MovieChat Forums > Du levande (2007) Discussion > GOT EVERY-THING, but the damn ending :(

GOT EVERY-THING, but the damn ending :(

posted 15 years ago by DogtownGirl
5 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS ...... SPOILERS ....... SPOILERS ...... PUT UNDER THE RED SHEILD ....................................................

Seriously? I got everything, every joke, every ironic occurrence, the special effects, the bleak hilarity of the film ..... EXCEPT:

The damn ending!!!!!

What was the humorous significance of the planes flying in what looked to be WWII formation? At first I thought: Oh yeah, everyone in the film looked as though they might well have been alive in WWII, all pale, old and corpse-like, but then again ... I re-thought, 'So what?'
Why was this the ending? Were we supposed to laugh, or ... not, and why either way?

I feel weird not understanding the ending because EVER-Y other joke I "got".

Thanks, anyone ...

[–] sulinjal 15 years ago

It's not a joke. The message of the film is the classic epitome of shallow wisdom: seize the day. The attack is there to remind us how fragile the existence is, that any day we might be invaded and bombed to death, so it's a waste of time to complain too much about banalities. And the film kind of builds up to this nazi/ww2 theme with the swastikas, old music etc.

[–] DogtownGirl 15 years ago

Ahhh, ninja, THANK YOU.

Really, I walked out of the theater, thinking ....WTF?, at the ending, as did many of my audience members.

Now, if I run into any of them, I will tell them what's what about it.

Say, how did you figure out the ending? Did you work on the film, or know anyone who did?

The movie's great, by the way. Very, very funny ... Just the ending I could not fathom, until I read your post .

[–] Doctor-T- 14 years ago

First off, the bombers coming refers back to the man's nightmare in the first scene.

I agree that the point of the ending is to realize all the mundane things of daily life people take for granted and complain about endlessly will seem like golden memories after the bombers come. But you think that is "shallow wisdom"?!

I live in the USA and all I see is people who have an embarrassment of riches, have comfort and luxury 99.9% of the people who ever lived on this planet would have been overjoyed to have, and all they do is feel sorry for themselves and complain about the things they don't have (I'd be happy if only I had a motorcycle).

Calling this realization shallow wisdom makes me wonder if ninja isn't one of the people desperately clinging to self-pity, and so he must reject and belittle the message of the film. Of course this message is not new or original, it is the conclusion that many of the wisest men throughout history have reached, and so many forget and reject, it is timeless, but as with any great work of art it is how the artist melds form and message that makes this film something to be put alongside the great poets, Shakespeare, Bach, Picasso's Guerinca, etc.

*
Ambient, Experimental & Neo-classical Music : http://www.myspace.com/mrdreamstream

[–] leforcat 14 years ago

If you just experience the film and draw own conclusion - that's fine. But if you're interested in the meaning of the ending (or the whole film) perhaps you should find out something about it's author, or even what he himself has said about his films.
Roy Andersson wants to show us what a terrible world we live in, wants to make us aware of it. It's a sort of communist take on the matrix. Andersson belongs to a particular branch of communism that consider our present western capitalism as evil and as a lost case, and anything that can bring it down even quicker is welcome - including working for that particular capital. As a person he makes tons of commercials which finance what he does as an artist: making us aware. The B-52-like planes at the end in nothing but an inevitable conclusion to the present world as he sees it, unless we do something about it.

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[–] CounterPaul 13 years ago

Now with that in mind, go back to the opening scene - the man wakes up to the sound of loud overhead engines, faces the camera and accounts his dream of bombers.

"POWER TO THE PEOPLE WHO PUNISH BAD CINEMA!!!"