The father's reappearance is predictable (Buddhist references throughout film, mother's obsession with facilitating her husband's impending return).
But what's not predictable, what's metacinematic, what's magic, is how the director used the "wheel of rebirth" return (father reincarnated in Paris) to express the point of the film: existential displacement.
The father returns existentially, but in the "wrong" place. He's existentially displaced. It's bad enough that we are displaced in our regular existence, but, alas, we are also fated to be displaced post-existence, the next world/the next existence a place/existence where the self loses itself.
And this is something we've known along, we already know we're lost in our known lives, and we sense we'll be lost in unknown post-existence. We don't know what awaits us in death, and chances are, whatever awaits us, we'll be just as lost in it as we are here, in our living lives, that is one of the things about dying we fear the most.
The director reminds us of this existential displacement during the last seconds of the film, leaving us just as mentally lost and surprised as the father. And we feel it physically, because the ferris wheel (symbolism...) in the background (and in the peripheral margin, the suitcase full of earthly possessions drifting away in water...) is clearly divided from the rest of the space on screen, emphasizing the sense of isolation and loneliness.
The combination of the father's existential displacement and the isolated gently revolving wheel is a startling reminder of how humankind is so utterly displaced and isolated, physically, mentally, and spiritually, how our urban space is also isolated and dispirited, and how time itself is isolated and dispirited (clocks: living by the clock, a clockwork orange, mind attuned to clock instead of life itself).
What continues to exist beyond the screen, what continues beyond the allocated time frame imposed upon viewers, what continues beyond the allocated time frame imposed upon earthly existence, is all the emptiness and fear and metaphysical connection to space-time that humankind has tried fervently to root out of its individual and collective consciousness.
The director has told us (director "thematizing" viewers), nice try, but nope, we're still displaced, forever displaced in the known and unknown places of existence, displaced even more so than we were since creation, perpetually displaced, the last cosmic laugh is on us.
reply
share