Ending -- Otto SPOILER


Is Otto dead at the end too? The last shot was of the mangled plane after it crashed. I wonder if he really perished for a couple of reasons: there's no reason why he would have parachuted out of the plane and the man who saved him from the tree was the same man who saved him after the sledding accident (an angel?). What say you?

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I didn't realize that it was the same man who rescued him from the sledding accident. Good point. I also wondered if Otto died at the end. I just watched this yesterday, and Sex and Lucia today and while both endings are confusing to me, its refreshing to see some films that make you think at the end, instead of all of the fluff out of Hollywood where the end is already decided for you.

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In real life, endings are not ambiguous or confusing, when someone dies, they die and that's it.
It's not like the people in this film (and most films) are anything like real people, and their thoughts and motivations are either utter nonsense or completely simplistic. Their lives are nothing like the complex lives of real people. So what is the point of having ambiguous or confusing events and endings in a movie ? Sure, it makes you wonder what "really" happened Did Ana really die or not or did Otto really get saved by a weird guy in a giant fur coat on old-fashipned wooden skis who could ski up hill, or did he just get found by Ana. But why would thinking about this benefit you in any way ?
There is no way to know one way or the other.

How is this ending really any better than a Hollywood-type ending (so despised by elitists) where Otto and Ana get together and walk off hand in hand into the sunset (oops couldn't do that - the sun didn't set - midnight sun and all that).
So-Called Hollywood endings really were invented long ago by 17th, 18th, and 19th century European novelists like, Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens etc, not by Hollywood scriptwriters.
At least this film did have some sort of an ending unlike many French films.
If this were a French film it probably would have ended with Ana sitting in her chair by the lake, or earlier after the family split up.

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I think what rachlanee meant to say in regards to Hollywood endings, is that unlike this movie, Hollywood endings are typically very predictable, and follow the same formula most of the time. In this movie however, the plot and conclusion are so ambiguous and told from different points of view that it forces you to think about it, even after you've seen it.

In most cases, it is very seldom that you get a complex storyline that leads to a tragic ending (such as the one depicted in this movie) in a Hollywood flick. Most of the time Hollywood wants to please the audience with a happy ending by somehow saving one or the other lover, who was originally meant to die. This then concludes with the happy ending of the couple getting together. One perfect example that I can think of is The Glass House, which also uses an anachronistic plot. Even though Keanu Reeves in the movie was meant to die, the whole of the movie revolves around Sandra Bullock helping to prevent his death by writing to him in the past.

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wow i didn't even think of that...i thought the ending was just that ana actually got killed by the bus and the scene w/ otto is her dying wish....

i loved i love u beth cooper the book. y did it become one of the *beep* movies i've ever seen

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SPOILER---
The story is told in a linear fashion (with a few flashbacks), and the point of view is alternately Otto's or Anna's - with instances of back-shuttling to tell the same part of the story for the other's perspective. When despondent Otto nearly kills himself in the sledding incident, his POV becomes incoherent and he imagines a man who magically conveys him to safety. Before this, the only "untrustworthy" narrative is Anna's youthful imaginings that Otto houses her deceased Father's spirit- but that is clearly a half-opinion of hers. Later in the film, Otto bails out his plane to literally drop in on Anna. Obviously he isn't that stupid- this simply did not happen. The plane has crashed, and in his dying mind he envisions an escape from his predicament. The time hung up in the tree is his re-imagining of German pilot Otto's encounter with Otto's Grandfather during the War, a thing that has been played over repeatedly in young Otto's mind. He is aware though that time is passing, that Anna will miss him, and in his delirious state imagines that the same man from the sledding incident brings him to Anna so they are reunited. The story them back-jogs to Anna's POV. She learns of the wrecked mail plane. In her distraught state, she steps out into traffic and is struck by a bus. As she dies, she imagines that Otto has returned to her and she cries. At this point both are dead and the movie ends- there is no one left to tell the story.

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Thanks for explaining that.I just saw this last night and was confused too.


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[deleted]

So they're both dead? Thanks for explaining that, I thought he was alive.

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I think you nailed it. I had totally missed the part about Otto actually dying in the plane crash. At best, one could hypothesize that since they both clung to each other as they were dying, they met somewhere else, beyond this earthly plane.

The whole world is a very narrow bridge. The key is to be fearless. R' Nachman of Breslov

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I also think Otto is dead at the end, but I take it a step further. I think Otto died on the sled.

My theory is that everything that happened after the sledding accident is in Anna's mind, she being so stubborn she doesn't want to let him go. She imagines him a pilot so their story can come back around to another coincidence, when she sees the story about the plane crashing it breaks the fantasy to think of his death, at that moment she is struck by the bus. At her moment of death her fantasy plays out as she wishes.

Why do I think this, it's tough to say. The whole movie seems to be thoughts of Anna just before she dies, the bus hitting her is one of the first images in the film even though all we experience at first is the thud and the newspapers flying in the air. So everything is an interpreted reality and it can be hard to call anything an objective truth. Nonetheless:

- After the accident, Otto's father is seen in three scenes, in each he is a different person in a different house. I think Anna has lost touch with him after her mother left him, and the different fathers are unconnected because they are only instruments to expressing her feelings about Otto.

- Skiing uphill. What is the point of this if not to symbolize death? Later when she claims to have found Otto in the snow, she declares him alive when all we see is a lifeless lump. Wish fulfillment? Not to mention Otto seems to have survived flying off a cliff into a tree without a scratch.

- How does Otto suddenly become a pilot and get this job flying mail in and out of Finland? Before his mother died, Otto doesn't even mention wanting to fly, now all of a sudden in just four years he has his license and enough flight time to get hired to do tricky solo flying in a potentially dangerous route, not to mention in a foreign country when he doesn't seem to speak Finnish. Perhaps it isn't so, except in Anna's wishing.

Anyway, my thoughts - perhaps like Anna my point of view is not truely the objective reality of what the film or love "means" - perhaps we connect with this beautiful film because we can never understand what a coincidence truely is. We doubt, we dream, we doubt again and dream again. Death is what is forever, but life still goes on.

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