MovieChat Forums > Cure (2001) Discussion > You all have it wrong. *Spoiler Alert*

You all have it wrong. *Spoiler Alert*


Thought this deserved a new thread, so in response to what I've read here about the ending...

You are all neglecting one important thing. The victims were incapacitated prior to being sculpted with a knife. The prostitute was knocked out with a pipe, then carved into. The police officer was shot in the head, before his partner cut him open. These are the facts. How did the female general practitioner slice perfectly into that adult male? Outside of an operating room, would anyone just lay down and allow that to happen? No, of course not. There would have been a violent, bloody struggle, but we saw no evidence of one taking place. That male victim did not have the multiple stab wounds typically found when there is an assailent armed with a sharp piercing object. So, along with the previous trend, we must conclude that he was first incapacitated and then dissected afterwards. Working in a Hospital, the GP could have obtained any number of relevant substances and delivery tools.

We only briefly witnessed the second crime scene, and I'm not sure what we can conclude. Goose down feathers? Did the teacher suffocate his wife with a pillow, and then carve her open?

You all believe that the waitress murders someone seconds after the film ends. Given what we have seen, that probably did not happen. Not once was Mamiya/Mesmer present during any of the murders. All the while, Kenichi Takabe patiently waits for his car as the waitress he just "hypnotized" murders someone at the same time? I don't think so. More likely, the waitress retrieved a knife for the kitchen staff. Further, Kenichi Takabe "hypnotizes" a nurse to murder his wife? How are you even certain she is dead, remember when she hanged herself? Oh wait, that didn't actually happen. There was plenty of disturbing imagery, Makoto Sakuma was delusional before his suicide and we saw some of his visions too. Get a grip people, the film ended on a positive note. The case was closed, and the detective was probably promoted.

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I disagree. I think to assume that the movie ended on a "positive note" is naive. To show everything that was shown and then say "nope, his wife really is alive and Takabe is just having a regular-guy dinner" and then have the movie end makes no sense. We saw his wife "dead" and then we immediately saw it was fake--to be more precise, we saw she was dead from hanging the first time. The next time we see her she is dead, with no scene to prove it's a psyche out, and she even has the X. Takabe was told by Mamiya that they were similar. I think it ended just as it implied; his wife was killed and, yes, the waitress was going to kill someone.

My reviews and more random musings @
http://asinynepov.blogspot.com/

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I agree - to say that the film ended on a high note is ignorant and disrespectful to the director's intentions.

Incidentally, I think an important theme that has still to be mentioned is how mankind is naturally hostile. When hypnosis was first brought to the audience's attention in the film, it was mentioned that the hypnotist can't provoke any unnatural activity. In other words, a person cannot be hypnotized to do something they wouldn't normally do, or something they aren't predisposed to doing. This being said, how was a man able to successfully kill all of these people through hypnotic suggestion? It is an interesting assumption about the human race and how we may actually be predisposed to such violent tendencies. Its frightening when you think about, that under the circumstances, anyone is susceptible. Anyway, its just something I thought of.

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[deleted]

--Get a grip people, the film ended on a positive note. The case was closed, and the detective was probably promoted.--

You're trying to be a lot smarter than you actually are.

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[deleted]

I think Takabe hypnotized the waitress. When her boss came over her shoulder and whispered something to her, she snapped and grabbed the knife and went to the back to take care of business. I think this just proves how powerful Takabe has become. I have a question, I read somewhere that Takabe uses a Z instead of an X, I dont remember seeing that anywhere in the film. Can someone please explain.

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Since when is Kiyoshi Kurosawa one to end things on a conclusive positive note? He does the John Carpenter style ambiguous yet dark ending in essentially all of his films.

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Someone posted how there is an uncut version of the film where there are more scenes involving the wife's murder and at the end you see the waitress commit the murder.

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes!" --Roy Batty Blade Runner

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If that actually exists, I'd LOVE to see it.

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I think calling the OP naive or disrespectful for saying it is a high note is untrue and just rude. That is his interpretation of the ending. The ending is left ambiguous on purpose, so one can't say for 100% certainty that it ended one way or the other. I think there could be multiple answers that the film points to at the end:

1) as OP said ends with the case closed, the wife is fine and the waitress isn't about to kill anyone. The detective is still dealing with the visions from the case.

2) The detective is indeed the new killer, hypnotized the waitress who then goes to kill her boss, he hypnotized someone at the hospital to kill his wife for his first victim.

3) The original killer hypnotized someone to kill the detective's wife after he escaped from prison, the detective accidentally hypnotizes the waitress and she kills her boss.

4) The waitress got fired or accused of something and is just a psycho who is going to kill her boss and as crime is never ending so to speak.

5) The waitress is getting the knife or someone, which is what the boss asked her to do.


The point is we don't know what the boss said to the waitress, what the waitress is doing with the knife and/or who killed the detective's wife. Which is the director's intention by leaving it open ended. The only way to be disrespectful is calling someone a name or insult them because they have a different interpretation than you do. The only issue I have is OP's title should have been, the ending in my opinion was... instead of you all have it wrong.

In the directors own words form an IGN interview:

KUROSAWA: However you interpret films, I don't believe that a film is limited to the beginning and the end of that piece. There's a world before and after that, all over it. And I feel that a film is simply a little window cut out with a little chunk right through it. What I tried to accomplish with Cure was to leave it very open and to indicate that there is a world before and after that and I hope that people get the sense or maybe the terror at the end that there may be something else. So it's left open [on purpose].
http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/08/23/interview-with-director-kiyoshi-kurosawa?page=2

In other, words there is no right or wrong answer about the ending as it was left open to interpretation.

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