i've seen the movie and one thing puzzled me the most:what was in that box? i know this is not the most important issue about the movie but i'm curios ,what was in that box?????
I don't think they ever showed... or even hinted at what it could be. I have been thinking about it for two days... all that I can come up with is that it is a symbol of the father's knowledge... something that they will never know.
share[deleted]
I think it was their father's history, maybe an explaination for why he was gone. I think he was going to show whatever was in it to his sons and perhaps what was contained within would have helped them to understand their father and his absence. But the box sinks with the boat and their father's body at the end of the movie and his sons will never get to know who their father really was, which adds to the emotional pain of the movie. But that's just my guess.
Next week on Arrested Development: Buster moves to the kitchen.
I mean they should have told us what was in the bloody bocks,it spoiled the movie for me.I LOVED!!!that film up until the last 5 min when I realise there were no payoff,no answers to anything.
shareI disagree. I thought it was a strong film. It is a fresh change from all the Hollywood crap that has to spell every single thing out for the audience.
shareIt's called Art Cinema Narration.
sharenup, I feel empty and tragic after watching those last 5minutes. I'm sad to see such a good movie run with such a pathetic ending (even though it was intentional). I feel worse than when I started watching the movie, it's the most anti-climatic movie I've ever watched. And too all you snooty "art-film" idiots out there, don't bring 'hollywood' into the argument, It's got nothing to do with damn hollywood! GOT IT!? GOOD, FOOL!
shareDaniel, why do you need things to be "explained" to you at the end of the film? The last 5 minutes of this film was as terrific as the previous 100 minutes. The whole point of a great film is that you must interpret what you see. If you have no desire to do so then there are plenty of US telemovies out there.
shareand not knowing what's in the box leaves you thinking, and pondering...
why would there be a forum if we all knew what was in it?
I love it when directors leave things ambiguous. It's something that Hollywood rarely ever does... they have to wrap everything up in a nice little package (just look at Spielberg's films... and the fact that George Lucas had to fill in the first part of the Star Wars story)... sometimes it's nice to be confused, or have to think about what will happen next.
lou: what is in the box?
bud: what is in the box.
lou: i'm asking you what is in the box.
bud: and i'm telling you what is in the box.
lou: i don't know.
both: third base.
It was a Nintendo inside the box. The dad understood that fishing was not helping with the Father and son bonding thing and only a game of Super Mario could save the day.
shareI agree, thinking is good:) About the box - wasn't getting the box his job? He was called before to do something and he wanted to send the kids back home, but then took them with him. Perhaps the box had something to do with the ship that was sank in the island. But let it be the secret. Anyway, very good movie and really nice ending.
shareAfter seeing this film I have thought something along these lines:
The Father was aboard the ship that sank/wrecked by the island. Him and the other survivors were stranded on this island. They built some structures (the shack and the tower), but they all died off except for the Father. Aboard the ship (or among the dead) were some valuables which he put in the box and then buried to return at a later time and retrieve.
The Father may have been stranded on the island until he was rescued, having only fish to eat (this is why he no longer wants to eat fish... he had too much one time... when he was stranded on an island).
This is just a theory... I love the ambiguity and enjoy films that let the viewer think wonder.
Anybody have a theory or something to add?
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Wow...!!! Quite an explanation..!! This will surely help me to digest the movie a whole lot better.
shareI think in the box were pictures, as some of which were shown at the end.
shareOld valuables - read traditional values. He actualy manages to pass them on but we dont know whether they truly accept them
my vote history:
http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=27424531
<< and not knowing what's in the box leaves you thinking, and pondering... >>
...thinking, and pondering why the screenwriters expect the audience to do their job for them. Fortunately, the pondering is mercifully brief except for art house snobs.
My theory is that the box contains the same stuff Vincent and Jules retrieved for Marsellus in "Pulp Fiction". Whether it was in the briefcase first or the box first is a question only those cretins who still need to think in linear time need ponder. They should stick to their "Transformers 3D" Hollywood fare.
