MovieChat Forums > Salvage (2006) Discussion > The REAL explanation for this movie's pl...

The REAL explanation for this movie's plot. - SPOILERS.

posted 11 years ago by wakanasakai
4 replies | jump to latest

The REAL explanation for this movie's plot. - SPOILERS.

The whole movie reminds me of a discussion from the book "Through the looking glass, & what Alice found there". Alice & another character (I'm pretty sure that it was the white queen) talk about Looking Glass Land's legal system (I think that they were discussing the mad hatter's punishment), & the white queen tells Alice that in their legal system, the order that things happen in is in this order.
1) You get punished.
2) You get told what your punishment was.
3) You get told what you were accused of doing. (In other words, you are told why you were punished).
4) You do what you were accused of doing (IF you were guilty). & if you don't do what you were accused of doing (if you were innocent), then, as the white queen tells Alice, that proves that their legal system is better than our legal system.
The problem with that kind of 'justice' is that if you don't tell somebody WHY you are going to punish them until AFTER you punish them, then it's a NOT a punishment, it's just torture.

The flaw in this movie's version of justice can be exposed like this. Imagine that you have a PC that has only the "Windows 7 OS" on it, & that it gotten infected with a virus that is so bad that you have to do a clean re-install of the "Windows 7 OS". You use a program that completely over-writes the entire hard drive. Then you decide "To hell with Windows 7" (no pun intended), & you clean install the "Linux Ubuntu OS" instead. Then somebody falsely accuses you of NOT clean installing or re-installing ANY OS, which means that your PC still has the "Windows 7 OS" & the virus. In this movie, the "Windows 7 OS" represents Duke's memories, the "Linux Ubuntu OS" represents Claire's memories, & the virus represents Duke's memory of killing anybody.
---
IF I want your opinion, I'll GIVE it to you.

[–] Indifferent_Observer 11 years ago

***SPOILERS****
Thats an interesting theory there,but Its pretty clear what the movie is about and there are really no flaws in it at all if you follow the simple formula(Duke murdered Claire and her boyfriend, the cops killed Duke, Duke goes to hell and is forced to live the life of the innocent vulnerable Claire over and over until the facade of being Claire slowly starts to unravel(though his own dreams) leading to him ultimately being killed by himself, then he wakes up and has to do it allover again waking up as Claire at the cash register.)

This type of plot has been done before over the years and the movie itself been explained ad-nauseam in the forums here, but I guess there will always be someone trying to find different meanings and interpretations. Its a great low budget indie nonetheless.

[–] wakanasakai 11 years ago

It sounds like you're confusing my saying that this movie's version of justice is flawed with me saying that this movie's plot is flawed.

Some of what you posted (which I'll quote for you) agrees with my criticism of this movie's version of justice.

In Hell, Duke is forced to re-live the last few days of the INNOCENT Claire.

In order to re-live the last few days of an innocent (read = not a killer) Claire, Duke has to NOT know WHY he's being punished (because he thinks that he's Claire), which means that it's a NOT a punishment, it's just torture.
---
IF I want your opinion, I'll GIVE it to you.

[–] Oakface 11 years ago

I get what you're saying. And one has to wonder: how many times has Duke relived her death when we enter the opening scene? Is this the first time? Why does it only take him 6 or so cycles to be told what is going on, when presumably there be an eternity of them?

My own belief is that this hell is tailored to *beep* with his mind, and it makes little sense that he will be there for eternity, but only suffer confusion for the first dozen "cycles" of his punishment - I think he wakes up in the finale the way Claire woke up at the beginning, he does not remember the "I am Claire" revelation. It was for the audience, for our own horror and torture at the implications of what this man will now endure, possibly forever.

Possibly, the entire run of the movie is one BIG cycle he relives and forgets. Not only the torture of being a girl murdered and revived and alone, but eventually learning his fate, only to forget it again. We may be walking into the movie years and years after Duke's death, he may have gone through all of this already before.

[–] taticat 9 years ago

I am late in jumping in on this, but who ever said that any kind of 'justice' was meted out to Duke? That's your error. Nothing calls for anything that Duke endures to be just. Whether we are watching Duke's first run-through or his five billionth, it doesn't matter in the least. Hell, as commonly conceived, is a place of eternal *torment*, not justice. And this part is where I become extremely thankful that I am an atheist, and do not have to go through any massive mental gymnastics to explain away anything: Someone is going to chime in with, 'oh, but [my] god is a merciful god, and the cornerstone of mercy is in delivering punishment that is lesser in severity than the offence.' Then someone else will try to counter with the argument that [whomever's] god is a just god, where the fundament of a just nature is to administer a punishment that is equal in severity to the offence. ::yawn:: Let me nip this in the bud. First, something cannot be both merciful and just at the same time. Second, the nature of any stupid deity has nothing to do with the damn movie. Duke is in some generic Hell, and he is being eternally tormented because he was such an evil s.o.b. in life. There is no justice, no mercy. End trans.