The Red Rose

For the Beast the most moving metaphor in the film is the red rose, which he kept within sight, counting the petals as they fell.  The rose is a symbol of many things: blood passion, fragility, an hourglass of one’s life and death within the grasp of the bedside.  It becomes a measurement of time, a distillation of a human body into the space it takes up.  But we all die and it’s hard not to think that way when you’re dying…