I believe that “Hour of the Wolf” is a confession to murder. Alma has alluded to murdering her husband out of fear for his mental illness. I believe that Johan was a mentally unstable man, and Alma began to fear for her own mental well being as time progressed. She describes the demons that Johan had drawn as coming to life, and mocking him. I believe that these demons were facets of Johan’s psyche that began to destroy his life. As Johan became more and more withdrawn and unstable Alma recognized this. I believe that the turning point of the story is when Alma asks Johan the question if people that live together for so long start to share the same thoughts. After she has raised this question, Johan gets worse. His demons start to mock and taunt him more, and he sleeps less and less. At one point Johan describes a story where he says that a young almost naked boy attacked him. Johan tells Alma that he killed the boy, and threw him in the water.
By the end of the film Johan is overcome by his demons, and lets them destroy him. I think that Alma realizes that Johan has been overcome by his demons, and she realizes that if she were to stay with him any longer that she may be attacked by these demons too. Fearing for her own safety Alma kills Johan in the woods. To cover her tracks Alma tells the story as if the demons did come to life and destroy Johan. She also claims victim by accusing Johan of shooting her in an attempt to kill her. Perhaps he did shoot her, and that is when Alma realized that she would have to kill him for her own safety.
Alma’s realization that Johan was mentally unstable, and possibly dangerous allowed for her to kill him. She believed that if she were to grow old with him she would have inherited his illness, and she could not live with that. Even at the end of the film she asks the question again. Would she have become like him? I think Alma regrets her decision to kill Johan questioning if there was another way to save him. She will never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment