[Blarg]

He's headstrong and proud, and the movie is largely about how he gets humbled and how much his old way of thinking and doing things almost made him lose -- how close he came to his own heart's destruction. It's his despair and loneliness that make him realize what he took for granted, opening up other ways of feeling and acknowledging what's important, and what eventually winds up humanizing him for the viewer.

For that process to have its full impact, it helps that his change covers broader territory. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel to have a weepy guy at the end of his rope; that sort of guy is already half there anyway and just waiting for an excuse. If love makes fools of us all, that's shown all the more so when it's a somewhat oblivious hard-arse, justifiably proud of his hard-won competence in the way life works and also in his insistence on living life the way he knows it can work, who comes to realize just how fragile his heart is and how much love means.

Although it's a very quick shot, by the time he runs to the sea and finds no way out of the biggest mistake of his life, then looks distraught and inconsolable into the camera directly at the viewer, I've forgiven him.