Questions about shoes, rocks, belt buckles and ear plugs.

And I want to know the answer too:

1st question:
Why does Anthony say "i'm not a shoemaker, I'm a musician!" immediately after the shout.
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remember that Anthony (John Hurt) wakes up holding the kidney shaped stone; apparently, he was connected to the shoemaker's mind/soul and was having his dreams/thoughts. Tony puts "2 and 2 together" when the shoemaker tells Tony of his dream later on in the movie (when Rachel rushes Tony out to repair her shoe in town).

Earlier in the movie, when Crossley first meets Anthony by his bike (as well as referenced with the father's homily on "not enough spirituality in modern society"), Crossley mentions that the soul may move out of a human's body in search for sustenance and move into a tree or (in this case) a rock, either to tap into the life source of said living organism or to take refuge in a non-living one. Tony essentially "accidentally" discovers the residing place (or I should say "hiding place") of the souls of everyone in town.
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2nd question:
Why does he have to use shoes to smash the rock? What is up with shoes in this movie? Did someone have a foot fetish?
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Maybe the shoes are significant, maybe not. If so, I would say because they are Tony's shoes, and the religious/mystical symbolism is that TONY is crushing Crossley's soul by crushing one object connected to Crossley with an object associated with himself. In regards to the significance of shoes in general, maybe it has to do with how the soul fits into the shell of a body the way our feet fit into our shoes (the shoe being a hollow object holding life within it). Think along the lines and terms of the movie's angle, which is that shamanism is (possibly) real and has actual power.
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3rd question:
Why does Crossley tell Anthony not to plug his ears until he is FINISHED shouting? That doesn't seem to make sense.
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I just watched this on TCM and I think he mentions to Tony to touch his ears when he wants Crossley to STOP shouting; beforehand he mentions that he will want to put wax or cotton in his ears if he does not want to die (which would imply putting in it BEFORE he shouts). Tony puts the wax in while Crossley is not looking; even so, the power of the shout is still enough to send him spiraling down the hill unconscious.
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4th question:
After the shout, Crossley comes into the room where Anthony is sleeping and lifts up his hair and looks at his ear and says something like "Good. You listened to me." Was Anthony wearing ear plugs or something??
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Yup; on the HD Turner Classic Movie print, you can clearly see that Tony still has his wax earplugs firmly in place.
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5th question:
Remember how Anthony gathers the bone and other items up in a towel and throws them out the window? I didn't see him gathering the belt buckle as well. But, soon after that we see Crossley picking the belt buckle off the ground outside the house. Did Anthony throw the belt buckle out the window too? Wouldn't he have wanted to hold onto it to reverse the spell against his wife?
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If you remember, Crossley put the "shoe" buckle down on the rock, with the seeming intention of leaving with Tony's dog (he took a piece of the dog's bone, hence enchanting the dog to him). My impression was that he was intending to leave with the dog as his companion, and as soon as he put the shoe buckle down on the rock, his hold over Rachel (Tony's wife) instantly disappeared. You soon see that her affection for Tony has returned (in the bath tub scene) and Tony get's his in-town lover back - so everything is hunky-dory, back-to-normal.

And then Crossley has a change of heart; picks up the shoe buckle and continues his torment to completion (notice that Rachel is right back to being infatuated with Crossley even to the point of licking/kissing his hand like a dog).

Remember how Crossley mentioned that aborigine people would steal mundane objects from the women they hoped to love and would put a spell over the object to make them their own? It was only if that object was destroyed or the man willingly broke the spell that the spell would wear off.
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6th question:
By all of this movie's logic, would there have been any way for him to have reversed the love spell his wife was in?
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Only if he destroyed the shoe buckle, since that was the object that possessed her soul and Crossley's "magic"
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Overall, I thought this was a pretty cool movie. But it was odd that the nurse at the end seemed kind of obsessed with him and not the other two dead guys. Maybe they did have some sort of relationship. I also wonder if that lighting strike would have killed all three of them in real life?
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That is because the nurse was Rachel (Tony's wife). If you notice, the very last shot is Rachel pulling the shoe buckle necklace off of Crossley's neck. Also remember that the three dead people were the ones inside the score box (the doctor and Crossley) and the crazy guy running around in his underwear.. Tony (John Hurt) was not one of them... I don't think (?)..... nor was Tim Curry's character.



To add to this, I like some of the interpretations in some of the other posts in this thread - that the story is made from the mind of Crossley as patient, and that the only real thing was that he indeed killed his children and that maybe Rachel (as the nurse) was either his former wife or "took to him" (like the nurse in JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN). Regardless, I love how the entire film is open to interpretation (like a film version of a rorschach blot test)