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Does anybody has a complete explanation about the movie?


Does anybody has a complete explanation about the movie?

Anything that i can come up with, has flaws, and i cannot be such a good critic, cause i was distracted at several points.

I quite like it though.

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Probably i am asking too many...

Thanks anyway.

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Try my User Review and see if that helps -- Bob Pr.

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This probably isn't the answer you wanted, but the best one I can come up with...

I'd say that most of what you're thinking is right, even if it doesn't necessarily square with everything else. The best movies/books/whatever often do that--resist neat, tidy explanations.

Consider as one example, internal to the film, that the angels are more surprised than the boy about their purpose/mission. Angels are usually thought of as privy to divine omniscience, but these ones are in the dark, so to speak--they're left, just as we are, to determine what words mean, and exactly who is speaking them.

So I think the film itself resists a "complete explanation." And a viewer's inability to come up with a complete explanation doesn't necessarily make him/her a bad critic--in fact, the more I read/think/experience, the more I'm convinced that the only thing that ensures that one will be a bad critic is the conviction that one has all the answers.

Of course, I would still like a complete explanation as much as you!

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I read your comments, and it was very interesting. I had come to the conclusion that it had to all be in the boy's head, as elements from his room and experience kept ocurring in both stories (the town's abandonment and the child's death). Also, if one was real and the other fantasy, then why did the Woods character see the weird collection of characters that talked to the boy.

However, the imagery was so confused and the plot so nonsensical that the whole had no coherence at all; one felt the writers could have gotten away with anything. Indeed, they did: nothing was explained and the only explanation that makes any sense (all in the boy's head) leaves too much unexplained to be satisfying.

I also saw a comparison with "Swimming Pool", but that film had a certain underlying logic to it that Northfork lacked, despite its kooky relationship to reality. The impression left was of a very pretentious film that hadn't really been thought through, of filmmakers winging it and hoping the audience wouldn't call them on it.

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I has.

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hahaha. best joke i heard all day.

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This film is so dense (as in Broadband dense, not stupid dense)that it would be dangerous to assume that you 'understand' everything about it. How would you know that you hadn't missed something? So, a complete explanation may be a tough order.

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Think it's about dying and letting go.

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Just finished watching the film, haven't checked out the commentary yet, so this may be an obvious observation. To me it had overtones of Jacob's Ladder and The Sixth Sense, where these people were in limbo and had to be shown the way to move on. The men in black were angels, albeit more blue collar ones than traditionally portrayed, excluding Irwin of course. They didn't seem to realize this themselves though, as when James Wood's character briefly sees Cup of Tea and company. The feathers in their hats and their lapel pins, which were the same logo as on the Northfork Cemetary stationary seen at the films main menu and opening scene seems to confirm this. Kind of. Or I could be totally wrong. In that case disregard all of the above.

Cheers

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I was completely amazed, and completely confused by this film. So much so, that after checking out the director commentary, I came straight to this site to see if I could get more answers. After reading this post, and all the others, I'm floored with all of your observations and theories. Take a moment to check out the rest of the posts too--there's some cool stuff out there.

I just want to make one observation that no one had made. The directors mention the "wing" reference and did you notice that when the father/son team arrive at the ark that James Wood's character says "We'll wing it". Very clever, as were all the one-liners. Even the "What you talkin' 'bout Willis" one.
Some folks on these message boards despise that line, but I think they're taking it too seriously. I think it shows the Polish brothers' creativity, and their effort to add comic relief to a very serious theme of death.
P.S. I gave this movie a 9.

"I even caught myself driving by convenience stores....that weren't on the way home."

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Just watched this film myself and haven't seen the commentary, but I agree with the Jacob's Ladder and Sixth Sense comparison. In terms of after-death characters who were trying to move people on though, I don't know if the men in black were angels or more devil type characters.

It seems like their mission was based on the greed of wanting 1.5 acres of land. That's what drove them. And how did they get those wings they presented to the people they were helping to move on? It seems like they were convincing people to move on not out of freedom and love and heart (as it seems would befit more angelic intentions) but out of fear. And they couldn't quite see the more angelic characters, like Cup of Tea, except when James Woods briefly did, and that freaked him out badly.

Nick Nolte's character was interesting because he actually was concerned with freedom and love and heart.

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There is an implication to herds of angels being hunted down on the plains of Montana and that the boy is the forgotten angel whom the other angels have come to look for. The flooding of the town adds to their urgency to find Irwin and leads Walter O'Brien (Woods) to come in contact with Cup of Tea and the gang and leave behind the angel wings that became the convincing evidence of Irwin's origin. It was not all in Irwin's head. O'Brien saw them in the same house Irwin did and came to the realization that his wife isn't dead and that he should exhume her body in time. I find the story of the town to be just the backdrop to a story of love and spirituality.

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The Polish Brothers did a Q&A at the theater I saw the film at, and Mike seemed pretty reluctant to answer people's questions about what this or that meant, and I was glad. He seems to want people to come to their own conclusions, which they obviously have......

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Seems what looks like allegories are just a bunch of incoherent fantasies.

my vote history:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur13767631/ratings

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