Herostratus: screencaps (II)

[michael_gothard]

On the night before his planned suicide, Max gets a visitor: Clio.





He is nervous and suspicious at first.





Even knowing that Farson sent her, he plays along, and allows her to seduce him.









She is his first.





Farson observes everything; he knows exactly what he is doing.



After they have made love, Max is transformed; protective, and, by his own admission, happy.



Clio warns him not to get soft, and not to let ‘them’ get him.



As Max falls asleep, Clio weeps, knowing that she is one of ‘them’, having taken part in this betrayal.







Farson wakes Max with breakfast in bed.





He finds Max in ebullient mood, suicide apparently the last thing on his mind.





Farson tells him that he knows Max has no prospects; nothing to live for.



Then Farson reveals to Max that he paid Clio for seducing him.



She was to soften him up, and has performed the same function with other awkward clients.



Max is devastated.



He believes Clio has revealed everything about him to Farson, which perhaps she has.









In a sense, Farson stands in for Don Levy; he thoroughly investigates Max, as Levy intensively tested Michael for the role; a voyeuristic pimp, he organises and observes the ‘act of love’ which Levy films; he orchestrates the action, and puts Max in a position where he must get up on that high roof, even though he is afraid; he bullies Clio into doing what he wants, as Levy, by his own admission, bullied Gabriella Licudi to get a reaction for the end of the film.









With the love he thought he might at last have found brutally ripped away from him, along with his innocence,
Max goes up to the roof.











When Max tries to get his attention, the dead-eyed cameraman, preparing to film Max’s death, tells him to ‘piss off!’





Max then stands on the edge of the very tall building.



The cameraman thinks Max is about to give his final address.





He runs runs to drag Max away from the edge, not to save his life, but because he isn’t ready to start filming just yet.





In the ensuing struggle, is it the cameraman who falls to his death.







Max runs down the many stairs.







He sees the man lying dead on the paving, then runs from the scene.







Clio, meanwhile, also has to deal with the emotional consequences of her betrayal.