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What did you read from the defense of the dissertation?

posted 12 years ago by shide_85
4 replies | jump to latest

Would be nice to see if im the only one reading too much into the movie?

From my point of view it ended up with him tearing down his own inner context of reality to create something new, same as what his dissertation ended up with. It might be reading alot into it and in that sense as far as getting the point through to the professors, their ability to read this into his actions comes into play (if it was meant that way by the script). His action to break loose would then be considered evidence for his dissertation, aka defense of it. By failing his disseration he shows that it's correct...

[EDIT] This post has been modified - I'm correcting the tag, can't recall the rest of the post as it was quite some time it was made.

Ignorance is only a bliss if you haven't reached awareness.
My imdb posts are getting altered.

[–] joey-tribbiani 12 years ago

What did I read from it?

Well this is my honest answer.

I thought the writers/director wanted an interesting ending. Here is a man who has a career ahead of him which he has just spent most of his life on. He is basically in a situation that is quite prominent and useful. Apparently his "Dad" got him there but he has also put effort into him.

Oddly, the writers have the idea of pub quizzes in there too. They had to therefore put the idea of trivia into the end of the film. Why he did it - God knows. He was basically erm... saying to them, I shouldn't be here and my Dad got me here. The fact his Dad got him there is supposed to be the revelation.

Really? In other contexts where somebody cannot do their job this would work but for him doing a doctoral dissertation at one of the most prestigious schools out there wasn't real in any way. Then the girl he likes is also a geek too.

This film made no sense at all. It was funny in parts and the story was interesting. Why he decided to catch a coach ride to somewhere new also made no sense at all. It was like "oh my Dad controlled my life so now I will drop everything and disappear into the world - there are no jobs out there and I have nothing to do with my literature degree but it's cool because hey I HAD A REVELATION".

Weird.

[–] Johnny_Hing 11 years ago

Yeah, the ending didn't make much sense to me either. He seemed to have an epiphany and then abrubtly "transcended" all that he had strived for, his doctorate, his promising career, his friends, his Dad, his love of trivia... he even told the "free hug" guy he wasn't coming back, as he boarded the bus for who knows where. I could understand this ending if he was off to the Himalayas to practice Yoga or Zen or something, leaving material life behind. But, that message wasn't indicated anywhere in the movie. Apart from that, I admit that I enjoyed the movie, especially the setting in Ann Arbor, a beautiful college town that I have had the honor to visit before, back in the '70s. But this could have been so much more, if not for the bizarre and rather frustrating ending.

Go within, or go without

[–] imrama2002 12 years ago

I think the message was you should live your own life, not live it to please/meet someone else goals and in the process be miserable. The fresher girl he became friendly with helped him to gain this insight, by taking him out of his comfort zone and in so doing helped him to, as some would say, "grow as person". Prior to meeting her he was rather child-like, particularly in his relationship with his father.

So yes the destructive act - dispensing with his old life - was proving his dissertation to be correct.

[–] reaseltbim 10 years ago

yeah but he doesn't have a lot to stand on, he will probably end up working at Burger King or cleaning tables but he is free from his dad and his awful life so "YAY" I guess....

God that was so ridiculous. This was so stupid, what a waste of a budget, what a waste of sets and actors, waste of everything.