Dan. Why did he feel the need to stalk Jane? And then carry on an affair with her for over a year? What kind of person is he? Where did he get his ideas about love and sex and relationships? Is he attracted to - in the movie at least - slightly older women? Does he like the rush of doing something so wrong? Did he have an absent mother that leads him to compulsively seduce in an attempt to gain the confidence that he'll always have a woman? The fact that Anna apparently knows that he wakes up in the night crying for his mother suggests the last might be true, but the conclusions are up to the audience.
Anna. Is she a divorced wife trying to recreate the circumstances of her divorce but with her in control this time? Is she a self-hating woman trying to sabotage her life and drive someone who loves her - Larry - away? Is she actually fed up with Larry's horniness and roughness and just want someone who'll be more gentle with her? Is she living an absurd fantasy with someone just as stupid or more stupid than her? It's unclear.
Larry. Is he a brute who doesn't deserve Anna's love? Is he a horny idiot just being territorial about someone he considers to be "his"? Does he truly even love Anna, or just her body? Is he an abusive partner who just treats her like an object and is ignoring her desire to not be treated that way? Is he a Magnificent Bastard running circles around Dan? Does he even know what love is? It's unclear.
Love Cannot Overcome: No matter how much "love" you have for someone, you need to have loyalty and respect and fidelity too. Otherwise it's just a feeling, not a fact.
Self-knowledge - the ability to examine how you feel, WHY you feel that way, and what you really want - is a very valuable tool. Anna and Dan can't even seem to put into words what they want or why they do what they do, and end up totally helpless before their partners. But Larry DOES know what he wants and what he cares about and where his lines are, and so is able to pursue what he wants with vision and clarity.
The longer you wait to tell your partner about someone else, the worse you make it for yourself and them. Larry cheats on Anna but then comes home and tells her immediately, and she's hurt but not devastated. But when Anna and Dan admit they've been cheating for over a year, they blow up their relationships immediately and without question.
If your partner had sex with someone else when you expected they wouldn't, that is a massive betrayal. Larry solicits the details of Anna's adultery precisely because he wants to comprehend the depths of her betrayal instead of shying away from it, and that's ultimately what gives her the courage to leave her.
Artsy, abstract thinking can just be a cover for idiocy. Dan seems to be a flowery, "carried-through-the-air" lover, but in the end, he doesn't understand what he's doing or feeling at all, and gets rings run around him by the more cerebral Larry.
Have sympathy for those who hate themselves. Larry says he's going to forgive Anna and take her back, and it ultimately seems to be because he thinks she did what she did because she hates herself, and he thinks their relationship is more than what one of them might do because of their self-destructive tendencies.
At Least I Admit It: Everyone in the story sucks, but viewers are likely to come away liking Larry more, if only because he's always honest about what he wants and never hides it, even when it's uncomfortable or personally risky.
Award Snub: Neither Natalie Portman nor Clive Owen winning the Best Supporting Oscar in their respective categories. A bit of a surprise, given that they each nailed the Golden Globe and the Globes are sometimes predictive of the Academy Award wins.
Fans will find it hard not to cheer when Larry successfully tricks Dan into first rejecting Anna so she'll return to him. And then tricking him into rejecting Alice so he loses her too.
Larry's speech to him in general is also satisfying after watching people be absolutely clueless about love and relationships for the whole film. Larry may be an asshole, but he at least has a little self-knowledge and can admit what he wants or doesn't want and why.
Larry: You don't know the first thing about love. Because you don't understand compromise.
Crosses the Line Twice: It can be hard not to laugh during the climax as Dan is reduced to begging the man he cuckolded to return the woman he has since "counter-cuckolded," and then, when he realizes that he's lost, to beg once again, the man he cuckolded for advice for getting his own ex-girlfriend back.
The cybersex scene between Dan and an unwitting Larry. Particularly Larry, a doctor, blatantly ignoring phone calls to continue the conversation. Though to be fair he is a dermatologist, so they're probably not life or death calls, but we don't yet know this at the time.
To say nothing of Larry and Anna's subsequent awkward meeting in the aquarium the next day. Anna realizes he's been pranked and finds it Actually Pretty Funny, while Larry is at first in complete denial that he wasn't really talking to a woman.
The climactic argument between Larry and Dan is full of awkward comedy as Larry deflects every single desperate statement Dan makes.
Why did Dan feel the need to stalk Jane? And why did Jane eventually feel compelled to take him up on his offer? The reasons for this behavior are ultimately rooted in things we never definitively get an explanation for.
She Really Can Act: An odd example. Julia Roberts was considered the weakest of the four leads in anticipation of the film. Although she had an Oscar win for Erin Brockovich, she was heavily typecast as The Ingenue in romantic comedies. Here she's slightly against type - Jane for instance would be the role more within type for her - and she was given lots of praise. Anna is considered one of her more underrated roles.
The strip club sequence between Alice and Larry is the first scene that comes to mind for most people who have watched this film.
Larry and Dan's climactic argument about love and Anna.
The scene where Anna admits she's been having an affair and Larry insists on her describing every detail, both for its very explicit descriptions - surprising especially coming from America's sweetheart Julia Roberts - and in its emotional rawness. There's a reason a thousand emo songs were spawned by it.
Strangled by the Red String: The film does this with the pairings, thanks to multiple time skips that don't fill in the blanks. Dan decides he's in love with Anna after one kiss. Anna gives Dan the brush-off, but the next scene has them confessing to their respective partners that they've been having an affair for over a year. Anna reassures Dan of her love for him despite having slept with Larry, the next scene reveals that she went back to Larry. Alice rebuffs Larry, but Larry is later seen taunting Dan about having slept with her. Dan is depressed over Anna leaving him, the next scene is of him and Alice in bed, having reconciled and all we get to explain this is a brief flashback of him tracking her down at the strip club. It gets jarring.
Tear Jerker: The fights between the respective couples regarding their infidelity are brutally realistic and quite uncomfortable for anyone who's been in the same situation.
Truth in Television: Dan seems to have a reactive attachment disorder. Adults with reactive attachment disorder frequently have trouble with complex emotions like remorse, empathy, and shame and are more likely to have issues trusting people but also a deep need to be loved. In Dan, we have someone who incessantly seeks love from Anna and Alice, but who is incapable of expressing real remorse or feeling empathy, and who loses trust in them very quickly when they cross a line in his eyes. Considering how Larry says Dan wakes up in the middle of the night "crying for mummy," it's quite possible Dan had a neglectful mother figure, and his behavior during the story is a result of that.
Album:
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The album made such an impression on American music critics that it made The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critic's poll for 1980 despite only being available as an import at the time.
Harsher in Hindsight: Every fucking thing just screams "Ian Curtis is going to kill himself".
Nightmare Fuel: Rolling Stone referred to Closer as "one of the most chilling albums ever made", and not without good reason. Every waking second of this album is packed to the brim with a hauntingly primeval sound that offers a terrifyingly honest look into the rapid downward spiral Ian Curtis's state of mind had taken by this point, with uncompromisingly dour lyrics that altogether serve as a prolonged suicide note.
Tear Jerker: Pretty much the entire album, but especially the last four songs, which are some of the bleakest musical recordings in history. More than one person has described the lyrics on the album as "suicide notes set to music".
predictive of the Academy Award wins.