When Roy is shoveling dirt into the house to build Devil's Tower in the living room and Ronnie says she thinks he needs a doctor:Quote:
Ronnie, if I don't do this, that's when I'm going to need a doctor.
He knows what he needs to do, that he's not dangerous, and that it's okay for his family to help. The younger kids were helping (from the best of my recollection) and he was fine with that. Nothing is an indicator that he would not have a resolution if the family had stuck by his side.
When Roy is asked by Claude what he wants:Quote:
I just want to know that it's really happening.
I think this is a powerful confirmation that Roy knows he needs to have someone believe him and since his wife didn't (she even mocked him earlier on - see below), he must turn outside his family for that affirmation.
When Roy tries to explain to Ronnie what he saw:Quote:
Ronnie: Roy, what did it look like?
Roy: It was like an ice cream cone.
Ronnie: What flavor?
and
Quote:
Roy: Well they're not moon burns, goddamnit.
Ronnie's flippant answer in the first quote tells a lot of story here. Ronnie didn't take her husband seriously and when she went out at 5am, she went to try to calm Roy down for her own needs - not in the supportive role of a partner. Her constant nagging at him to
"just be normal" is what I remember and her constant disbelief.
Ronnie can't even believe that his burns were from what he knows he saw.
Is that excusable? Absolutely. Most people expect disbelief from others when you speak about things like UFOs, Big Foot, ghosts, and alien abductions.
But, I think most people also believe the person they have married is someone that will have your 'six no matter what else happens. Especially in those circumstances you hope that someone connected so intimately to you will be there for you.
Is Ronnie wrong? No. She is just not strong enough to deal with something not Americana suburbia.
Is Ronnie right? No. She is not right to run away and slam the bathroom door when Roy pointedly says he needs her help and he's not sure what is happening to him. Later on, Roy also tries again via a phone conversation to have Ronnie help him. Both times she refuses him.
Did she bail? Yes. According to Monty (and
Slate backs him up with a reference to a 1997 bts interview), Spielberg has said he could not make a movie about a man leaving his family - under any circumstance. Yet, here we have a film where the woman does exactly that: She leaves her husband that has pleaded at least 2-3 times that he needs her support. This is why I call double-standard.
Roy never demanded that his family leave and he was actually encouraging his kids to help him shovel dirt into the house and that he was actually fine: Not dangerous. Not in need of a doctor. Extravagant? Sure. But not dangerous.
Every person must decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
Roy's decision may have already been half made, I think, since his home life before the aliens was not really that ideal. He obviously was not doing well at his job. His kids and wife were already ignoring him for the most part and taking advantage of him not really being that present (I recall him trying to read the paper amongst yelling and screaming). Roy seemed lost from the start.
His "becoming lost" at the start of the movie when he's called by his job is actually a perfect example that we are looking at a man who is already adrift in the weeds of Life.
Roy definitely may have felt that his family would be better off without him and he could be right since it was Ronnie that left and never opened a possibility for him to return without him having to pay for it from that day onward.
I don't think his decision was necessarily right but neither do I feel it was really wrong.
It is a pity that filmmakers decide that the cultural norm must be the way things have to be in their thoughts or art they've done previously: It's how we get things like Han shooting first.