What a Way to Go! 1964

Louisa May Foster, a black-clad widow, descends a pink staircase inside a pink mansion in a dream-like pre-credit sequence. She is followed by pallbearers carrying a pink coffin, which slips and drops as it slides down the stairs. Louisa clings to a desperate plan: to give her wealth—$211 million—to the U.S. government, a gesture the Internal Revenue Service initially treats as an April Fools’ joke. As she sobs to her unstable psychiatrist, Dr. Stephanson, Louisa’s memories unfold through a cascade of flashbacks and fantasy sequences, inviting the viewer to piece together the unusual chain of marriages and fortunes that have shaped her life.

Her story begins in Ohio, where a young Louisa grows up under the influence of a money-driven mother, Mrs. Foster. The pressure from her mother pushes Louisa toward conventional wealth, yet she defies the plan by marrying Edgar Hopper, a poor shop owner who embraces a simple, Thoreauvian ideal. The couple finds happiness in simplicity, but their humility becomes a target when the jilted Leonard Crawley—an ambitious local businessman—returns to humiliate Edgar and threaten their modest dream. Leonard’s scheming, coupled with Edgar’s relentless work ethic, drives Edgar to achieve astonishing success at the expense of the relationship, and his hard-won triumph ultimately darkens Louisa’s world with grief.

Louisa’s next chapter unfolds in Paris, where she encounters Larry Flint, an impoverished artist whose life embodies a wild, bohemian spirit. They marry and inhabit a luminous, artistic romance, living amid a playful, dreamlike atmosphere. Larry invents a crane-like machine that translates eclectic sounds into paint strokes on canvas, a concept that propels him toward fame. When Louisa triggers a moment of artistic magic by playing classical music, a painting emerges that becomes Larry’s first major sale. As his fame grows, Larry constructs larger cranes and continues to create, but one night two wayward cranes—uncontrolled and stubborn—turn on him, beating him to death. The tragedy leaves Louisa not only bereaved but increasingly isolated in a world of wealth that does not bring happiness.

Back in the United States, Louisa’s fortune climbs even higher, yet her heart remains unsettled. In a chance encounter, Rod Anderson Jr., a coldly calculating business magnate, offers her a ride on his private jet after a missed flight. The journey reveals a gentler side to him, and the two eventually marry, settling into a luxurious Manhattan penthouse. Despite Rod’s wealth, Louisa fears losing him, so the couple retreats to a simpler life on a rural farm reminiscent of Rod’s childhood. A drunken moment on the farm ends in tragedy when Rod, trying to milk a bull, is knocked from the barn wall, and Louisa becomes a widow once again.

Wealth returns Louisa to newfound freedom as she roams the country, her mood oscillating between despair and possibility. In a small-town café she meets Pinky Benson, a former nightly clown who has spent over a decade entertaining patrons. They fall in love, and their life shifts to a humble, close-knit existence aboard Pinky’s weathered houseboat on the Hudson River. Pinky’s uncomplicated joy and partnership offer Louisa a rare sense of belonging, but fame eventually lures Pinky away from their quiet life. He sheds his clown persona to become a Hollywood star, and the mansion they share is painted pink to mark his success. At his film premiere, Pinky ignores warnings and greets an excitable crowd, only to be trampled to death by the frenzy that follows.

After these revelations, Dr. Stephanson returns as a potential suitor, promising to give Louisa the simple, steady life she claims to want. Yet a mishap occurs when the psychiatric couch rises and knocks him unconscious, leaving Louisa on the edge of the chair and facing an unexpected moment of truth. The janitor helps her down, and she discovers that the man she believed could provide stability is actually Leonard Crawley—the very figure who once felt the sting of her husbands’ failures and who, in a twist, now claims to be content with a life rooted in simplicity.

Louisa and Leonard rehearse a bucolic, farm-based existence with their four children, a quieter verdict to the rollercoaster of her past. As Leonard plows a field, he reads Thoreau and unexpectedly appears to strike oil—the implication is ambiguous, but the oil company soon clarifies that the spur of fortune came from a punctured pipeline while Leonard toils. The surviving couple embraces a modest, dirt-poor lifestyle that they still find happiness in, exemplifying a life that’s not defined by wealth but by the relationships that endure through it all.

In the end, the story folds back into the dreamlike frame of the opening confession, a meditation on desire, luck, and the cyclical nature of fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams. The portrait of Louisa’s journey—from humble beginnings to spectacular wealth and back again to a simple, albeit precarious, happiness—feels both unusual and intimate. Across marriages, love, ambition, and loss, the narrative preserves a quiet, reflective cadence, inviting viewers to reflect on what true contentment might resemble when it is stripped of glitter and reimagined through memory.