So who did it? (Spoilers)
I'm sorry, you're all going to think I'm stupid cause I just didn't get it. Who killed Marion?
It was an accident
share
MovieChat Forums > Croupier (2000) Discussion > So who did it? (Spoilers)
[deleted]
Clearly it's meant to remain ambiguous, but my interpretation was that Jack (or should I say Jake) did it or at least arranged it. She was his "conscience" so metaphorically he'd already killed her off by becoming the conscience-free Jake, why not seal the deal? After all he could never have been sure she wouldn't turn him in and he is totally amoral by the end of the story.
This is the real weepy and like tragic part of the story...
I think it may have been set up by Jack's father as revenge for tipping off the police.
shareHow did Jack's father know Marion had done this? He'd have no reason to, and therefore no reason to kill Marion. I think it was an accident and the idea of a revenge killing was a red herring.
For you alone I think and planshare
Jake's father was not alone on this. Besides, Jake said he recognized his agressor, which make us think the criminals would want some vendetta. At that point, Jake's father might have intervened not to have his son killed.
shareI actually disagree with you. This was an accident. But the idea is clever.
share
I thought the giveaway was in Jack's alibi. "She was visiting his mother....HER mother....."
My interpretation that Jack killing her was so subtle that not only would the police not catch on, we the audience would have doubt ourselves.
That's exactly what set me thinking...I had to watch that part over and over and wondering...'HIS mother????' And although I didn't quite understand whose mother he was talking about when he said HIS... it nevertheless gave me the hint that MArion's death wasn't a 'hit and run', then what about the 'WHITE WITCH' who gives him a ride and almost ran over a woman? Isn't that connected somehow? well... I wish I knew...
shareI guess we'll never know and it was designed like that.
shareIt is...but I think it was Jack. Something not mentioned here is the hospital scene where she tells him she's basically going to blackmail him to quit, be with her, etc. He leaves, then comes back and is as sweet as sugar to her (an act). Next thing we know....she's dead. No one else knew she deleted the message plus Jack did the right thing -- stopped the guy. So unless someone else knew that she told the police, Jack's the only one with a real motive...
shareI hate it when directors make a movie deliberately mysterious. It's annoying and pretentious. It is such a cheap way for a director to try to distinguish himself.
share"I thought the giveaway was in Jack's alibi. "She was visiting his mother....HER mother....."
My interpretation that Jack killing her was so subtle that not only would the police not catch on, we the audience would have doubt ourselves. "
It definitely seems to be left ambiguous. I find it interesting, however, that one of the first things he says to Marion, towards the beginning of the film, is "I want to buy a car." And then later she gets run over.
Been making IMDB board posts since the 90s, yet can't bring up any from before December of 2004.
having recently watched the film with directors commentary: during the scene in the morgue, mike hodges doesn't mention any murder; instead he talks about how the feeling of security in life is a delusion; and that her 'number was up'. given this, i think the circumstances of her death were incidental, and that it was written into the story as a comment on how merely living life is a gamble too ...
shareI originally thought Marion was murdered because she knew too much about the robbery or as revenge
share"She was visiting his mother....HER mother....." What was THAT about??? It was so obviously intended. Who was the "his"? Was Jack just a little stunned at seeing the detective in the morgue who he had seen Marion with?
share[deleted]
Re: So who did it? (Spoilers)
This was an odd line. Here's my stab at what that could have meant.
It is certain Jack was referring to Marion going somewhere. It is certain that where she is going is important. What else is certain is that Jack corrects himself, so we know there is a double meaning here, and the actor puts at lot of stress on it, as if it's important. Jack repeats Marion's words and as he repeats them, he seems to come across another meaning, but we are not told what. So what did Marion say? Was it "I'm going to see "your" mother."? or I'm going to see "my" mother. It seems that it's the former.
First Option.
Does that me that she wanted Jack to marry her and therefore Marion's mother would be Jack's "mother" too? No talk about marriage, so that seems unlikely.
Second Option.
Could it be that they are brother and sister, and therefore share the same mother - my mother and her mother being the same? Unlikely.
Next option. Jack refers to being "born" in a casino, and I don't believe there is any other reference to his mother, only his father. So the casino, could have been meant as his "mother". Who was Marion's mother? If Jack's mother was the "casino", perhaps Marion's mother was a metaphor for the police force. Therefore Marion was going to tip off the police, as part of her investigation about where Jack's 10K came from. The police may have informally told her of a rumoured robbery of the casino.
The hospital scene was a great bit of acting.
There is little evidence that Jack did the deed himself. Absolutely not. He said he didnt' want to lose her.
