...with Charles Durning's character on the telephone pole watching the couch with a binocular was very odd. It was such an unconventional ending, but was it supposed to be more like a statement than just an easy conclusion? I mean, he could've inspected the couch to discover the body, but instead he just sits there observing it, and with a binocular! He wasn't even that far away. Pretty surreal scene. Any ideas?
shareThe beginning and end of the movie are all about voyeurism - that's an astute point - but what you're missing is that the whole movie is about voyeurism. The advertising executive watches Danielle undress and the TV audience watches him watching her. Emil's always there, watching Danielle. Grace watches Danielle's apartment (and gets in trouble with the police because she's been "watching" them, too, and writing about it in her column). The doctors and researchers, and the audience of the documentary film, watch the twins in the institution. Grace again peeps through a window to see Emil administer an injection to Danielle. De Palma is constantly putting his characters - and the audience - in the position of voyeur (and it's kind of ironic that the movie's big revelation - the story of how the twins came to be separated - is about the only thing that's not shown to the audience by way of an eyewitness; instead, we get Grace's crazy drug-fuelled brainwashed take on the story). This is a really common theme in de Palma's movie - it comes up again in Body Double and Dressed to Kill, and probably others I haven't seen.
I think it's really important that the show-within-a-show we're watching at the beginning is called "The Peeping Toms". In case you're not familiar with it, there's a 1960 slasher/horror movie called Peeping Tom where the killer murders his victims with a knife attached to a movie camera, filming their deaths. It's probably the most important film on the topic of audience-as-voyeur, and I'm sure de Palma had it in mind when he made Sisters. (I haven't read all of the threads here - maybe someone else brought this up).
I like the ending, I think's it's kind of wry and funny. I wouldn't read too much into it. The detective will realise eventually that no-one's coming, and when he gets back to NY and finds out what's happened he'll take them to the body. It's just funny to think of him stuck up that telephone pole for a few days. I don't think you can write off the psychosexual component of the movie though - it's all over it (like with most of de Palma's films). Dominique emerges after sexual intercourse to stab her victims in the groin because of Danielle's guilt about causing her twin's death by insisting on a separation procedure so she could get it on with their doctor. Get the girl a magazine rack, because she's got issues.
Did anyone else get the impression de Palma was making it ambiguous whether Dominique's death was an accident? I suspect Emil of having killed her. Danielle asks him to make Dominique go away and he does.... permanently.
Of course it's an open end.weird,absurd.The whole scene is so peaceful,contemplative,quiet,a snapshot of the country. But we know the truth...it's so disturbing...and i think she (the murderer) will never be discovered
it was such a weird scene, the best one in the movie imo
so many movies, so little time
I just wrote this in another thread, but after reading the comments here, I'm convinced the last shot is more of a "gotcha" than a twist ending. Durning would eventually find the body in the couch if he looked; that's not the point. And no, Grace is not really one of the twins; the story is just as it played out, with Dominique dying and Danielle developing a split personality. The shot of Durning isn't supposed to reveal anything new about the story, but instead it just recalls the opening with the game show, and inverts it with the black guy now being the subject of another's prolonged gaze. Only this time we don't get to see the game show play out; we don't get to know for a fact what Durning will do because de Palma has the last laugh by quickly ending the film.
Or I suppose you could say Durning is the voyeur who stays and watches (unlike the black guy, who chose to turn away), only in this case no one will ever come to pick up the couch (i.e. No one else was involved but Danielle and the Doctor), so the last laugh is on Durning, waiting up there for eternity.
The point is it's all about de Palma messing around with the audience, messing with our sense of suspense and playing around with different outcomes that come from being a voyeur.
There were comedic elements in that film. De Palma first pictures were pretty humoristic before he became more serious. I mean even in Blow Out you had some major comedy (the beginning, the scream...) going on mixed with heavy drama. Black humour.
Also, Sisters is a bit like a potpourri of Hitchcock's best thriller films. You had the violent Psycho-like knife murder, the two women who make one like in Vertigo, the dream-like sequence and the clinic like in Spellbound, the searching an apartment and watching through glasses like in Rear Window, the film even starts with a show like The 39 Steps, TV instead of stage. Do I forget something?
Edit: oh, and Rope also! For the missing body hidden yet so very close.
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I actually found the ending pretty hilarious.
After Durning finally gives up, befuddled that nobody came to claim the couch, and comes down from the pole, he drives back to Staten Island to report his findings to Salt who replies, "Murder? What murder?" Durning does a double-take in our direction.