So I'm dying to know what all you "reshufflers" think the title, The Cake Eaters, means. When we played the film all over the country, and in Europe too, it was usually the first and most hotly debated question, "What the heck is a Cake Eater?"As the screenwriter, I always had to, gulp, step up and do some explaining. Now if you google it, you'll find all kind of dark, peculiar references and definitions. But don't listen to any of those....use the force, dig deep, think about the movie, those lost characters struggling....ahhhh, I've said too much. Come on and write me, and let me know what you think the title means. And the picture posted is actually graffitti written on a bathroom wall after a screening of The Cake Eaters in Vermont. I snapped it with my camera phone, and got some strange looks.
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now i am goin on a limb here, i think it means, well you know in the sense, having you cake and eating it too, in that all the characters are getting what they not exactly deserve but kinda in that sense but in a darker way. anyways i think i am wrong but wow what a film...
ReplyDeleteIt's not unreasonable to have your cake and want to eat it, too. (I, too, cannot help but play off of that old phrase: "he wants to have his cake and eat it, too")Yet somehow, many of us have become jaded into thinking having cake AND eating it is not okay--in fact it's greedy, or gluttonous or spoiled. In the film, it's not that the characters have been denied the luxury of "eating their cake" by others--rather, they've denied themselves that experience. Most of the characters (with the exception of Georgia--who arguably is in a position of unavoidable clarity) won't allow themselves to fully grasp love (as if they don't deserve it, or they feel they've been cheated in some way)...examples...Beagle with Georgia or with his dad...Georgia’s grandmother with Beagle's dad....Ironically, Georgia serves as the strongest character and a catalyst for embracing love… Ultimately, the characters finally allow themselves to “feel their love and reciprocate it, too.” --Megan, CT
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a Marie Antoinette reference. They don't have bread; let them eat cake. The characters have hard lives and are struggling with the basics (bread). You want to give them cake? Ok, they'll eat it. They all find a little bit of joy.
ReplyDeletedamn....you all got it!
ReplyDeletei think that the title means "those who take the best of the life" you know, like , to live life to its fullest. this girl suffers from a desease and she doesn't complain at all and just live like a "normal" person and even more because she knows live is short! she wants to experiment all the great stuff live has to offer! the old couple is also a couple of cake eaters because they just love each other and don't care about anything else or about what people could say at the end of the movie, they just live their love.
ReplyDelete"Cake eaters" are the ones who get the leftovers (cake being the splatterings of dough in the old ovens, scraped off and given out to the peasants)...Those who are not so lucky in what life hands them.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful, warm movie. Where can I get the soundtrack?
Those are all good theories, but I have no idea which is the main one, or if there even is a main one.
ReplyDeleteTo the person who wanted the soundtrack: I know that the song where they are on his scooter-thing together for the first time is called 'Begin' and it is written by Nicky Mehta and performed by The Wailin' Jennys (of which she is a member). Other than that, sorry, I don't know!