Fatal Attraction: When The Jealousy Reaches a New Level

Inside each person, we have a touch of jealousy. Jealous in school when another student gets a higher grade than us. Jealous at work when we do the same amount of work as others, but the boss only pays attention to one person. Jealous in life when there is someone better than us in everything. But the most dangerous kind of jealousy is love. No one is normal when they are in love. Once we find love, we always consider that love as the true love of our lives. It can be true. However, in today’s society, true love is tough to find. Usually, when I look around at my friend, especially myself, I realize that so-called true love only lasts less than a year. But that’s not the main point. People can call their partner true love anytime they want as long as they feel happy. And because they are madly in love, jealousy inside them grows. They never want to share their love with anyone and vice versa. Jealousy in love has massive destruction to a person. It can turn them into a cruel monsters ready to take action once their love is on the brink of threat.

The theme of jealousy fits with one of the greatest movies in the 80s that I watched before. It is called Fatal Attraction with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. Paramount+ is currently having a TV series remake of Fatal Attraction 1987, but unfortunately, it is not that good.

Source: IMDb

Like its name, the movie has hinted at the plot of this movie. It is all about dangers and fears. Dan Gallagher, a lawyer from New York, has a happy family with his wife, Beth, and his daughter, Ellen. At a book launch event, Dan met a book editor for a publishing company, Alex Forest, and immediately fell in love with her. While Ellen and Beth are out of town, Dan and Alex begin their love affair. But things started to go wrong when Dan wanted to stop this love affair because it was just a fling with him and meant nothing. However, Alex didn’t think like that. She had fallen in love with Dan and would do anything to have him. And just like that, Dan’s family and himself started to bare the fatal attraction to Alex. She committed to doing so many horrible things that no one could expect. It all came from the jealousy inside her.

The performance of Glenn Close as Alex Forrest is superb and addictive. She brought out the devilish and malignant inside Alex when she reached the highest level of jealousy. Usually, when the husband is in a love affair with someone else, the wife must be the one who gets jealous. But in this case, it is Alex. She is not normal at all. She has an unstable mind. In a scene where Alex comes to Dan’s house, she stands outside and looks through the window where Dan’s family is happy together. Alex began to cry, and the flame of jealousy inside her got bigger. She wanted to be like Beth, Dan’s faithful wife. She wanted to have a happy family like that. She tried to replace Beth. She wanted to be with Dan forever after. Ultimately, after what Alex had done to Dan’s family, she had to pay a high price.

However, when I watched Fatal Attraction, I didn’t hate Alex that much. Of course, I know what she did was wrong. But if looking at the larger picture, Alex is just a victim of this love game from Dan. This movie clearly shows that Dan was the wrong one at first. Because he couldn’t hold himself from the love of Alex, he betrayed his happy family to be with Alex. He didn’t want to take responsibility. When Alex told him that she was pregnant, which was false, Dan told Alex to get an abortion and asked if the baby was his. After all, Dan returned to his family as if nothing had happened. Society always hates the third wheel inside a love relationship. There are so many fights between a wife and a lover in which the husband is wrong, and nothing happens to him. The person that the wife needs to teach a lesson is the husband because if the husband is faithful, there will be no way he can go outside and have a loving relationship with another woman.

“I’m not gonna be IGNORED, Dan” is the best line from Alex in this movie. It shows the desperation inside her when her love doesn’t pay attention to her. From another angle, it is her heartbroken feeling right now.

Dan had raised hopes in Alex that one day he would leave his wife to be with Alex. And because of that, Alex held into it and waited for Dan. But when Alex realized it would not happen, her jealousy inside her had reached a new level. She had to “make” Dan belong to her immediately by erasing Beth from his life. If Dan could not commit to Alex, he shouldn’t have begun this love affair from the beginning.

This movie is a wake-up call for everyone in a love affair. You will never know what you are heading into. It will always be challenging. It will contain many unexpected storms. Fatal Attraction is the most precise picture of jealousy that has the immense power to destroy and rot a person from the inside. Highly recommend.