Very good movie. I hope it gets more attention.
My question: What was the significance of the child's painting? The maid said it was based on an American masterpiece, but I didn't recognize anything. Why did it have such an impact on Rostow?
Any input will be appreciated.
amazing ending line. terrific writing. just really summed up his whole character, didn't it?
I just replayed the painting scene. it is a child's version of an Edward Hopper painting , "New York Movie",of a blond usherette leaning against the right wall in a movie theater.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/hopper.ny-movie.jpg
Earlier in the film,rostow is on the train, gets drunk at dinner,sees the boy and man in their stateroom and then passes out in his own room. Then he dreams of a magical old time glamorous movie theater with a blond woman(Amy Ryan or a look-alike) in a silk chinese sleeveless dress leaning against the right wall in the theater, with an old WWI airplane movie on in the left background. It appears to be snowing in the theater and on rostow as he dreams (symbol of pleasant dreams from the past?)
near and at the end, rostow, and then rostow and charlie, talk about the joy and closeness of the good old days- which are no more. I think that when rostow sees the painting and groks/ feels the acute loss of the child that painted that painting , he recognizes the acute loss he himself has been
feeling, and he realizes that each person should be allowed to suffer their loss and grief in their own way. The man was begging him to be let go- to return to the new life he had claimed, so Rostow acquiesced. And in so doing, Rostow, made the first step to recovering his "self as a moral being. " Both the pursued and the pursuer are Missing Persons on their way back to finding themselves.
what i don't understand is:
1)what the lawyer had to gain in bringing back the man (whose 'death' had enriched the lawyer)
and
2) why did the writer throw in that confusing stuff about the evil or goodness of the mexican man(who, if evil, might have, in actuality, been invalidating the work that had become the 'dead man's raison d'etre.)
was it to show that even a drug lord could do good things (support an orphanage?)
And why was the f.b.i. involved?and why did they tell rostow that things were much deeper than he realized?
Plse educate me!
The way to have what we want
Is to share what we have.
WOW! thats a brainstorm of an ending! you got all that off him zoning out on one *beep* painting?Maybe im stupid, but there has to be a more simple meaning to the way this film ended, someone else please help us out! Is there a simple ending? or is this really have that deep of a ending? the way I took it was "The Missing Person" was the boy that painted that painting, I think it was their son? maybe I missed it but how again did he die? I hate it when a movie stumps the *beep* out of me like this!
share'the way this film ended'>> what do you mean? the very last scene?
'the missing person' was ostensibly the man he was hired to find. but it is also him, the protagonist. the loss of his wife in 9/11 threw him into the land of zombies/ missing persons. At the very end of the film, he relays how he has some good days; life is kind of o.k. Until he remembers her, and realizes that in comparison, his life is nowhere near good.
The way to have what we want
Is to share what we have.
Naturally, these answers are just my impressions, but here goes anyway...
1)what the lawyer had to gain in bringing back the man (whose 'death' had enriched the lawyer)?
The lawyer worked for the wife, so he had to appear to be doing her bidding in bringing him back to New York, but secretly he hired Gus (I didn't quite get if he was a PI or still a cop) to sabotage the reunion.
2)why did the writer throw in that confusing stuff about the evil or goodness of the mexican man(who, if evil, might have, in actuality, been invalidating the work that had become the 'dead man's raison d'etre.)
Well, that goes into the entire theme of not really knowing if our actions are for good or for evil. In his final lines, Rosow talks about how beyond the lights of a police precinct, there is no right or wrong. Who knows the motivations or consequences of our own actions, never mind anyone else's?
3)And why was the f.b.i. involved?and why did they tell rostow that things were much deeper than he realized?
As mentioned, Don Edgar, the Mexican fellow Rosow had coffee with, was supposedly a drug dealer and (implied by Gus) a pedophile. The FBI might have assumed that Rosow knew the guy was a "9/11 fraud" and was tracking him down for that reason (I seem to recall the FBI female agent mentioning something about Rosow's past). Therefore, the FBI figured he knew nothing about the exploited children & whether or not Don Edgar was a drug dealer.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and will look at the director's other work, as well as Michael Shannon's. Actually, it was Shannon's performance in Shotgun Stories that lead me to this. He is really a compelling actor.
1. Being moody.
2. Being bad at maths.
3. Being sad.
I have just watched this film for the second time, a little over 3 years after writing the above post. My thoughts are pretty much identical, with the exception of the interpretation of the dream and painting.
I missed a key thing on my first viewing: in a flashback to Rostow as a cop, driving his car, he receives a call. It's confusing but i think the call is from his wife in the towers, and he is reassuring her that (paraphrasing here)"we're on our way; all the guys and me too; don't worry."(He doesn't seem real upset or tense when he speaks to her because he doesn't really realize what is happening down there. He sets down the still-active receiver on the passenger seat as he drives and then you hear from it all the chaos and screaming etc that is escalating in the background where his wife is.
And I now interpret the Hopper dream differently. I now see that rostow's dream was grounded in the edward hopper painting, but: the blonde represented/was his wife; the plane on the movie-screen was one of the planes that hit the towers; and the snow blowing down from above-was the ash from the towers.
So when rostow saw the painting by the now-dead abducted boy of Harold, he got lost in it because it took him to his dream and his deepest feelings of grief for his own loss, which moved his better self and forced him to grant Harold's plea that rostow let him go; this scene followed directly by rostow returning the briefcase of cash to harold's wife when she opens the door, expecting to see her husband.
The way to have what we want
Is to share what we have.
I couldn't really tell what the picture was meant to represent, but I thought it looked like a picture of the Twin Tower on fire. Or maybe I am confusing a woman's blonde hair with a conflagration.
share
I like Edward Hopper's paintings and recognized both the early scene and the child's version of "an American masterpiece" he and his class were supposed to paint as a project. The detective felt a link between the loss of the child and his wife who died in the Twin Towers.
He confronted his ex friend saying now I know why you hired me. You figured I would screw it up. Meaning the lawyer and his friend who was in the pay of the lawyer didn't want the man brought back but had to appear to be doing their job. The lawyer hired the other cop because he had worked on the kidnapped child case and the father and mother knew him and trusted him.
One problem I have with those payouts for the Twin Towers is you have all these stock broker families wanting more and more for the rest of their lives. Those Towers had low paid people, many of them foreigners with no papers, working in the restaurants washing dishes and busing tables and cleaning toilets and carpets. Their families mostly got nothing or a token payment.