Not an explanation of the plot, but the actual identity of the contents of the box would have had an important bearing on the message of the movie, and should have been outright shown (the admittedly less subtle and more heavy-handed approach,) or at least insinuated. Was it an ulterior motive? A bit of money for his family? Or perhaps its value was not monetary, but of a more personal nature. We the viewer shall never know, rendering the entire box sub-plot incapable of bearing any sort of purpose, and thus, futile.
share[deleted]
I got the same feeling with you
I watched it at night and I couldnt fall asleep almost for the whole night
Well, don't we swagger?
shareMaybe you feeling empty and tragic is good. The box and the ending are supposed to put you in the position of how those boys feel. They want to know why, and what took their father away, and so do we. And we feel just as unsatisfied and empty and tragic as those boys. This film obviously affected you in the way it was supposed to.
sharehow could you like the movie but hate the ending, that is really quite sad. does everything filom have to be like a cute little christmas package all wrapped up in the end with a pretty little bow for you to like it? that is very american of you.
shareTo stereotype another's nationality and to use belittling statements in order to denigrate them is petty and detestable.
De gustibus non disputandum est, sir.
I think that is a great explanation, ( by queenoftheknik No 3 ) and that suddenly made the movie complete for me.
Darkness lies an inch ahead
at the beggining of the movie... we see a boat underwater
where the "box" was... we see something white.. xD
It's a shame some people need everything explaining to them.
I would have liked to have known what it was, but the film was so much better for not showing us. Besides, I think it's irrelevant to the basic idea of the film. It was a 'McGuffin' of sorts considering it drove the father's journey along but it ultimately was the journey that made the story. Not what was in the contents of the box (or bocks as one idiot said).
I thought he had dug up some ill gotten gains from his shady past. I thought perhaps he'd been inside and he had come out to find his swag. I'm not sure but I thought there was something shady about his disappearance. And his mysterious phone calls and behaviour. Maybe this was what we were meant to think since the boys knew nothing about him and found his actions mysterious.
shareThat was my thought exactly. Daddy was in the slammer and when he got out he made a bee line for the stash. Could be why mom wasn't happy to see him and looked so nervous. It makes sense except I don't know why he wanted or needed the boys along for the ride, or why mom would permit them to travel with a convicted felon. Also, they boys noticed a large amount of money in dad's wallet. If he just got out of jail, where did the money come from? I can't imagine the Russian penal system being so generous with its former guests. I don't mind the mystery. It's what makes people talk about such films. The most you can say about Scooby Doo is that the special effects were pretty good and Velma was cute. End of conversation.
shareI agree with both schools of thought, so to speak: the box holds, oh, jewels gotten while in prison, say (the choice of the thriller-plot-payoff narrative, perhaps, which I certainly enjoyed the first time I saw the movie); the box also holds That Which The Father Wants To Give His Sons, to Tell About Himself and About Life... so to speak. And it dies with him, sinking under the water. I was drawn to the second 'meaning' as well, as I loved the film as a fable, as an allegory of every father-son relationship that exists (or, doesn't exist, so to speak).
Also, every Russian film I've ever seen is also About Russia - some heavy allegory going on. Single Mother Russia looks good early on in the film; the authoritarian father has been absent for a few years... He's back with a vengeance, eh, Putin? Not to put too fine a point on it, though - the film bears all of these meanings and more.
Note that, early in the film, when Ivan goes and finds a photograph of The Father in his own box in their attic, the photograph is stuck between pages of a book that looks amazingly like some illustrated 'Stories from the Bible', and the very page that holds the photograph of the long-lost father and family has an illustration that seems to be 'The Angel Telling Abraham that he need not sacrifice his son Isaac.' Fascinating, eh? The absent God who speaks in a baffling voice: another layer of meaning. Deeper and deeper still.
Who needs resolution when you have such wonderful provocation and deep, deep beauty even in the midst of anger, loss, and Fathers? What direction! What cinematography! Excellent writing! Acting to the point of impersonation! Riding the fine, fine edge between allegory and realism.
"and the very page that holds the photograph of the long-lost father and family has an illustration that seems to be 'The Angel Telling Abraham that he need not sacrifice his son Isaac.'"
That would provide some fore-shadowing as well becuase I don't think the father had cruel or murderous intentions for his sons, eventhough Ivan tried to convince his brother of that.
