Star Words: Episode III, Part 13

[matril]

It's only natural that Anakin would go home after a day of disappointment and humiliation and seek the comfort of his wife's presence. Unfortunately, there is a growing rift between him and Padmé as well, and we see it illustrated all too painfully here.

When he expresses his fear that the war is destroying what the Council used to stand for, Padmé ventures the suggestion that the Republic itself might not be the good guys anymore. If you consider the deleted arc with Padmé and the proto-Rebellion canon (which I do) you'll know that Padmé is herself feeling conflicted about keeping something secret from Anakin, and she's hoping to gently bring him into agreement with the ideals of her secret Senatorial meetings. But Anakin rejects her suggestion as "talking like a Separatist." It's clear that Padmé feels she's not being heard from what she says next.

"This war represents a failure to listen."

It certainly does. Why did the Separatists want to leave the Republic in the first place? What sort of negotiations were attempted to keep them from leaving? We can safely assume that the Separatists didn't feel their concerns were effectively addressed. Why else would they be fighting a vicious war over it?

But the failure to listen, the failure to communicate, is epidemic in every level from the galactic to the deeply personal. It's a problem in their own marriage. Padmé pleads with Anakin to use his position with the Chancellor to help bring back peace. If only he had confided in her about the secret assignment the Jedi Council just gave him, she'd have known that her comment would hit a sore spot. Instead, he lashes out and walks away. She begs him to open up to her. He won't. She goes to him; he takes her in his arms, but they might as well be planets apart. She speaks, but he might not be listening at all.

Next time, a chilling scene with a master manipulator....

Comments

[krpalmer]

"I consider the extra scenes to have happened" seems to me a positive way to look at things compared to some of the needling "ah, if only we'd had longer movies" insinuations. I know it's been a while since I watched the bonus DVD (the "deleted prequel scenes" didn't make it over to the Blu-Ray collection), though, and as much as I accept "something like that happened in spirit," I do remember a slight feeling the last scene felt just a little off somehow with Anakin present for the low-impact confrontation between Palpatine and the dissident Sentators. After seeing this post I had to turn to my "Art of Revenge of the Sith" book, which has an extended version of the screenplay, to get the impression Anakin would have been there for the meeting, gone back to the Jedi Temple, and immediately been told to go see Palpatine again for the "Sith Lord reveal"...

In a way, the Separatists can seem to me to be an opportunity for us to use our own imaginations. The comment about Count Dooku being thought "a political idealist" can help me accept the "Separatist parliament" once shown in The Clone Wars, with people discussing matters disconnected from the droid armies said to fight in their name, and yet the later scenes in Attack of the Clones can also have me wondering if they simply amounted to "corporate powers" intent on getting the last slivers of pie to themselves. Anyway, as you said the scene points towards the main characters themselves.

[matril]

I've always felt that the two initial scenes from the deleted arc were stronger than the final scene -- it did seem a little weird for Anakin to be there. I'd rather that his last face-to-face contact with Padmé before his fall be their conversation in her apartment ("I promise you, I'm not going to die in childbirth; "No, I promise you"), which is much more urgent and intense. And yes, the scenes leading directly to his turn to the Dark Side end up having him kind of volleyed back and forth between the Jedi Temple and Palpatine's offices. Which helps to illustrate how both are treating him like a kind of pawn.