Character Analysis
The Fairest of Them All
One of Katharine's first scenes involves her telling a story around a campfire. Shadows flicker on the faces of everyone listening, but those aren't normal shadows… they're foreshadows. (Hey-o!)
The story involves a man seducing a queen, killing her husband, and becoming king. Perhaps Katharine intends the story to seduce Almásy, who listens with rapt attention, but this isn't how things turn out for these two at all.
It's easy to see why these two are attracted to each other—they're the two hottest people in Cairo, and we don't mean temperature-wise. Almásy actually resists Katharine early on, not liking the fact that she is a married woman. But she enters his room in a virginal white dress that he rips right off her, and their affair sizzles and steams immediately.
But the two have a super complicated relationship. Katharine, even though she is married, wants to transcend her boundaries. She loves her husband and she loves Almásy, but she loves them differently. Almásy, a mapmaker who seems to hate boundaries, doesn't like the concept of marriage, and how marriage means that a man owns a woman. However, at the same time, Almásy wants to claim Katharine for himself.
One evening after a steamy encounter, he says,
"I claim this shoulder blade. No, wait, I want. I want this, this place. I love this place, what's it called? This is mine. I'm going to ask the king permission to call it The Almásy Bosphorus."
She responds,
"I thought you were against ownership."
He's against it in principle only. When Katharine breaks off the affair, Almásy goes crazy—literally—with loss.
Cave Story
Things unravel for Katharine after she breaks off the affair. War erupts, and her husband, Geoffrey, who works for England's Central Intelligence, won't leave Egypt. This means that Katharine is trapped in the same social circle as Almásy, who can't get over her.
The idea of ownership continues here. He says,
"I want to touch you. I want the things which are mine, which belong to me."
And while she may seem chilly on the surface, she tells him,
"Do you think you're the only one who feels anything? Is that what you think?"
He's selfish to think she doesn't have feelings too. She's conflicted: she loves Almásy, but she is guilty about cheating on her husband.
Katharine and Almásy are punished for their affair when Geoffrey crashes his plane, with Katharine in it, in the desert, trying to dive-bomb Almásy. Even though Almásy ends up burned alive later on, we think Katharine actually gets the raw deal here: starving to death, slowly, in a cold dark cave. Especially considering how much she loves water and hates the dry desert. She tells Almásy this, after the crash:
"You promise? I wouldn't want to die here. I don't want to die in the desert. I've always had rather an elaborate funeral in mind. Particular hymns. And I know exactly where I want to be buried. In our garden, where I grew up, with a view of the sea. Promise me you'll come back for me."
Not only does she die there, but her body is likely lost to the desert when Almásy does retrieve her, and his plane goes down. It's a tragic end to one of cinema's great love affairs.
Katharine's Timeline