I've read some ideas about where the father had been and I keep thinking of fish. The father said he once ate too much, all Ivan wants to do is fish and the father seems oppossed to this but appears happy when watching Ivan fish by himself, the father seems to know the people at the port when he gets the motor and I'm not real up on the Bible but was brain washed enough as a child that I know fish hold biblical meanings.
As far as the mysterious box, I like to think that that box held the explanation or diary-type material documenting where he had been and why he was gone, and that he was going to show it to the boys before they went home.
The ending when the father is sinking and Ivan cries out for him, calling him "papa" on his own for the first time in the film was unbelieveable, can't remember the last time a film moved me that much.
Wasn't this the same photograph that the boys looked at in the car toward the end of the film after the father's death? The father was no longer in the picture. Did he magically disappear--was he a ghost to begin with? Was this some sort of allegorical symbolism? (Was I disappointed in this film?!)
shareDon't think he was a ghost but the picture does seem like the one from the book like the beginning. Only without the father in it.
Did you ever notice that people who believe in creationism look realy un-evolved? - Bill Hicks
The picture isn't the same, it just looks like it was taken at about the same time and place. Maybe it was just there to prove that he really was their father, since Ivan/Vayna had his doubts.
shareJust as the sons have their photograph of the still intact family, the father keeps a photograph of his beloved family, a photograph he himself might have taken.
shareBeneath the first layer of interpretation (father and son relations) lays also the political layer (old and new russia).
Ivan stands for the new Rusian people and Andrei for the old Soviet folks, the father symobolises the Kremlin Heads of State (which did not change remarkably since Ivan Grosny). Father was away for 12 years - it is the time between first Perestroika and reclaim of power of the hardliner in the person of Adolf Putin. So the absence of 'Father' could be understand as the time of democratic changes in Russia and his return as the decline of civil rights.
The box was well kept underground. It symbolizes the essence of the past. Maybe the father would never show it to them, maybe he would show it only to his 'favourite one'. Foremost it is valueable enough to go for it and to bring it home from the island (the isolation).
In my political interpretation the box contains the key to power over the sons, a secret well kept, a thing 'to be curious about', the grail, the ultimate solution which can be only provided by a 'powerfull leader'. Leader for which all the soviet people wait since the death of their last one - Stalin.
Thats a very strong interpretation and I think it makes alot of sense.
Whats more, the film was made (and presumably set) in 2003 - and the father had been away for 12 years. Lets do the math, that means his departure was in 1991, which without coincidence was the year that Soviet Russia collapsed, further illustrating your point about the film's political meanings.
As for the box, I personally figured he had kept photographs of his family in there (reinforced by the slideshow of photos at the end?). However, I am just as happy to accept that the box was left in the film to toy with our curiosity and imagination - and actually cause us to empathise better with his two suns, who like us no nothing about their father.
As far as the father's reference to having had too much fish before, I believe that he was quite possibly stranded or exiled on the very island which he takes his children to. This could well explain why he had buried something of personal importance on the island, and it would only make sense that he would bring the children along because he obviously wants to teach them to fend for themselves (as we see throughout the whole film).
I am a "new Russian," and I couldn't help smiling reading these lines...
>Ivan stands for the new Russian people and Andrei for the old Soviet folks, the father symbolizes the Kremlin Heads of State (which did not change remarkably since Ivan Grosny).
-- Well, they did change actually
>Father was away for 12 years - it is the time between first Perestroika and reclaim of power of the hardliner in the person of Adolf Putin.
-- Putin is certainly not the best leader ever, but he is not "Adolf", not a monster... just a president... like Bush or Blair...(but smarter:-))
>In my political interpretation the box contains the key to power over the sons, a secret well kept, a thing 'to be curious about', the grail, the ultimate solution which can be only provided by a 'powerfull leader'. Leader for which all the soviet people wait since the death of their last one - Stalin.
-- Actually, all nations in the world wait for a strong leader. But no one in Russia wants Stalin back!! (some do but who cares)
Conclusion: your political interpretation is *beep*
How about earthworms, just like the ones they used as fishing baits.
sharehaha. They were probably the best earth-worms ever... worth a weeks trip across land and sea.
