MovieChat Forums > The Oxford Murders (2010) Discussion > Solution didn't make sense [spoilers]

Solution didn't make sense [spoilers]

posted 12 years ago by holtor
14 replies | jump to latest

So Seldom made up the story with the letter with a circle because he happened to see that word at the scrabble board, by pure chance thus. Next he entirely randomly decided to use the "fish" symbol, without having any sequence in mind apparently as he didn't know how the 3rd symbol would look like. At the concert he simply grabs his program sheet which happens to have a triangle on it.

Thus it was pure coincidence that he got the first 3 symbols of that pythagorean series. And it was another coincidence that the bus driver, who regularly meets Seldom and Lorna at the clinic, happened to carry a book around with this sequence in it.

Apart from the solution being based on this rather large amount of coincidence, there are several things which do not make sense:

1) If Seldom wanted to fake a serial murder, why did he not make up a sequence of symbols which he knew how to continue instead of choosing that "fish"?

2) What was the point of giving Martin the empty sheet and taking the risk of him opening it (as he eventually did)?

3) How could Martin possibly deduce from the fact that Seldom did not predict the 3rd symbol, that Seldom made all the symbols up? Because of (1) one would rather expect the exact opposite. The only thing he could deduce would be that Seldom tried to look smarter than he was.

Besides I really do not like how math is confused in this movie with cabbalism and numerology. If the screen writers have no clue what math is, couldn't they ask someone who knows?

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] andreas-schmidt-pabst 12 years ago

Good points. I haven´t noticed these things.

But on the other hand: Is it more likely that random coincidence happen which are not helpful than which which seem to follow an order and are convenient.

For example I can´t comprehend when people say something like: "What a miracle, I met my old teacher at the other end of the world!"
According to which logic is it more likely that this person met a foreigner?

So, is it really more unlikely that all these convenient cooincidences happen than that they don´t happen?

[–] TheManInOil 11 years ago

I agree with your third point. It was quite a leap on his part, but it was also conjecture. A better ending would have been for him to accuse Seldom and have Seldom say "Nice theory, but you have no proof." The whole idea is that you can always find a way to explain things if you try, but that you are ultimately not discovering truth - only a way to settle the riddle in your own mind.

Which is the answer to your #1 question. Seldom wanted it open-ended in order to maximize the possibilities that would still make sense. He doesn't want the truth discovered so he leaves it as open-ended as possible for others to impose meaning upon with their 'solutions'.

The answer to your #2 point was given in the movie. He was hoping Elijah would come up with a third symbol for him, to allow the illusory serial killer to exist outside of his own scheming. The more divorced the imaginary killer is from Seldom himself, the less likely anyone could trace it back to him.

He didn't plan the 4th symbol or the bus driver's killing. It was the bus driver who saw the first three symbols and postulated a 4th based on a book he was reading. It isn't the only possible fourth symbol in that series. As Seldom kept saying, no matter what the fourth symbol turned out to be there would be a way to rationalize it.

"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."

[–] dbre 10 years ago

An interesting irony is that by letting randomness dictate, the false solution found order. I wonder if they did that purposely in order to show that truth really does underly everything and we naturally fall into some definable pattern

[–] daddie0 10 years ago

He didn't plan the 4th symbol or the bus driver's killing. It was the bus driver who saw the first three symbols and postulated a 4th based on a book he was reading.

Here you are incorrect. Seldom actually "told the paper everything he knows" about the serial killer, which included the fourth symbol which was printed. The police hoped that by Seldom "recognizing" the genius of the pattern the killings would stop. This was indeed Seldom's plan--that there would be no more 'murders'--thus the perfect crime.

But what Seldom didn't count on was a random stranger recognizing the symbols then seeing the solution to his own problem in them. This became the ultimate crime which Seldom only indirectly caused.

[–] ghost_hat 10 years ago

I was wondering how he could possibly not know the third symbol. He's very well aquainted with the Pythagrean symbols, there are only 4, he has the first 2 already. It's impossible that he wouldn't know the next one. He just made up the second one randomly? Ok, perhaps subconciously. But with the first 2 he had to knnow the next one.

[–] fearless2003 10 years ago

I agree with all your points, especially the third one.

At the end in Elijah Wood's explanation, he says the school bus driver read the paper with the series. So he's saying the guy saw the series in the paper, and that's when he decided to commit the murder... and the series just happened to be the same one published in the book he had been reading? Too much coincidence... the whole "publish in the newspaper" plot point should have been left out... but even if it had, we still have too much coincidence.

