[spoilers] Lucas. Just Lucas.

[binkie]

(26-11-2010 09:21 AM)Belle Wrote:  

(25-11-2010 11:41 PM)binkie Wrote:  

(25-11-2010 10:59 AM)Belle Wrote:  He longes to be the pre-russia Lucas, but somehow he lost that person whilst in prison.
Everything he does is a quest to try to become that Lucas again.

I understand what you mean when you say this, but I’m not convinced Lucas does actually want to ‘be’ his pre-Moscow self in the way you suggest. I think the situation is rather more complex. It will almost certainly be very important to Lucas now that his time in prison not be dismissed as an eight year black hole. The initial expression on his face in 7.1 when Malcolm says: “Is it really eight years?” is one almost of irritation, then confusion and disappointment, before softening into conciliation and the placatory comment about Russian prisons being like holiday camps: “They have mattresses and everything.” Lucas is beginning to realise here that those eight years will never mean the same to other people as they do to him. He will actually become, in some ways, quite protective of those years. By the time of 8.7 he is even able to make jokes about them, characterising them to the Hindu translator as an: ”eight year reading sabbatical”. That time belongs to him – it is literally part of him, written on his skin - and it is for him to make sure it continues to have meaning. Undoing that time, reversing through the black hole, is unthinkable. To do so would be to strip that huge portion of his time, and all the pieces of his life that went into making it, of any value. I think Lucas probably looks fondly on his pre-Moscow self, in the same way he would at childhood pictures. But I think he recognises it would be dangerous to think he could be that person now, and that it would be equally dangerous to want that.

I'm not sure you get what I'm trying to say with this .
I don't think Lucas wants to errase the 8 years in prison, because they are indeed very important and indeed a serious part of him. Anyway, such a dark period can't ever be really whipped out, I think.
I get the feeling, however, that he wants, or wishes, to be able to be the pre-russia Lucas in terms of feelings. We, as a viewer, know little or nothing about the pre-russia Lucas, but I can imagine that he was a lot happier and felt more sure of himself and of who he was (NOT including S9, here, simply because it's easier to make my point ). I really think that he's striving to feel the way he felt before his ordeal in Russia, that it is his ambition to feel safe, trusted and secure again. Not to forget the pain, but to be able to make it more bearable in one way or the other.

Belle, I think perhaps I am older and more cynical than you . I do appreciate the point you are making, (I realise you are not suggesting that Lucas wishes he had a time machine!) and I wish I interpreted the character and his motives in the same way. But I don’t. I’m not sure I see any indication of a desire on Lucas’ part to feel as he felt. Certainly, he is confounded and distressed by his inability to identify and experience the full, subtle range of human emotions. We must assume he has been capable of this. Elisabeta as much as lays this out for him, and us, when she more or less accuses him of being unrecognisable (That little scene in Elisabeta’s kitchen could support a lengthy analysis of its own, I suspect. There is so much going on, so much of it unsaid - and none of it anything to do with the disastrous and objectionable misinterpretation of it undertaken by season 9). My understanding of the character from this point, though, is very much of someone who is impelled to move forward. Yes, he still fetishes Elisabeta: he strokes and kisses her hair, he holds her waist, he tells her how he has missed her. But I see these actions as indicators of the survivor iteration of Lucas’ psyche. Thinking of Elisabeta (not of England or MI5) has been one of Lucas’ survival rituals for eight years. It has kept him alive, kept his mind active, and provided him with a connection to the emotional world (rather than the professional or operative world) outside prison. It’s hard to let that go. This is not necessarily so much a sign of lingering affection for Elisabeta as it is a fulfilment of the human need to need: specifically, to need something perfect and unobtainable (God is an obvious example of this, but there are others).

I do not mean to suggest that Lucas never loved Elisabeta. I do not mean to suggest that he is exploiting her, or any remaining feelings she may have for him. Rather, I am suggesting that the world looks different to Lucas now. Things no longer mean what they meant. He no longer wants what he might once have wanted. What he wants is more than likely nothing familiar to him. He may not even be aware of what it is he does want. He has been a long time without wanting anything except to be somewhere other than where he was. Comfort is no longer necessarily to be found in those things (people, relationships) which might once have represented security. I think Lucas wants those things (people, relationships) to mean something. I think he wants to be saved by an ability to feel. I think the abject dismay and confusion and self-disgust he displays when he tells Sarah in 8.4 “I just haven’t been able to feel anything for a long time” underline the extent to which he is aware of the distance between what he has wanted and what he is capable of wanting now.

It is, I admit, a very small point of interpretation on which we differ: the difference between wanting something and wanting to want something. I hope you don’t think I’m being unreasonably obtuse in coming back to this. The question of trust, to which you also allude, is a much more deeply felt thing for Lucas, which can only have been exacerbated by his experience of prison. I suspect it is quite important to an appreciation of the character to separate this question from that of security, although there is plainly a link between the two concepts. You have made me think more about this as a distinct object of concern for Lucas and his position in the narrative of seasons 7/8. I will come back to this later, because it’s worth a proper assessment of its own. You have only yourself to blame!