MovieChat Forums > The Details (2016) Discussion > Left a bad taste in the mouth.

Left a bad taste in the mouth.

posted 11 years ago by budarc
11 replies | jump to latest

I liked the fact that I wasn't sure where the movie was going most of the time; the set-up at the beginning listing all the pieces, and watching them all fall into place throughout the narrative (the "cheese and salami plate" didn't fit very satisfactory, though). In the end, it was just like, eh, what's the point? Was that the point, or am I missing the point?

Also, was anyone else expecting the 420 fetish friendly lady to somehow have a bigger importance in the story? I felt like that was an interesting red herring that got dropped early on. Oh well.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] DaliParton 11 years ago

The murder was the turning point in the movie. It took her murder to make him come clean of all his secrets.

And to the OP, the thing about the salami plate was that he said he wished he had known about it earlier. The obvious inference is that if he had known about it, he would not have felt the need to keep his own affair a secret and thus Lila would not have been killed.

[–] BeinMysef 10 years ago

very good point. would have prevented the death of the baby and mother... which is bad considering all the who haa about crime against women now days.

[–] anglophilejen 11 years ago

Probably just me, but I thought the film was dark from the beginning. Basically started for me with the whole online chat cheating thing.

When it was so quickly revealed that he wasn't the nice clean doctor everyone (including himself) thought, I knew we were being taken on a journey down a dark rabbit hole.

Loved the recurring raccoon metaphor.

[–] hexedd 10 years ago

bluesdoctor: I didn't feel like it was crossing a line. If you envision it that the movie is really meant as a parable, about lying and deception (hence the story being totally framed by the raccoons), then it really just shows how his lying and manipulation came to a head. If you think of it literally, yes, of course it was crossing a line. But it's mainly meant to show how his lifestyle and lying slowly got out of control. Once he runs over the raccoon it's symbolic he's finally getting over being sneaky. I agree the murder was beyond anything else, but of course murder is beyond anything else.

[–] bing-57 10 years ago

> What was up until then a tepidly ironic and amusing series of mishaps all of a sudden turns dark and heavy.

It turned dark when the cat was killed.

> The murder is incongruent with the rest of the movie.

Don't you remember your mama saying, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye"? Well, that's this movie in a nutshell. Up until then, everything is all for laughs and then bang! It becomes deadly serious.

--
What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?

[–] Oblivion14 11 years ago

Exactly what DaliParton said. He had this image of his wife as innocent and didn't want her to know the bad things he had done. In order to do that, he unintentionally caused a chain reaction of even more truly horrifying things.

If only he had known that Nealy was doing the same bad things as he did, he wouldn't have had to try to hide his own mistakes.

The point really is how lying leads to more lies. Tangled web and all that. And the punishment is not divine nor karma or anything like that, but something just as equally effective: guilt.

It's one reason why the Greeks depicted liars and oath-breakers as being constantly hounded by the Erinyes, the Furies.

[–] ryansassy1 11 years ago

Well stated!

_________________________________
"I'm sorry, but.." is a self-contained lie.

[–] MaximusGrandimus 10 years ago

I think it's supposed to leave a bad taste in your mouth. That's kind of the point of dark comedies. Yes, the beginning starts out in such an upbeat, almost happy way - this guy has a pretty good life, aside from a few "off" things such as his wife turning down sex and raccoons going at his newly-sodded yard.

But this movie is really all about causation - one seemingly small detail, such as trying to resod the backyard - leads to a spiral of increasingly worse and worse events. How, trying to hide one little detail actually causes you to tell an increasingly worse series of lies and betrayals - I've seen this happen before in my own life and in other friends' lives. Now, in most instances, people get caught and they pay the consequences. But sometimes, sometimes people don't get caught. Sometimes they just decide to come clean, and when you do, even if it was just a tiny little white lie about something seemingly innocuous, it's freeing, the weight is lifted. That's the point of this movie, is the parable of someone who divests himself of his lies.

The lies that pile up through the course of this movie can also be seen in the metaphor of the poison he uses while attempting to kill the raccoon - that of the lies being like poison for his soul.

I don't know if you're aware of this but I've already changed things. I killed Ben Linus.
--Sayid

[–] movie80 10 years ago

Left a bad taste in the mouth.
I don't like this movies, so many bad people in it.
When I say bad, I mean they do bad things repeatedly, not just once.
What were the writers trying to say?

[–] 10 years ago

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