Hahaha... True, I doubt that Sandy Bullock would be able to handle six-dimensional tensor equations, but then, there's all sorts of genius. I think she's a comic genius, and I've listened to enough interviews to know that, in addition, she is very clear eyed about the business of cinema. Obviously she's going well beyond comedy and I think she's quite brave and trusting of her audience's intelligence.
I'm not surprised that you think that Premonition is a convoluted mess. It apparently confounds a lot of people. Honestly, what's your problem with it?
Okay, to be fair, I really shouldn't leave this without some sort of constructive comment, so here it is: I'm frankly amazed that so many folks - not necessarily you - can watch a film that took tens of millions of dollars to make, that has a script that has taken months or years to prepare with possibly dozens of rewrites, and that took a month or more to shoot and then several months more to edit, and yet come away with the opinion that the film makers have somehow made serious or fatal mistakes. Oh, don't get me wrong. They do make mistakes, but for the most part, they are minor mistakes. For the most part, film makers are very serious and smart people who don't make big mistakes. (I think that even the likes of Uwe Boll do things intentionally, not because of sloppiness.)
Let me give you an example. Some people think that a flashback is simply an out of order story rather than being the real-time mental recollections of the protagonist.
In the case of Premonition, the days that appear to be out of order are really Linda's dream premonitions. They're not time traveling and the story does not involve out of order story telling. I write this, not to insult you (because I don't yet know what your problem is with Premonition), but to honestly present a rational argument in favor of the film and the film makers.
I think that it behooves the viewer to make sense of what may, at first, seem nonsensical because therein may lie a large part of what the story teller is trying to communicate. I think that Premonition provides an excellent example of creative film making that appeals to the intellect of the viewers. Let me give you a specific example from the film.
When Linda takes Dr. Roth's yellow pages listing out of her pocket, crumples it, and tosses it into the trash, she has an epiphany. She realizes that she's not cracking up, but is having premonitions, instead. That's when and why she starts her timeline. She tries to get control of the situation only later to find that she's as powerless to change what will happen as she is to change her dreams. It's not that fate is involved so much as it is that a premonition may be based on feelings devoid of details. In a sense, her premonitions are the story's antagonist. Her plight is how to respond to her premonitions. That's where faith comes in - a detail that, to some people, doesn't make sense and seems like some sort of religious note that was tacked onto the film.
Sorry to make this rant so long, it's just that I have so many friends who watch films without thinking about them and walk away from the experience none the wiser. They're still my friends, but I feel a little sorry for them wasting two hours of their lives. Since you are posting on this board, I assume that does not apply to you, so I ask: What's your problem with Premonition?
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tomm4004
15 years ago
Mark,
I agree with your points. The timeline makes sense to me. This is how I have it:
Sunday night she has Thursday premonition; Monday real; Monday night she has Saturday premonition; Tuesday real; Tuesday night she has Friday premonition; (Sunday??); finally Wednesday real.
But note I have ?? after Sunday. I'm not sure how it fits in. Did you understand that? She doesn't fill it in on her chart on Tuesday night, which indicates it has not yet happened. It takes place after Friday's premonition. But the events of Sunday are real, not premonition (I think). It's my only confusion.
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markfilipak
15 years ago
Yes, Sunday presents a problem.
Interpretation #1: Sunday is a dream that also takes place Tuesday night-Wednesday morning following her premonition of Friday. So the sequence is this: Thursday (dream) - Monday (real) - Saturday (dream) - Tuesday (real) - Friday (dream) & Sunday (dream) - Wednesday (real). The Sunday dream is different from the premonitions in that it is a appears to be a recollection of what really happened during the real Sunday (but perhaps with some wishful thinking) whereas the other dreams are premonitions. The only day that we know for sure does not match a premonition is Thursday. In her premonition, she IS NOT at the accident scene on Wednesday because her Thursday dream comes as a shock, whereas in reality, she IS at the Wednesday accident scene, therefore on the real Thursday (which we do not see), she would already know the details of what happened on Wednesday. On that basis alone, her premonition of Thursday MUST BE BOGUS. Of course, it has to be that way because otherwise, she would have done things differently on Wednesday (like telling Jim to keep going and NOT TURN THE CAR AROUND). If she had told Jim to keep going, would he have been killed in some other way? Perhaps by encountering the tanker truck BEFORE it topped the hill? THAT we can never know.
Interpretation #2: Every day is a dream EXCEPT SUNDAY. Thus: Thursday (dream) - Monday (dream) - Saturday (dream) - Tuesday (dream) - Friday (dream) - Sunday (real) - Wednesday (real). This leaves unanswered what happens on the real Monday and the real Tuesday, but they are not really important to Linda's plight except to the extent that she tries to talk Jim out of taking the trip (which would match her premonitions and therefore would be moot).
I think both interpretations are plausible. I find interpretation #1 to be more plausible but interpretation #2 to be more satisfying. Which did the film makers intend? I don't know - that's part of the fun.
I write that I find interpretation #1 to be more plausible because it seems reasonable that her premonition of Friday would prompt her to immediately dream/recollect what really happened on Sunday. Consider this: She ends her premonition of Friday asking her mother, "If I let Jim die, is that the same thing as killing him?" Perhaps that question prompts her to continue dreaming, this time about Sunday (which was the setup for the entire week of premonitions). I write that perhaps in her dream/recollection of Sunday she engages in wishful thinking because on that "Sunday", she clearly knows about what MAY HAPPEN ACCORDING TO HER PREMONITIONS and she formulates a plan to alter what WILL HAPPEN. To me, the important thing is that she utterly fails to substantially alter anything. Regarding causality, that's how it has to be. That has nothing to do with fate (or even with faith) and everything to do with time relativity. As with nearly all things related to relativistic causality and quantum mechanics, like Schrodinger's cat, it drives people nuts! To a film maker the issue is: How to get this across/appreciated in a film that a great many ordinary people will see. Premonition is not perfect, but I think that it presents/stimulates the paradoxes in a most appealing way. I look forward to your reaction to what I've written.
