Ending scene **SPOILERS**
What do you think about the very last scene, I thought that golden chain must have some relevance, but I don't understand how...
sharehe has her buckle on the chain perhaps? the way she ran to see his dead body implied that she was still under his 'magic' spell.
share<< the way she ran to see his dead body implied that she was still under his 'magic' spell. >>
I don't think she was ever actually under his spell. I think the whole business about magic was part of his delusion. I think the only part of the story that's actually true is that he really murdered his children. All the business about being able to kill with the shout and stealing another man's wife with magic, was all what Douglas Adams once characterized as "the product of a deranged imagination".
Though I'm still not sure why she ran to see the body after the mishap during the thunderstorm. I got the impression that Rachel was actually a nurse at the mental hospital, but I'm not sure why she should be so anxious to see the body, as if she was the next of kin. Unless she's also his wife, perhaps the mother of the children Crosley murdered.
I agree in essence with the poster above. I recently posted my thoughts in another thread....here it is:
In my opinion, this movie (and its narrative and the original short story) relies on the "unreliable narrator" plot device. The reader or viewer can interpret the story in entirely different ways depending on whether they believe the narrator verbatim or whether they believe that the narrator believes his narrative. There is of course, a third option where the reader/viewer tries to analyze how much of the story could be true and how much of it is fiction.
The fact that the story is set in an insane asylum is the one thing that is certain. Everything else is open to interpretation. Perhaps the Fieldings were a couple only in Crossley's imagination. Perhaps Crossley who was attracted to the nurse imagined her as Fielding's wife and imagined Fielding to be his rival. Hence the "sound based sub-text" that runs through the entire film. Fielding is interested in analyzing the sounds that are normally not audible until magnified. Crossley however possesses a shout so loud that can literally kill! Insane Crossley's story and "delusion of grandeur" focuses on establishing his superiority over Fielding (who was in reality, a doctor perhaps) and the nurse, who Crossley probably had a crush on. One can interpret the shoe buckle episode as rooted in reality to the extent that Crossley probably stole it from the nurse and she was merely annoyed with the fact that she rips it fom Crossley's body at the end. The fact that the lightning bolt could have very well caused the deaths (and not the fictional shout) is also suggested. A very obvious hint that the story was made up by Crossley --Throughout his narrative we see him chipping of pieces of the bone he is carrying - he gives the dog a piece, another piece is left in the house -- but we see the entire bone in his hands when he starts striking it to "make the cricket ball hit the player in the leg".
This film reminded me of Mulholland Drive - if that story had been "told" from the viewpoint of a stark raving lunatic Diane.