Okay, I just watched this movie on Dvd and I didn't get it...What happened?
Was she also killed at the hold up at the store?
What was all the thinking and searching with pictures from her class that she was doing .. if she was dead?
Basically.. someone explain me . what happened?
I don't get it...
Well, I'm just as confused as you are! Basically, I do think she was killed during the robbery, which was the 'third act' (Acceptance) that we see in the film. Maybe the rest - where she just misses the killer going out the door, and the other scenario where she hides, and his gun doesn't go off, are scenarios she's thinking of as she lays there near death? I don't know.
I thought the film had a lot of potential, and was wonderfully filmed, but I have to admit I'm tiring of movies that leave me thinking, "Wuh HUH?" at the end. Do I have to have neatly tied-up endings? Definitely not, but my appreciation of the movie really drops if I am totally and utterly confused!
From what I can tell, I think the movie is a mixture of her dreams (1st chapter) and other thoughts she's having as she's dying. And lots of the things in the movie tie in with things around her when she is killed. (i.e. the picture of the hand is like her view of her boyfriend's hand as they die side by side.) I think this movie is not so much a fit-the-pieces together thing, but a more artistic, interpret-it-for-yourself thing. I listened to some commentary on the DVD, and the director and writer didn't provide any concrete answers....i liked it though.
shareWait but the end end she took a picture and there was no one in the chair. does that mean only she died or what??
shareWell what I thought was that as she layed their dying, she imagined different ways that this scenario could have gone. For example, she thought about hugh dying and she lived. She also thought about being in the robbery but not dying. Her relationship later ends after the robbery. The different scenarios included the cop that she say laying over her as she was dying. In each scenario there is a clue as to what actually happened. For instance,in one of the conversations that she has with her shrink she states that she had a dream where Hugh was shot in the stomach and shoulder. Then her stomach began to hurt. What really happened as we will find out later is that she was shot in the the stomach and he was shot in the shoulder. The light bulb is the same kind of thing. I think that the whole affair thing wasn't. I think that was just part of the different scenerios. Had she cheated she wouldn't had died. In the first one, where hugh died, he went to get the chocolate and she stayed to talked to the other guy. In the other one, she was with the other guy. In real life, she doesn't stay to talk to the other guy because there wasnt' one. She ran in to check on hugh, and in turn, got shot. I don't really understand what the whole end thing means, but I am pretty sure that they both died. This movie has many similiarites to the movie Stay.
sharei think you did very well with this interpretation.. very similar to mine.. and it reminded me alot of "Stay" as well..
but where mine differs is, i thought the affair was a mental thing, and it was a metaphor to create blame for herself. the ending made me think that she was shot, but survived because it was only hugh's chair that disappeared.
the movie was very artistic and for its budget was amazing..and i think the story was more about someone coping with death and feeling they're dying as well because of that loss, or in a more literal sense.
the only thing i didnt really understand was the black and white picture that was taken of hugh's hand.
i think they survive, casue she gets shot in the stomach, that means hugh doesnt get shot twice.in previous since it forshadows the gunman running out of bullets. i think she has like a butterfly effect 'black out' and doesnt come back til when they are sitting on the couch towards the end and talking about where to eat. like all the foreshadowing she is able to recall, just to remeber a few:the cop saying another victim/ the mom spilling the wine/ the light bulb/then at the end the fortune cookies(which i think explain alot) but it still isnt a tight fitting story, it could mean any thng and everything.
movies it reminded me of: memeto, groundhog day, butterfly 'effectisc'
chatterbox12991 wrote, "Wait but the end end she took a picture and there was no one in the chair. does that mean only she died or what??"
In the same vein as kate_marshall82, my interpretation of this was simply another scenerio played out as she died, i.e. what if we had never met? what if I had never taken his picture? maybe we'd, or at least he, would be alive. I don't know, but that's how I took it.
My two cents . . . here's three back.
I dunno - I think the director was going for a "no definite reality" thing, but, in my opinion, he screwed up. Even if the first act was a dream, in the second act, Hugh moves out after Courteney (I forget the character's name) tells him about the affair, which occurs after the robbery in which the gun doesn't go off (hugh specifically asks if the affair continued after the robbery). In the third act, Courteney remarks to Hugh that she's so happy he moved back in, after leaving in act 2 (specific remarks in act 2 about Hugh taking the furniture, and in act 3 when Hugh jokes that she just wanted his couch back). Then the 3rd robbery takes place, specifically on Nov. 7, just as the second robbery did. So they're in a time loop? What the hell?
I think the director wanted the 3 acts to be independent of each other - that, to my mind, would have worked better in establishing doubt about which is the "true" sequence of events, a la Run Lola Run, without *beep* up causality.
Do I have it wrong?
you guys are leaving out the most important part of the film that helps you piece it all together. the chapter titles.
the first act was called denial. she denies that she was even involved in the whole robbery/shooting and was only sitting in the car, while her boyfriend was killed.
the second act was called despair. she is defeated. she imagines a scenario where she is caught cheating on her boyfriend and is punished. and when the gunman approaches her, she just cowers to the floor.
the third act was acceptance. she finally accepts the reality that they were both shot.
no clue whether they survived. i thought it was just ambiguous.
But that still doesn't address the continuity between the second and third scenes - artistic license or no, the dude can't die twice.
shareI have to agree with toobitterforyou's interpretation. When you are dying your mind runs through all possible thoughts. She was trying to come to terms with her death. Many also try to bargain while dying, if I live I will be a better person type things. I felt she was see all possible paths that she could have taken, but ultimately we have to accept death,and be happy with what we had while we were alive, her and Hurh reaching for each other while dying on the store's floor.
The empty chair in the end only means to me that in the end there truely is nothing when we die.
DO NOT FORGET HOW THE MOVIE STARTS IN THE FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE, YOU SEE HUGH'S HAND AND THE CALENDAR ALL FROM THE FLOOR. IT MATCHES THE OVERVIEW AT THE END OF THEM DYING ON THE FLOOR.
Perhaps - perhaps - the key is what she tells her class: What an artist excludes is as crucial as what he includes. "Denial" and "Despair" are the artist's efforts to manipulate reality by excluding certain unpleasant details (the true origin of the photo of her boyfriend's hand), whereas "Acceptance" is the final recognition of the limitations of the artistic viewpoint, i.e., artists do not simply create reality, but must accept parts of it beyond their control. The appearance of the mysterious slides in the first two parts reflect the cracks in her own ability to maintain the artistic pose: reality keeps breaking in, she is becoming aware of her efforts to stand aloof as the artist. Other people die: the artist depicts this, but does not die.
Or is this intepretation just a lot of hooey?