Life of a Man… (Synopsis) by Attila J. Keszei
The plot follows the life of an Englishman who at age seventeen incestuously molested by his mother, derailing his sexuality, going through two marriages and some homosexual encounters, finally finding unconditional love at age sixty with an oriental woman.
Unable to stay with his family after the incestuous act he works himself-up to become a merchant-ship engineer. During this time he develops adulation to his mentor the ship-master which turns into a homosexual relationship.
After some traumatic event he leaves the merchant ship and finds work on a Caribbean island. There he meets his first wife. They have two daughters, and the hero leads a normal life. But his troubled sexuality resurfaces and leads to the break-up of his first marriage.
He gets another job in Quebec, Canada. As he is a good looking, intelligent, kind individual and an Englishman, he gets into the local ‘English high-society’. He meets his second wife.
She also had been molested and became pregnant at a young age. To keep the ‘family honor’ she had been sent away and forced to give up her new born daughter for adoption at birth. This trauma makes her becoming a nymphomaniac. The protagonist and his second wife know each others problems, but they decide to make it work.
The hero becomes psychologically exploited by his second wife and due to the constant physical and mental stress, the class difference between them and his hidden troubled sexuality toward outside he develops the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
When it becomes obvious to his second wife that with time the protagonist will end up in a wheelchair, she dumps him and gets out of the marriage.
He is on his own for the third time and the progress of his illness makes him contemplate suicide. Through some newly developed stem-cell operation, his MS problem improves and he manages to keep his job.
Living alone, he meets a religious Oriental woman who is attracted to the distinguished Englishman. Our hero becomes her protector from her deranged, violent, ex-husband and she becomes his ‘saving angel’. Finally at the age of sixty he finds love. He marries the Oriental woman.
His nervous system is slowly destroyed by the re-advancing MS and finally he can only go to work in a wheel chair, in which his third wife devotedly helps him.
The film ends with his funeral, with some unexpected people turning up. These are his brother/son whom the hero had donated one of his kidneys and the long given-up daughter of his second wife, who thinks that the hero was her father. The fellow worker, a close friend of the hero, only informs the girl about the true identity of her mother but does not share his knowledge regarding the relationship between the brother/son and the hero.
The aim is to express the vulnerability of the male psychology.
The underpinnings of the storyline are the conversations of the two men as the hero tells his life story to his fellow worker. Through their discussion, past events of the protagonist’s life revive and with a lead-in narration of the hero the actual scenes take the viewers into the dept of the events.
Attila J. Keszei – 16 Cayuga Ave. Mississauga, Ont. L5G 3S7 – ajk@artterrastudio.com