The driver happened to have been carrying a book with the series printed inside? This was before the second murder had been committed... so coincidentally Seldom chooses the fish symbol and triangle symbols which match the series in this guy's book...

At the end elijah wood tells Seldom, "you haven't killed anyone"... this isn't true, Seldom killed the guy in the hospital.

[–] guardian_owl 10 years ago

At the end elijah wood tells Seldom, "you haven't killed anyone"... this isn't true, Seldom killed the guy in the hospital.

He didn't kill the guy in the hospital, he waited around for someone to die naturally (he spends a lot of his time in the terminal ward visiting his friend) and then pricked him with a needle to make it LOOK like he had been killed by some exotic, undetectable toxin (you'll see if you watch closely in the flashback that the patient isn't moving at all when Seldon sticks the needle in his arm). Seldon then picks the intercepting ellipses at random for the next step in the sequence, wrote the exact time the person died and then Beth probably stuck it on the door on the way into the University library to see Martin (since we find out at the end that they have been in cahoots since the aftermath of the first murder). For all we know that breakdown could have been an act to lure Martin outside to see the clue and make the connection to the patient he had seen earlier with Seldon in the hospital. The police see his friend is fine and then are sure to look more closely at the other deaths in that ward.

If Seldon picks a design he knows, then that makes him more likely to be a suspect, so after being locked into the start with the circle, he followed up with the intercepting ellipses precisely as he says in the movie, because it has so many different options what could come next. He had to make Martin think he knew what the sequence was in the hopes that (like when he suggested the imperceptible murder) he would solve the next step for him. Leaving the napkin blank as opposed to writing the wrong symbol is the best play because if Martin happens to find the napkin later in his pocket he will just think he happened to leave a napkin in his pocket. It's only because he put the folded napkin in his passport that he realized its significance.

Then Seldon saw the guy who strikes the triangle die by chance in the concert and EUREKA, the solution to his problem, the Pythagorean sequence which ends in 4 steps. Publish the solution to the sequence in the paper so that there is an excuse when the imaginary killer doesn't strike again. Only problem is a mad man reads about the 4th step of the sequence in the paper, recognizes it from the the book he has been reading by chance and realizes that he can piggy back on the murder to find a donor for this daughter. Make it look like someone sabotaged his bus or something and when he couldn't stop, jumped away to save himself. Then the police will think it is the murderer who sabotaged the bus and not the driver. Unfortunately he moves too slow and dies in the crash.

What convinces Martin that Seldon invented it all is not just the blank napkin. The blank napkin shatters the notion that Seldon has any idea what the sequence actually was, which triggers his memory of the original crime scene. Circle is written on the scrabble table in German, untouched by the killer. Which is more likely, that the old woman happened to have circle spelled out on her tile holder and the killer happened to also use a circle in the first sequence OR that Seldon was inspired by the word Circle to use it in his story he told the police?

[–] pmmacoris 9 years ago

Best explanation I've read, actually made me like the movie a little better.
Indeed I verified my account specifically for commenting on this.
Thanks Owl, for helping a slow person get this... Hm, good movie.
Still gave it a 7 though, because I don't think the basic reason that Seldom did this ("helping" Beth) is very explicit.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] Wilde_child 9 years ago

Yeah, thanks for the post. I was confused about the patient at the hospital and the triangle guy. Thought the latter was poisoned. I knew I should have followed my gut instinct when I suspected Beth was in it...

[–] saima-85097 8 years ago

Exactly the things that disturbed me...!!!! especially HOW COULD SELDOM NOT KNOW THE THIRD SYMBOL AFTER THE FISH WAS ALREADY THERE!!!...If he was so dumb as to not know the basic sequence that was so easily available to be seen in all books,just as Martin saw..it literally took him a few minutes to find the sequence in the bookstore...AND why didn't he do that earlier..i mean why didn't he search books to look for sequences that start with a circle!!!!!
If Seldom had no clue where the sequence would go after the circle,how and why did he just randomly choose the fish as the next symbol...hardly believable!!!!
and who the hell put that fish message on the door?????...it was so well pasted!!!

[–] yusef-ghanima 7 years ago

1- subconscious, he's a professor who read so many books, so he came up with it subconsciously. and also as a professor he forget a a lot, like you on this thread, you can't remember that there was for not three symbols
2- he knew from the beginning that the boy is suspicious about him and in the same time idolize him, and he knew he can use the butterfly trick in the end to immobilize him
3 like they said in the film it's not a matter of logic. it's intuition, and the hobbit was suspicious about him from the start because of his presence at the crime scene