What's the significance of the end scene. Are the two boys just sleeping? And what's the significance (if any) of the helicopter overhead?
Other than that, the movie was a great portrayal of the pressure-driven Japanese family focused on getting their children into good schools.
vmwrites
I think the helicopter was there to airlift the corpse of the neighbor's father-in-law.
shareI never thought of that. I do remember the neighbor wondering how they would get the body out of the building. Thanks for the reply. I'll watch it again, with that in mind.
I was also wondering if there was anything wrong with the two sons. Both of them seemed in a VERY deep - almost unnatural - sleep. And at the very end, the mother sits at the table and seems extraordinarily sleepy. I wonder what's with that?
vmwrites
I personally think that there was a gas leak, and they got carbon monoxide poisoning and died. I hope that wasn't the indended meaning, though. I watched it last month and it's still bothering me.
shareInteresting, and it would fit the behavior (all three of them sleeping). But nothing was mentioned about a gas leak, to my knowledge. And it doesn't explain the fascination with the helicopter. But thanks. That certainly might be one scenario.
vmwrites
Well I came to the conclusion of two possible scenarios; one is that after the tutor left the long lasting tension disapeard and they could finally relax, so the whole family was so tired that they litteraly collapsed sound asleep. The other scenario could be the poisoning theory, this one works really well for me, becouse during the film we see many scenes in which are shown industrial aereas and pollution, which were and are one of the big problems in contemporary japan, and if you remember, there are two or more scenes where the protagonists are waiting for something to happen (while in the car, the tutor and the father listen to the radio if there is some important news, the funny thing is that the radio announcer speaks in korean,...) and it could actually be that due to pollution or something else an ecological catastrophy took place or something simmilar happend, and the helicopter is there becouse of the emergency.
But on the other hand it could really be that the helicopter is there to pick up the body, I never really thought about it, so thanks for pointing that out.
Why does it have to be significant?
shareAlthough there were a lot of things in this movie that I didn't understand, I thought it was hilarious and I'm glad they finally released it on dvd. My favorite was when the mother discovers how her husband likes to eat his breakfast eggs, the look on her face was priceless!
shareshe didn't just discover how her husband liked her eggs, she had simply gotten so caught up in the activities of her sons that her husband's favorite egg style had been pushed out of her memory. it's representative of the changing role of women in Japanese culture.
shareI think that the final scene was intended to be symbolic: with the tutor gone, the family has fallen back into the banal, directionless existence that they were living at the beginning of the film. The sons are evading their responsibilities, the mother is doing her leatherwork, and the father is absent. The fact that they are all asleep just presses the point that they are, once again, out of touch with their own lives.
It fits in with the overall message of the film as a satire on the meaninglessness of 1980s Japanese family life, and it makes more sense than a possible poisoning scenario with the only backup being the fact that the film is set in an industrial town.
The only other thing that points to a possible poisoning theory is when the tutor remarked on how much chlorine was in the water the family had been drinking.
Still, I think it was symbolic.
And I second the view that the helicopter was there taking the father-in-law's body out of the apartment building.
Man, this was one WEIRD film.I watched it through to the end but there were many times when I was ready to turn off the dvd.I think slayton's take on the last scene is correct; everybody is back to their old disaffected lives.
I have to say that the pacing and choppiness of this film were awful. The tutor's first scenes w/ the boy were so long and boring.Lots of little choppy scenes that seemed pointless. The crazy last eating scene made me wonder if the director was trying to access his inner Bunuel or Groucho Marx.Juvenile stuff there.
There certainly were many funny conceits. I particularly liked the 'everyone eating on the same side of the table' so that no one had to look at another or have a normal conversation.
But I don't think I would choose to watch it again. The fact that it's rated highest amongst his films, on IMDB, makes it unlikely that I will search out any of his other works.
Ad hoc, Ad loc, Quid pro queeee,
So little time and so much to see
[deleted]
i agree that that is what a GOOD film does. But i think that for THIS film, only the good PARTS give back what you put in.
The way to have what we want
Is to share what we have.
I actually saw this scene as an emphasis on how the family completely lack any knowledge of the outside world. You notice that they are never watching TV for the news or reading newspapers. Also, in the scene where the father and Yoshimoto are sitting in the car, the news is not in Japanese, but in Korean. So there is a complete disconnect of the outside world. Which leads up to the helicopter hovering over their building. I saw this as an association to the Vietnam War because it helicopters are closely associated to that particualr war. Although this was filmed in 1983, it makes a social critique on how the family continues to remain ignorant even at the possibility of a war going on. When the older brother drops out of school and you later see him kneeling over the rising sun flag, this palces an emphasis that he will inevitably be dragged into some sort of war for the government, and he will continue to remain ignorant until such an event happens.
There is also the possibility that the two children committed suicide due to the social pressures in society. Once Yoshimoto leaves, the family reverts back to their old ways and inevitably succumbs to their stereotyped roles assigned to them. This scene probably emphasizes once again the family's disconnection and ignorance with one another. The mother, who is ignorant for the entire movie, probably does not realize her children are dead, just like she never realized the reason why Shigeyuki was being bullied or why he would get bad grades in school.
Wow, this thread is interesting. How I perceived it was a little different:
When the film begins the characters are instantly introduced, as they sit at the table and they therefore become "active".
The film finished when the teacher was congratulated at the table. The characters gradually become inactive and lose control. The camera also becomes inactive, and sort of takes a look at what the characters in a film do once a film ends.
I know its incorrect, but thinking that all the characters in all movies lose control and become inactive after their film is finished is quite a weird thought-provoking one.