Richard is the Best Character in Stoker

Picture this: It's 4 AM. I can't sleep. I'm lying awake in bed, and I'm still just a few degrees too hot for comfort despite the AC overhead, and I just can't seem to sleep despite my obviously heavy and tired eyes. There's a mosquito somewhere in the room, and I can't be bothered to deal with it. And then, out of nowhere, my mind wanders onto a thought that I'd never had before.

Richard is actually the best character in Stoker, despite being the least explored.  

 

I've watched Stoker about a dozen times. It's a favourite movie of mine, in large part because of the sound production. How many times have I put that movie on as background noise while I worked on a range of other things? But, there you have it: my own little humble opinion, courtesy of my 4 AM brain.  

You might be thinking, Best in what way? 

Obligatory spoiler alert; you've been warned. 

Let's say, to begin with, that Richard Stoker is the only "good" character that we get to have in the movie.  

The movie goes out of its way to pit mother against daughter, turning Evelyn's character into an antagonist of sorts rather than someone who is on India's side, but it lets the viewer root for Richard from the very beginning. There is no question about his moral character and whether he is a good or evil force in the story; it's clear right from the start.  

Here is a man who, despite Charlie's shocking murder of their baby brother, still finds a way to take care of Charlie in an attempt to get him the help he needs. And, when Charlie is finally ready to leave the institution, Richard goes to pick him up and attempts to help him get his life together, while still keeping him away from India. (Though, of course, we all know how that works out for him.)

Why would Richard need to keep Charlie away from India? Apart from the whole murderer bit, of course. The answer is simple: Richard sees in his daughter India what he saw in his brother Charlie. They're the same, with similar leanings and tendencies, and as a result, Richard doesn't want Charlie to ever meet India.

Regardless, it seems to me that Charlie has an inkling about his and India's connection, despite her complete obliviousness (she doesn't even know he exists). This, to me, isn't a supernatural thing. My theory is that when Richard noticed the same behaviours in his own daughter India, he visited Charlie to see if it was something he could help her overcome. Whether he told Charlie explicitly that India is like him, or whether Charlie surmised from Richard's visit, it doesn't entirely matter - the end result is that Charlie knows now, and he knows there's someone out there who could understand him and potentially return his love in the way that nobody else ever could, even his big brother Richard. 

His obsession with India becomes clear to Richard when Charlie starts sending her all sorts of letters. Because Richard is trying to help India deal with her odd tendencies, he can't risk the two of them ever meeting. He hides Charlie's letters from India for years. During that time, he moves his family to a sleepy, small town, building a house in the middle of nowhere, and teaches India to harness her tendencies and channel them into a hobby that can hopefully satiate whatever urges she might have: hunting. 

For a father with no how-to guide or any way of figuring out how to deal with India's Charlie-esque urges, Richard does a pretty stand-up job with India. One has to wonder how India might have turned out if Charlie never came into the picture, and if Richard had more time to spend with his daughter, and if he could finish training her to deal with the odd urges within.  

In other words, not only is Richard shown to have a strong moral compass, he's also shown to be a good father. He doesn't run away or turn his back on his daughter when he learns that she shares characteristics with the same man who killed his baby brother Johnathan all those years ago. Instead, he finds a way to help her control those characteristics so that she doesn't turn out like Charlie, who is too far gone. 

Perhaps in this regard, it is his regret that drives him. We see that Richard was a responsible teen, who looked after his siblings. He might believe that if he had seen what Charlie was earlier on, he might have been able to help him and to save Johnathan. Now, he helps India in the ways he could never help Charlie. 

The consequences of Richard's own obsession with India and making sure she turns out okay are also very pronounced. His wife, Evelyn, feels neglected by her husband, and the two have grown apart over the years. She laments that he spends so much time with India, and vice versa, doing a hobby she obviously doesn't approve of, but she doesn't know the truth behind it and just how critical it is to India's development. She doesn't understand, and therefore feels distanced from the rest of her family, while also being physically removed in this great big house in the middle of nowhere, when a woman like Evelyn would much rather prefer to be living somewhere more "happening". 

It's to be expected, therefore, that Evelyn feels like she's missing out on life. It hasn't turned out as expected. Her youth is slipping through her fingers, and life is dreary. Her daughter isn't a normal daughter who does normal daughter things with her, like going out shopping or getting their hair done, and her husband isn't the man she married. Everything was better - before India was born. The subtle context of blame and resentment between the two can find its roots in Richard's handling of the situation, though one has to wonder how else he could have possibly handled it.

Somehow, Evelyn doesn't seem like the kind of woman to keep it together when told, "By the way, our daughter turned out a lot like my murderous brother Charlie who's locked up in an institution and I really think we need to get a handle on it before she kills someone." Regardless, I feel like maybe it would have been a good idea to at least tell your wife that We Need to Talk About India. Or, at the very least, We Need to Talk About Charlie. Although, ironically, Evelyn isn't spared that knowledge anyway, since she learns everything in the end through the particularly traumatic near-death experience at Charlie's hands.  

There's a bit of a pattern here. All roads lead back to Richard. All of the conflicts find their convergence at the source that is Richard. 

Sure, Charlie is the one who killed Johnathan and put everything in motion, and sure, he's the one who's returned to kill more and initiate young India into a life of kill-kill-kill, but it's Richard who really makes this story possible. This story, in the way it's told. 

He's the one who decides to keep in touch with Charlie. He's the one who decides to hide Charlie's letters. He's the one who moves them out into a small town in the middle of nowhere - and, I guess, he's also the one who gives that address to Charlie. He's the one (in my opinion) that lets Charlie know that India is like him, thus starting his obsession. He's the one who allows a distance to grow between himself and his wife. He's the one who decides to teach India to hunt (a final gift for his wife from beyond the grave, because if India wasn't a good shot, that ending might have gone very differently). He's the one who allows resentment to build between his wife and daughter because neither of them are brought into the loop. He's the one who goes to pick Charlie up the day of India's birthday. He's the one who tells Charlie he can't be a member of their family.  

Richard's decisions - implied as they are by the various elements of the story - are truly the reason why the story is told in the way that it is, and why it unfolds in the way that it does. How would the story have been different, for example, if Richard had cut contact with Charlie, and hadn't told him where he was or that he even had a daughter? Or what if he never let on that India was like Charlie, so that Charlie's obsession never grew? Or if he'd let Evelyn know the truth about Charlie, so that when he came knocking, she could have at least been on her toes? Or if he'd let the police department know that his brother, who had murdered his other brother, was being released from the psychiatric institution and that they needed to keep an eye out for him? 

In other words, what if Richard had done literally anything differently?

The story would have been different, that's what.  

All of this to say, Richard is the best character in Stoker - by which I mean, possibly the most complex and the most central character - and we don't even get to see all that much of him.  

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