"Mourning Becomes Electra" Movie Review

Love, the base on which most relations are standing. How pure and important we found this feeling of love, but the question is, is it true that love is pure? Does with feeling of love can’t we find mixture of other feelings? We all know the answer, love is not pure it has many other feelings like jealousy, possession, insecurity, hatred and revenge, does not matter in which relation. Because every love relation has these kind of feelings. Can anyone imagine these feelings in one family? Yes consciously or unconsciously we have these feelings in family but most of the time these feelings are under control. What happens if we have over acuteness of feelings, answer is simple, same what happens with “Mannon” family.

“Mourning Becomes Electra” is a play by Eugene O’Neill. Which is originally published and performed in 1931. There is one black and white film also, which is adaptation from the play. That is the American film by Dudley Nichols, which is released in 1947. The film has some minor changes but by and large remain faithful to the original play. It also has divided in three parts like “The Home coming”, “The Hunted” and “The Haunted”.

There is mainly four members in Mannon family. They all love each other and also hate each other but differently. That love and hate leads family to collapse. Play and movie both shows Oedipus and Electra complex very effectively. Lavinia Mannon, daughter of Christine and Ezra Mannon. She loves her father and hates her mother. When her father spend time with her mother she can’t bear that and tries to keep her father away. Christine, mother of Lavinia and Orin also loves her son Orin. She also want him for herself. Christine loves Adam Brant also, because he is also a part of Mannon family and he resembles the Mannons in looks. This love is not same which anyone normally in family has but this love is of body also. Lavinia also once says that, “I want to be wife of my father.” And because of that she also denies Peter’s marriage proposal. From this way we can say there is element of Electra complex.

Same way we can see Oedipus complex also. Orin loves his mother Christine and he want to live with her alone. He told his mother that they both will go to island after Marring Lavinia with Peter. He also don’t like his father and he kills Adam Brant when he comes to know about his mother’s affair with him. He promise his mother that he will make her happy. After the death of Christine, Orin turns towards Lavinia because now Lavinia looks same as her mother and Orin as his father.

With love we can see the motives of revenge in this movie. Adam Brant behaves like he loves Christine because he wants to take revenge of his mother. Christine kills Ezra because she wants her freedom. She hates Ezra from very first day of marriage that’s why she plans to kill Ezra. Lavinia conspires against her mother with the help of Orin and kills Adam Brant after that Christine also commit suicide, at that time Lavinia says that it is justice. So, she take revenge of her father’s death. Orin also commit suicide because he thinks his mother wants revenge of Adam. This is how revenge leads whole Mannon family to the end.

Mannon family has very fishy past and that past has never leaved Mannons, take it physically or mentally. The past of Adam with Mannons, past of Christine with Ezra, past of Lavinia with Adam and also her conspiracies, past of Christine’s death till the end stays with Orin and at the end also Orin writes the manuscript of past of Mannons. At the end Lavinia also locks herself in Mannon house with past of Mannons. These all are mental past but after death of Christine and Ezra, their looks comes to Orin and Lavinia. They both started resembling their parents. This is how past never left Mannons.

At the end of the movie Lavinia decides to lock her self in room and punish her self because Orin has written in his history that Lavinia is criminal and now she don’t want mannons in world she wants to end her family as she is last mannon. We feel at the end that Lavinia is coward. She accepts to torture herself till death in that house but like all her family members she don’t has that courage to commit suicide.

At the end we can understand that every feeling in human being is important but when feelings becomes more stronger more you hurt other people.

Thank you.