Anyway, i agree about those ideas about what was in the box but i think the whole old/new russia idea is going in the wrong direction.
I think the annoying thing about the mystery of the box is that our little brains don't like ambiguity, paradoxes or concepts too big to grasp like infinity. It would just like to CATEGORIZE things as black or white... not gray and to FIND AN EXPLANATION absolutely.
This mystery of the box is acting on us exactly in that way.
Yes it was this kind of artistic movie with a tragic ending, and I got very frustrated too when I realized I would never get an answer to my questions... but isn't it how life is anyway? We don't always get answers, do we?
Everyday people die with their little or not so little secrets and other people might never find out what they are. That's life... and death. Can't change anything about. Can only accept it.
And for those who think that what was in there was related to his past... I just think you are victim of your brain trying to find an explaination. I don't see how this could be right. Why would he act all weird and cold hearted towards his sons, and then possibly become all tender showing them an explaination about his past. What was in the box was his business and very likely related to his phone calls since he told his sons he had a few days to attend to something. It never occured to you that it was why he went on the island, and not for other reasons? It's not like he wanted to bring them there anyways. Remember he was going to send them home, and I think the only reason he changed his mind was because of the speech little Ivan gave him before leaving. (This guy doesn't like to be proven wrong, so he's not gonna let that one go!) He didn't tell them what was in there because he didn't want to. In fact he made sure they didn't even know about the stupid box. If it had been about his past, why would he wait until their return to show them... It just doesn't make sense to me. It would be like playing with them... I act weird and scare you and then I show you an explanation that will make everything so rational, you will find yourself ridiculous to have ever doubt about me.
Come on! He abandonned them for 12 years... the guy is not a caring loving father nor a caring loving husband. I find that thinking explanations about his past life were in the box is like treating him like a victim "Oh that is too sad he didn't get a chance to show them his secret!" I don't think this guy is a victim.
In fact I think his past life is not completely over so I would be tempted to say it is more likely to have to do with his actual one.
Conclusion: let's just drop the subject of the box until someones forces the moviewriters to tell us because we could keep guessing for very long and be totally off!!! ;)
I think its wrong to just drop it, its an important part of the movie. With that said here's my take on it.
The entire movie is about children, we seem to forget that. To the children in the movie it doesnt matter whats in the box. It doesnt matter who their father really is or what hes really after, the only thing important to THEM is the short time they had with him (for good or bad). As children we dont always understand what our parents do or why. We dont think twice about it. And I think the box is meant to illustrate that point, that it doesnt matter what the material world holds for the sons its only the memories and relationships that are now gone that truly matter to them.
But I might be way wrong too, I only saw the movie once (had to special order it and it still hasnt come in.)
To those who say this ruined the film for them, I say that I wouldnt have liked the movie had it ended any other way. What would have happened had they opened the box? Their father would still be dead, they would still be on an island without a motor for the boat and they would have still had the same bad (and some good) memories of their father.
the guy was absent for 12 year and he kept the picture of his family...who knows what kept him away ..we will never know,but i disagree with you guys who say thay he was not a loving father...look at his sons at the beginning of the movie ,losers who whine all the time and have nothing manly in them...cannot look after themselves ...that's not a way to be ,it is a shame ...so he tries to make them real men ,he takes them out to the nature (and believe me there was nothing extreme about what they had to go through)by doing so he shows that he cares, and they whine only because they are mommy's sons and never had a man in the house.at the end of the movie we see two men who have nothing left of those naive mommy's sons ,they are changed forever ... he accomplished what he wanted to just in three days...that's a character!
share[deleted]
In the end, Father gets to keep what he truly covets, and the boys get to keep their simpler lifeThat's an amazing way to put it. share
I do love that film but artfilm or not for me it just felt unfinished.
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howcanyoubesure: Hey... that's like your opinion, no need to be so offensive.
Well to the box, I'm also in for the theory that the father is there for other reasons than his sons, he is just using them for some reason, and the reason to why he didn't want his son to jump was not because of love it was because it would get him in major trouble.
Although I want to believe it is because of love this explanation makes a little more sense, or maybe not, just think it's fun going through different theorys :D
Must say that the film otherwise was very beautiful, showing lovely landscapes and with great camerawork.
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