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tomm4004
15 years ago
Thanks. I like #1. #2 leaves my head spinning! I don't think I can handle every day as a dream, but it was a good alternate attempt. But yes, #1 sounds good. I don't remember the scene vividly, but perhaps she did not fill in Sunday on the chart because nothing extraordinary happened. That makes me feel better because Sunday was bugging me. But it's still strange that the church bells do not ring on Sunday. And yet, they ring on Tues morning (real) and Thursday morning (dream). Hmmm.
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markfilipak
15 years ago
Hi Tom,
You wrote: "I don't think I can handle every day as a dream..." That made me chuckle. Thanks. It does seem a stretch, but think back on the film. Were the "days" that seemed real presented any differently than were the "dreams" that we think were premonitions? Weren't you suckered at first into thinking that Thursday, when she was told the bad news, was real? Weren't they all presented as matter of fact without giving us a clue?... I have to think that was intentional. I'm not trying to imply that you don't think it was intentional. What I'm trying to say is that... the film very deftly mixes up reality and dreams to such extent that... it could all be a dream.
There's been other films that present dreams as reality and reality as dreams, but I've not seen a film do that as effectively as does Premonition.
You also wrote: "perhaps she did not fill in Sunday on the chart because nothing extraordinary happened." My take is that, when she started her chart, she was trying to pin down the day Jim dies. She was pursuing a process of elimination. Sunday didn't matter in that pursuit because she already knew what happened on Sunday. But she wasn't sure about the rest of the days. Was her first disturbing "day" Thursday, or another day? Remember, she started out as confused as us. She was putting the days together. She started with Thursday: FIND OUT JIM DIED, then moved on to Monday: JIM ALIVE AGAIN. She's writing this on Tuesday, so she quickly zeros in on Wednesday as the fateful day. What happened on Sunday was simply not relevant to her pursuit.
About the presence/lack of church bells. Yeah, I picked up on that immediately, on her very first "day" (Thursday) and in my very first viewing of the film. I think that the church bells are a ruse to throw us off; to put viewers further off balance. Related to that, did you notice that she starts her chart on a "real" day, Tuesday, and that it initially does not include Claire, and that she then adds to the chart the "next" morning, which is Friday and IS NOT real, by adding the name "Claire" to Tuesday? Did you notice that thereafter we never see the chart again? Of course, if we COULD see the chart again, "Claire" would not be noted on Tuesday because she added it in a dream, not in reality. I think we don't see the chart again specifically to avoid tipping off the audience that some days are more real than others.
I certainly wish that Sandy and the writers had been as careful doing The Lake House as they obviously were doing Premonition.
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tomm4004
15 years ago
The one thing that linked the "real" days for me was the clothes she wore to bed. As I recall, she would go to sleep and wake up in the same clothes. But on the "dream" days she did not.
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markfilipak
15 years ago
Tom wrote: "she would go to sleep and wake up in the same clothes. But on the 'dream' days she did not." Hehehe... Gotcha, Tom! (Confusing, isn't it?) When I wrote the synopsis, I tried to be careful with the cues.
From the synopsis...
Thursday night (Linda's Day 1): "Joanne's departure for bed leaves Linda staring blankly at her wedding photo, recalling her wedding day. She curls up on the sofa fully clothed and, clutching the picture, falls asleep."
Friday morning (Linda's Day 5): "Linda wakes up on the sofa. She's clutching her wedding photo."
Friday night (Linda's Day 5): "That night Linda is sitting in bed drinking red wine. She's wearing one of Jim's shirts."
Saturday morning (Linda's Day 3): "When Linda awakes it's morning, she's alone, and she's wearing one of Jim's shirts."
So, you see that the film makers planned this out as well.
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tomm4004
15 years ago
You're right. I guess I missed it because it's not in sequence in the film. So the filmmakers really were thinking.
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Nokitah
14 years ago
mr. mark, thank you!
i'm with you on interpretation #1.
i've seen this picture for the first time a year and a half ago and was left pretty confused. i didn't want to think about it, so i went with the "there are no premonitions, her days are just scrambled" interpretation.
yesterday i was reading a review for a terribly flawed (but fun in its own exploitative way) the butterfly effect and the general theme of trying to fix the future reminded me of this picture, so i went and got it.
i just saw it. as i was watching, something that i missed when i was at the theater struck me this time (as i was more attentive) - bridget's cuts. when she struck the window, and it was tuesday, i thought "but she didn't have any scars on thursday or else linda wouldn't be surprised at the funeral!" so i went back on the dvd and checked for the scars. and then i had my epiphany - thursday was really a premonition! from then on i figured it must be as you said above (thursday (dream) - monday (real) - saturday (dream) - tuesday (real) - friday (dream) - sunday (could be either a dream or real, but it is probably also a dream) - wednesday (real)).
then i came on this board and was astounded at the poor ratings (i mean, the butterfly effect has 7.8!) and the poor reviews! i'm a pretty cynical person, but even i can see this movie is a good, smart, well constructed and executed and entertaining picture.
thank you for being the voice of reason here.
i apologize for any ortographic/gramatical errors.
you tried your best, and you failed miserably. the lesson is: never try.
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