Interesting point. And, if memory serves, he uses a tape recorder after he visits Cole in the hospital.
I am sure it is all part of the 'creative license' of the moviemaker, but, if one goes to the trouble of setting up rules within a movie, one should stick to them, I think.
Another 'ghost interacting with real object' instance was when the girl whose mother poisoned her shoves the box with the video tape out from under the bed towards Cole. And, another, all the kitchen cupboard doors flying open in the time it takes the mother to throw Cole's tie into the washer. And, grandma moving the bumblebee pendant.
But, all things considered, still a great movie!
"You're so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art... flow... over you." The Big Chill
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Stratego
8 years ago
But there's never any rule that ghosts can't interact with physical objects. It just seems that sometimes they can, and sometimes they can't. Perhaps there has to be enough emotional energy behind it.
I doubt that the tape recorder he took to the hospital was a true physical object. People aren't seeing a floating coat with some folders next to it either. The tape recorder in the basement may have been real, though.
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dmayo-911-597432
8 years ago
Your point about the coat and folders serves to remind us that we need to step back and take a slightly blurred view of even a carefully crafted film about ghosts, time travel, or other things that can never mesh perfectly with reality. We may enjoy working out ad hoc principles to account for the contradictions, which is good mental exercise, but we mustn't take our exercise too seriously.
Filmmakers have to choose between seeking airtight plausibility and achieving other objectives, not the least of which is entertaining us. I'm generally open to being entertained and even consuming serious food for thought in spite of minor contradictions, but I do have a pet peeve: timelines that don't hold up. For example, when the backstory of a very old character isn't set far enough in the past, it drives me up the wall. But that's getting off topic.
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Stratego
8 years ago
Sure, but that doesn't mean the director has no ideas about the interaction of ghosts with the physical world. He goes out of his way to show as little interaction as possible between Malcolm and physical objects, while still showing moments when ghosts are clearly able to move objects. This obviously suggests that most of the time ghosts can not interact with the physical world, but sometimes they can. This may also mean that some objects ghosts interact with are real and some are just imagined.
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dmayo-911-597432
8 years ago
PS. I've just had a thought about organizing the "on and off" states of interaction.
When Malcolm is alone in the cellar, he interacts freely with various objects: the buttons on the tape recorder, his books, pen, etc. Perhaps at those times he's in a world that's entirely his own, and all the objects there are as ghostly as he is.
When he's moving among people, he's in the world of the living. The objects there are physical, the natural exceptions being his personal belongings. To him, there's no distinction.
Occurrences such as the cracking of the window at the antique shop, which apparently was done by Malcolm, are rare irruptions of astral energy into the physical world.
I wonder if that works.
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Stratego
8 years ago
When Malcolm is alone in the cellar, he interacts freely with various objects: the buttons on the tape recorder, his books, pen, etc. Perhaps at those times he's in a world that's entirely his own, and all the objects there are as ghostly as he is.
I think so too, because I very much doubt his complete office would still be down there in the cellar. These objects also have everything to do with his obsession that keeps him from moving on to the afterlife. They're all very personal. Did he also imagine wearing his wedding ring, while his wife was holding on to it all along?
I like your theory, I don't see how it wouldn't work.
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lachancejeanphilippe
8 years ago
Those objects were real. Why do you think his wife blocked access to the basement? She heard noises, him working. She felt like it was haunted. That's why she poppin' pills and getting drunk.
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Stratego
8 years ago
That doesn't mean the folders and tape recorder were real. She locked the door and put a desk in front of it because the door kept opening. I said it was possible that the tape recorder was real and kept playing on its own, but no, I don't think all those objects were real and that Malcolm's papers were floating in the air.
And she clearly took those pills because she was depressed over her husband's death. That's why she also keeps watching the wedding video.
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lachancejeanphilippe
8 years ago
Ok so you think that some of the objects are not real. That is your opinion but there is nothing in this movie, nothing, to support this theory...
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Gheelnory
7 years ago
Well, there's at least some support for the theory that the basement-office stuff Malcolm is seen using isn't real (but instead is in his ghostly-mind): the change in color of the volume-control numbers on the tape recorder.
It's unlikely that the actual tape-recorder he would have used in life had numbers that became redder as the volume was raised.
It's also fairly unlikely that there was an actually-audible Spanish-speaking voice on the tape of the session with Vincent. It's possible that MNS intended the implication to be that Malcolm was only able to 'hear' the voice when he was approaching being able to believe the dead are still walking among the living.
_ . _ . _ . _ . _ . _ .
Grey Fairy / White Wolf
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lachancejeanphilippe
8 years ago
Of course she takes pills and get drunk because she lost her husband. it's an evidence but that doesn't mean that she can't hear noises coming out of the basement. One does not exclude the other...
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