Some questions (spoiler alert)

[deleted]

I don't know about all your questions, but ehre are some possible explanations for a few:

>>(3) Next day, in the village, we hear the clock strike 1 (presumably 1 PM, since it's daylight). The husband then enters a cafe and it's 11 AM. Huh?? <<

Some clocks only strike one time at the half hour. COuld have been 10:30.

>>(4) The waitress in the cafe invites him to use the phone, but for local calls only. He then proceeds to call all over France. Why doesn't she object? And later, he asks her to put the charges for the calls on his credit card. How is she supposed to know what the charges are, until the bill arrives? Or is this possible, with the French phone system? <<

I'd say she doesn't object because she realizes the gravity of the situation. As far as the calls, she may not have even charged him. He likely said that to show that he intended to pay for the calls. Or, maybe she estimated based on the number of calls he made.

I think you pose very good questions about the roadblocks. What's the point of even having the roadblock if the police are going to let the actual fugitive straight through?

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I dont think this flick is simple enough to fit any real generalizations about masculinity, or how Antoine imagined it, etc. I do believe those interpretations can be applied, but I also am positive that our artsy little french man had put enough detail into it to contradict any logical generalizations as if it were a mathmatical problem.



The film begins with Antoine e-mailing his wife from work. "I feel like a young boy going on his first date" he concludes. At this moment we can't help but wonder what sort of extremely romantic event is about to take place. But a minute or two later his wife arrives, and we realize that nothing romantic will happen. The spark had burnt out long ago, and neither of them seem the least bit excited about the trip. Then without a reason he begins to go on a drinking binge.
Now let's think about when he pulls off the road for his first drink. What does he do? He almost swerves into another car like some *beep* maniac. And what's his wifes' reaction? Well, she ironically stays calm and just asks him what's wrong; even though the tension has been building up between them for a while now and she should be screaming.
The entire film is composed of hundreds of these absurd little paradoxes for the sake of structure (a structure that is basically a pretentious ripoff of the subtle one Sergio Leone had used to to critique the western genre in "Once upon the time in the west", but a structure still to say the least.)

The key to the film is what we deduce, or are made to deduce, as we experience it. Every moment in the film's been crafted to either give us a presumption, or to destroy one.

What did you think when the screen faded to black, and then to an airplane? I thought Antoine was dead. I mean the fugitive looked really *beep* pissed off.
What about when he was on the phone, and couldn't find his wife? I thought Antoine killed his wife, imagining she was the fugitive.
Or how the movie intentionally seems just like The Vanishing up until the very moment Antoine finds his wife's note. ehhh? ehh? And these are all major examples; nevermind the small ones like the initial two I had mentioned.





The reason why the cop didn't notice anything when she was checking the car in the end was because by that time it was subtley let known that Red Lights was in fact a "It's a Movie" movie, which is the art-fag elitist version of the "it was all a dream" movie where the logics of reality don't have to apply.
And prolly also so that someone would start a thread on the imdb about it.

hehehe


Well with all that *beep* aside...

The entire part with Antoine drunk with the Fugitive was the bomb. He just wanted to be the killer's closest pal so badly.





"Of course we hate him, but we can't tell him. It would end all the games"

The episode with the fugitive was a dream. I am surprised that no one has raised the point that the hitchhiker and the fugitive are two different men. The hitchhiker is much younger with more hair, long, bushy side burns, and a goatee. I think the scene in the bar with the bartender pointing out the tattoo on the man's arm is most likely the last real one up to the moment he wakes up on the road next day.

I don't believe Antoine was hallucinating. It was rather a drunken dream in which fiction and reality become one. Perhaps the flat tire was the last thing that Antoine remembered before stopping off the road and falling asleep at the wheel. The hitchhiker's lame arm is in my opinion based on the bartender's observation right before Antoine left the bar. Also, the entire episode with the hitchhiker is so surreal that it immediately raises questions about its authenticity: the road block, the fact that Antoine is not in the least fazed by the fact that he is traveling with an escaped murderer who keeps bullying him and telling him where to drive and when to stop, etc. Antoine is just not the kind of man who would react like that in a similar situation.

I think the movie was excellent for the most part, but I found the ending to be quite unsatisfactory.

(5) the arrows mean that the dotted line will soon become a regular line. It indicates the last opportunity to pass a car in front of you.

>> (3) Next day, in the village, we hear the clock strike 1 (presumably 1 PM,
>> since it's daylight). The husband then enters a cafe and it's 11 AM. Huh??

The clock strikes one if it's "a quarter past ..".
"Half past .." is wo strikes, and accordingly "a quarter to .." ist three strikes.
The full hour is chimed by four short strokes followed by the number of hours as long strokes (or different bells/sounds).

so when our hero walks the streets it's a quarter past something - maybe a quarter past eleven.

I wondered at some of these things too, and the 'dream' theory does seem the most likely explanation. I was also struck by the abruptness of some of the cuts, which seemed to allow for a passage of time but weren't accompanied by any other typical cues to support this, thereby further implying drea, logic (I might go back and find concrete examples of this).

This might be wrong, but the photos of the dead fugitive and the shot of him under the car seemed to be of a different person than the living fugitive. Maybe it was because the dead one was messed up and only seen briefly though.

What causes pip in poultry?

I wondered if the fugitive was an embodiment of his small man's rage and alluded to the baddie in The Fugitive?

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.