I am of no religion and watched this with a totally open mind,not too sure what it was going to be about to be honest.
However I think the reason that people try to find undertones in the movie is because there is a very clear one. Each of the characters have some kind of deep faith in something.
Now watch the movie again with what I said in mind and see what you think.
100% agree with you.
shareOh absolutely, it is about faith, but as you say not necessarily religious faith. Each character's motivation is based on faith or, more commonly, a loss of faith. In fact, Preest/David's character represents an absence of faith.
"I'd never ask you to trust me. It's the cry of a guilty soul."
I agree. I need to watch it again. But, what came to mind at the end of it was something my sister used to say all the time. "It's all in your mind." I took it as "reality is what you make of it."
shareThis seems like the right thread for an issue that troubles me a bit. The 'Faith' thing about Meanwhile City. Here's this wonderfully depicted place with massive cathedrals etc. piled upon one another, testament to centuries of religious devotion, massive physical effort in the service of belief. But it's full of 'religions' that are the fluffiest of ephemera: the rule is that you have to believe in something--it doesn't matter how idiotic it is: washing machine instructions, manicures, sacred beards (in one of the deleted scenes)--with the sinister clerical police there to somehow enforce this silliness.
It is funny, of course, in a movie in which nothing else IS funny, which is kind of off-putting despite any passing entertainment value. The simple and obvious thought is that it's all in the mind of the Preest/David character, but there's nothing playful in his madness, certainly not as portrayed by Ryan Phillippe--he's just a straight-ahead vengeance engine.
Maybe a different actor could have achieved some humor behind that Jack Skellington mask. (And what's an American, speaking American, doing in this movie anyway, except to pull in a US audience? Pretty crass.) An apparent misstep, or
missed opportunity, on the writer/director's part.
Just saying' . . . It didn't ruin the show for me, though. I'll watch Eva Green do anything. Eva Green can do anything: she's a genuine force of nature.
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