At the end of the movie after the main character throws the invisible ball to the mimes who are pretending to be playng tennis we hear what it seems to be the ball beating on the ground, so i believe he must be insane and had visions like the murder or am I mixed up?!?
shareI don't at all think the hearing the ball means that he was crazy. It was included to drive home the film's point about the tenuous connection between perception and reality. I always thought it was meant to say that the way the mimes were pretending, acting, as if they were playing with a ball took on a "reality" of its own. It was not happening in a material sense, but there was a point past which the film suggests it was happening in some sense.
I do not know how well this comparitor fits, but in Antonioni's L'Avventura, and not to introduce a spoiler here, there is a search on the film and although we briefly are given an explanation early on, as the film progresses one tends ot forget the explanation because it does not fit with the way the characters are behaving.
And yet the explanation is there.
I hope htat makes sense.
Agree with the above poster. What is the meaning of something, when is something real. In the concert scene, he wants the guitar because everyone else wants it, that makes it meaningful, and it loses it's meaning once it leaves its context. In this scene, the shared meaning makes it in a way real. Just like the blown up pic of the murderer makes sense in its context, and alone it means nothing.
I'd recommend watching the movie with the commentary on. It greatly enhanced my experience at least.
"The Love you take is equal to the Love you make" The Beatles.
I like how you link the tennis ball scene with the scene with the broken guitar. The theme (or at least one theme) of the movie seems to be that reality is based on mutual agreement. As you say, when the guitar is out of its context it loses it's value, and since Thomas discards it, it has no value to the fellow who picks it up, and he discards it too.
At the end of the movie Thomas is coming to the realization that without agreement (objective evidence that proves it), the murder really didn't happen in any meaningful way. When he hears the tennis ball bounce its the film telling us that Thomas has bought into that philosophy, and that since everyone thinks there is a real tennis ball, and one that he actually threw back, then of course he would hear it.
The guitar is now worthless.
The murder never happened.
The tennis ball is real.
We all agree.
ObamaCare: Making Grandma shovel ready
The tennis ball scene can be interpreted in almost too many ways.... But I doubt he is insane.
---
You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were and I say Why not?
The tennis ball scene can be interpreted in almost too many ways.... But I doubt he is insane.
It's not just the ball that becomes real. What we hear is the sound of a tennis ball bouncing off the tightened strings of tennis racquets. Both the ball and the racquets have become real and the game is no longer pretend. After Thomas participated in the shared illusion of the game by throwing the pretend ball, the game became real.
To me, the significance of the tennis ball sound was that we, the audience, heard it. I don't believe there is any indication that Thomas himself heard it. And it is the last thing that happens in the film. We the audience know for a fact that there is no actual tennis ball, so we are left at the end as uncertain as Thomas is about what is reality and what is an illusion. Slow clap for Antonioni.
shareJust think if he had used his camera to take pictures of players in action, but after the ball had flown out of the shot. We would be completely fooled and think that they were really playing tennis. It's a dated concept of the world of Photoshop, but proves that you cannot trust a photo.
In a similar way, the tennis ball sound proves that you cannot trust a film either.