boarding mother’s hand to dress him, paying not the slightest
attention to her.”
So, when Peter looked at the scene of Martha and George
kissing, their two faces did not automatically command his
attention. What he saw were three objects — a man, a woman,
and a light switch. And what did he prefer? As it happens, the
light switch. “I know for [Peter] that light switches have been
important in his life,” says Klin. “He sees a light switch, and he
gravitates toward it. It’s like if you were a Matisse connoisseur,
and you look at a lot of pictures, and then you’d go, ahh, there
is the Matisse. So he goes, there is the light switch. He’s seeking
meaning, organization. He doesn’t like confusion. All of us
gravitate toward things that mean something to us, and for
most of us, that’s people. But if people don’t anchor meaning
for you, then you seek something that does.”
Perhaps the most poignant scene Klin studied comes at a
point in the movie when Martha is sitting next to Nick, flirting
outrageously, even putting a hand on his thigh. In the
background, his back slightly turned to them, lurks an
increasingly angry and jealous George. As the scene unfolds, the
normal viewer’s eyes move in an almost perfect triangle from
Martha’s eyes to Nick’s eyes to George’s eyes and then back to