My Response to “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

I want to start off by saying, I very much enjoyed watching the movie “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” The plot drew me in and elicited a sense of empathy for the protagonist, Lee Israel, as she traversed the stress-inducing difficulties in her “career” of forgery. It was a great experience throughout, minus the part where her cat died. Considering that this movie is based on a true story, it’s shocking to know her cat died due to the negligence of her only trusted friend.

Not only that, but I was interested by the references to the LGBTQ+ identity that showed up throughout the movie. The movie made it clear; Lee Israel was a lesbian and her friend Jack Hock was gay. The people Lee Israel wrote about and made forgeries of were LGBTQ+ as well. I think a deep dive of the identity of all these people in conjunction with their situation would be an interesting prospect.

Let’s move onto the focus of Israel’s forgeries. A convincing forgery likely entails writing in such a way that it seems like the original person wrote it. In other words, to forge something, you have to write in another person’s style. Lee Israel said some of her best work was done in her forgeries, works where she wasn’t writing in her own voice, but in another’s. So, if Lee Israel was dissatisfied with her prior work in her “style,” but liked her forged works, it probably means that Lee Israel had not found her voice until then. Her true writing voice was not the one she used in her biographies; it was one reminiscent of the people she impersonated.

If only she used her forgery tactics into her writing to create something honest and original. If she felt that her best work came from writing as someone else, she could’ve dabbled into epistolary fiction. Israel forged letters of people she was well-researched about, and went lengths to add “authenticity” to these letters. These aspects could’ve been used to write a realistic historical fiction that delves into identities and situations of these historical figures.

What about the title of the movie? The line “Can you ever forgive me?” originates from a letter that Lee Israel forged. On the surface, it makes for an almost ironic reference to the guilt Israel may have felt after getting caught. But the line goes deeper than that because the one bookstore clerk said this exact line to Lee Israel on the “date” they had. I think this line represents Israel’s romantic feelings toward the clerk, which were unrequited once she received a fax warning against Lee Israel and her forgeries. Their relationship received no closure, and the movie emphasizes this with the shots of Israel looking at the clerk’s short story and watching the clerk through the bookstore window. Out of all the people, the one who said this forged Dorothy Parker line is the one that Israel wishes to ask “Can you ever forgive me?” the most.

All in all, we can learn much from Israel’s story. First, be true to yourself. In her forging career, Israel pretended to be someone else, and lied to others claiming someone else had wrote what she wrote. People started to catch onto her lies and in an effort to upkeep her career, she lost her friend and her cat. Things only began to turn around when she wrote a memoir about what happened, when she wrote about the truth. Second, don’t push people out of your life. Lee Israel did so many times, and each time she faced the consequences. She refused to go to book signings and other publicity stunts, harming her chances at success and fame. She wouldn’t let her girlfriend Elaine help her with her issues, so Elaine left her. She cut off her friendship with Jack Hock, and he sold her out to the authorities. And yet, some of the best moments in Israel’s life happened when she let people into it. Did she learn that letting people into her life would benefit her? Was she more open after her memoir? I’d love to know.