Was William about to call the whole thing off and save Jim? (spoilers)

I interpreted the garden-party scene's emotional effect on William the same way you did (that he had a change of heart about driving Jim to suicide, but then snapped back into vengeful determination after the altercation with his father.)

I agree with you that William's motivation seemed to be "to cause a suicide" rather than "to see Jim dead." It was the feeling of power that he was after--as in the rough/abusive-chat-room scenes in which William stood in the corner in front of the satanic wings. It seemed to me that the filmmakers were trying to convey William's pleasure when the boy being targeted for abuse in that room, looked William's way. William seemed to be identifying himself--or wanting the boy to see him--as the entity driving all the hostility in that room.(This would be William's distorted wishful thinking--his grandiosity. It appeared that the others in the room weren't really even aware of him.)

All in all, I thought this movie did a great job of translating the psychological realities of online interaction into visual metaphors. There were problems both with plotting and with the mechanics of scene transitions, but the movie deserves a higher rating than it gets.

I think the garden party seen was used to reinforce the point that William was projecting his own misery onto that of others a.k.a; his life is *beep* and people are mean equates into Will trying to make others lives miserable, William feels loved and happy = he no longer has a need to see others unhappy. William was in-acting revenge or suffering, whatever you want to call it, onto people he could, because in his real life he found himself in a powerless situation, not even being able to take away his own life. Which leads into your next question; William was trying to redeem himself through Jim. Because he had failed himself at suicide, and probably felt he couldn't try again because of his parents, he was essentially enacting his own suicide through Jim, and in that way seeking the satisfaction and relief he thought/thinks suicide would bring him. He was bringing to life the fantasy of his own suicide through the closest possible option second to killing himself, and that was being responsible for the suicide of another.

I assumed exactly what u assumed but I am confused a bit, he didn't need to get mad at his father and could've tried explaining what he was doing
I even thought he was after the suicide of the Asian girl who jumped her window
abt Jim he wanted him to do what he wanted to do himself but couldn't coz prolly he was too weak
so Jim's suicide is a joy to William, he made him do it while he failed to commit suicide himself
killing Jim wouldn't be the same thing, he wanted to push him towards doing what he couldn't do.


"It is never about what happened, it is only how you look at it!"

Let's just say that if that's all it took for William to reconsider then he really hadn't changed...

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Sir Ian McKellen? That dude must be knee-deep in boob.