior acts, although some would call them taboo (esp if Kate truly was his mother), occurred earlier than that. Second, until he realizes that Ray was wounded and lost his penis, he has no way of knowing whether he is the father of the boys.
He may, however, sense on some level that his brothers are more than just his brothers. In a very early scene, Tracy observes that he seems remarkably concerned about the kids.
I agree. That is why I think that it is still possible that Kate is Jimmy's biological mother, although it is clear that the Knights played some kind of a role in the past and were raising the child for some reason. Doris Knight's complete lack of interest in finding her son suggests that there must be something more to the backstory than what we are told on the surface.
When Doris Knight finds Kate--and briefly thinks it could be Jimmy--it is almost as though finding Jimmy is a minor afterthought for her. That makes no sense to me.
By contrast, Kate shows maternal support for Jimmy in every scene except, perhaps, the one where she and Jimmy are forced to have intercourse.