Many people may have surmised that a robbery was foiled. Maybe one robbery was foiled, but another carried out. We do know that money laundering was going on and that Jack's boss knew about it. His boss rewarded Jack at the end, and it seemed that Jack was surprised about that. All he did was stop a cheat, and he wasn't rewarded for that in the past. He did not stop the robbery. I think the stopping of the cheat as a diversion was a red herring. This leads us in the direction that his boss was in on the scheme along with his father. After all, both of them knew each other, and perhaps their misdeeds. Jack's South African female friend was also in on the money laundering scheme from an earlier scene. So it all boils down to something to do with money laundering, either the preventing of it, or the continuing of it. When the robbery happened, there didn't seem to be an unusually large amount of money available. What about the Asian guy and his gang? They seemed to know what was going on pretty well immediately. Was he just protecting his money? The police did not arrive immediately. It seemed the casino securtiy kicked in right away.
Why was Jack used in the diversion scene? Other diversions could have been used. Why was it crucial that Jack catch that man cheating, or did he catch the wrong guy, and it was the wrong diversion?
It's clear that his father was broke, and up to a scheme, that the father set him up "dealing from the bottom of the deck". When his father says that "sorry that it didn't work out for you", he may have meant that Jack didn't get the extra 10K. We don't know enough about the Dad to surmise that he was extremely cruel and didn't care whether Marion was bumped off or not. He was cruel enough to set up his son and expose him to being a party to criminal activity, and possibly jail time, but then again that he knew his son was honest enough, not to steal. The father knowingly exposed his son to violence and a certain beating. Maybe Marion overhearing the message and erasing was not part of the plan, just a random act, part of what can go wrong, part of losing the game. The game is not just a game, it's real life and death.
Take over from here!!!
My accountant says, "1 + 1, 40% of the time, equals divorce".
Earlier in the film, Jack mentions that Marion reminds him of his mother (and that his mother left his father and him when he was a kid.) He clearly has a lot of issues surrounding his parents - when he slips and thinks "his mother" at the morgue he's confusing her with his actual mother again.
shareVery well put Maysa79. Furthermore, when Jack states that she was visiting his Mother, he could also have meant that Marion and his Mother were both in heaven now.
shareYet the line before he states in his inner monologue:
"He covered himself. He knew the odds"
That leads me to think murder is a possibility
After thinking a while about the words "his mother", I came to the conclusion that´s it´s out of question that Jack killed her. The main raison for me why Jack isn´t the killer is that there are a lot of things Marion and Jack´s mother in common.
1) Remember Jack said that she is his conscious. Somehow like a mother.
2) Jack´s relationship to Marion is etremly similar to the relationship of his parents. They both betrayed thei girlfried/wife and were both addicted to the game though in diffrent ways.
3) Jack didn´t love Marion the way a man would love his wife.
4) Marion and his mother are both dead.
So when Jack says that she was on her way to his mother he means that they are both dead.
Ok - I'm going to throw something out about the visiting "her" mother rather than "his" mother.
I thought it was just more of the Jack/Jake writing/narrating/living confusion.
Jack/Jake is so detached in his observation that even at the death of Marion, or perhaps because of the shock of her death - he dissociates from reality into his narrator/writer self and as he talks he is already writing and editing what the narrator would say in his manuscript...
Nothing about a murder here - just more of the playing with the play within a play within reality thing...
No way Jack (or Jake) killed her. Marion's death was a random, unpredictable plot twist, as evidenced by the sound of the roullette ball when Jack pulls back the white sheet. The whole last ten minutes of the film were pretty wild and unpredictable really, especially finding out that Jack's dad was involved in the foiled casino robbery and is now marrying Jani!
shareThat's what I thought it meant, like,.. since he's been constantly writing about a male character, his mind is talking in a narrative, and he is now talking about Marion, and accidentally refered to her as a male,
"His mother" ... (oops, this isn't fiction, this is reality) - "HER mother"
I didn't think on it too much though, so,.. hmmm I like the interesting idea how she's dead because of being his conscience (sp)
it was definitely voiceover intruding into dialog, but did it mean anything else in addition to that?
sharecolonel mustard with the candle stick in the library
shareLOL. after all the intense thinking this thread has brought about, thank you for the comic relief, good sir.
shareI still see no evidence that he could not have done it. No one can argue that it was his story. Jack was the narrator and we were not seeing the story from his perspective, but rather we were having it told to us. At the end of the film we are left with a few choice lines, which I attempt to explain my understanding of.
"Now he had reached the point that he no longer heard the sound of the ball?" He was not controlled by fate or any other thing.
"The Croupier's mission was accomplished. He was master of the game." He was in control of more than just the gambling table. He controlled the entire story.
He had acquired the power to make you lose." This is definitely directed at the audience. He controlled the story and had done what he needed to in order to accomplish that control. He turned in Bella so he could write her out of the book. Unfortunately, he also had to tie up the loose end that was Marion. She had just threatened to blackmail him. He said it himself, he only half loved her, but he loved watching people lose.