Last scene with the horse??

I'm not sure about Angela. We found out that she had her own money and was well off herself with her own inheritance. But still, not sure.

Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.

When Zach went to see her while she was folding clothes, he said "Thank you for that" - it seemed like it was meant to be "welcome back to Earth" sex, not "let's have a relationship" sex.

Took me 22 minutes longer to write the same thing you did. :)
Loved the film. It's a 9 in my book, but a 5.6 in IMDb's, I see.

You see, the Amish man WASN'T waiting for the rain to stop. He was ignoring it. He didn't conform.

very well said agree 100%. magnificent.

i love you

I got the complete opposite, they left their sell out lives behind and actually started to live in the present, the now the real momment.

The ending to me is what was said through out the movie.

Amish man and horse in the rain going some where.

Boy on artificial horse, static in one place.

The focus is on the horses one is free walking around the other is not.

Then like someone said about rain, the rain does not bother the Amish man his still going were he wants to go.

While others are bothered by the rain even when their cars are just their a few meters away.

The scene with Steve could possibly be seen as confirming this, he wants to go in the house, out of the rain and Angela says no so they stay and get wet.

Don't be afraid of the rain it's all part of life.

The fact it had not rained in that area further makes me think this as Angela kept saying I don't think so, every time Steve said some rain was on its way.

No rain was like saying they weren't really living, rain is part of life. Rain being a metaphor for obstacles.

You can mask them with weed, money, sex but that's not going to make them go away.

Bens escapism prevented him from actually living, he only started to live once he gained clarity. Suddenly all these potential paths start to appear for him. Same with all other characters but this post is long enough.

Excellent interpretation. It's what I thought too. According to Freud's view "fitting" into society actually stinguishes out inner "id" of basic, passionate self in order to fullfill the super-ego society bound "right way" of living.
The mechanical horse represents that conformity, that fitting into society imposed ethics.

-cure

well written, and i agree (i think), the mechanical horse was the conformity (Ben's pills, the new shop etc.), and the real horse was... i dunno how to say it, but the opposite. cheers

Appreciate your thoughts. Thanx m8!

Perfection. 100% Agreed.

Questions for me now answered, great write up. Outstanding!

absolutely, highest marks to you for a spot on analysis. it's a very challenging film, beautifully realized.

as the camera stayed close on the mechanical horse i said "no, no, no, no, no!" to the TV. i didn't want it to end.
and yet, it absolutely had to.

It may be individual theories QweefPolice.

There was no way Ben could have continued the way he was going. He would have ended up in prison, he definetly had some serious mental issue.

When Ben faces this problem and gains clarity a chain reaction occurs as this decision impacts Steve and allows him to be happy also. As Steve breaking down at Bens was his realization that he was the only broken one left. Ben decision ultimately gave Steve a proper place to call home with someone to share it and run the farm with. Without the responsibility of taking care of his friend he could now live and focus on his life too.

In its simplest interpretation Ben was the mechanical horse, he wasn't going anywhere when he looks at it I guess he was looking at what his life use to be like.

I have to go back to my favorite music review of all time, for David Bowie's "Life on Mars?":

A quite gloriously strange anthem, where the combination of stirring, yearning melody and vivid, poetic imagery manage a trick very particular to the art of the song: to be at once completely impenetrable and yet resonant with personal meaning. You want to raise your voice and sing along, yet Bowie’s abstract cut-up lyrics force you to invest the song with something of yourself just to make sense of the experience. And, like all great songs, it's got a lovely tune.

Thanx for sharing!

Weiner's DVD commentary implies that he was very much thinking along those natural and "real" vs. little boxes lines himself.

I think Weiner is right that you can't have everything, you have to choose. I think Weiner thinks Zach's character _is_ better off -- and it's the lesser of two evils.

Well... the way I see it, the writers tried to do a critique of conformity but failed at convincing me they were honestly trying to portray spontaneity as a good thing.

I would bet the heads of the writers are just as ambivalent as Ben's was after he started taking his medication. That's to say he was still a bit "crazy", but now under control. And it seems the authors tried to push the idea that said "control" provided by antidepressants are a good thing, because life is *beep* anyways, and it's best to deal with it under the rules of society and the help of Big Pharma.

Well, it sucks that's the way the authors see life. Weed, booze and meaningless sex are at least as good a medicine as are antidepressants in my book, if not much better. And to a certain extent, we're all more or less free to shun conformity to society's most idiotic habits, while keeping some of them as our choice idiocies. It must be hard for these people who think they're stuck with only two choices: either to live a dull life as a conformist douche, or to be a crazy SOB running around wasting his life like a hedonist hippie.

I, for one, believe life's more complicated than that. We all have got to conform to society in many ways, but that doesn't mean we all have to kill our real inner selves, because otherwise we'd go crazy and destroy ourselves. We're definitely allowed to challenge societal paradigms and the human kind has done so for millenia. That's exactly what brought us to this place we're in today, and all the progress mankind has achieved. If all humans had always been was medicated conformists just playing to the same tune, we would still haven't invented the wheel or the alphabet. Thinking outsite the box is what makes us happy, what pushes us forward, even though it's a painful and tiresome process. I sincerely disagree with the authors that life is as bad as they put it, I actually feel sorry for them - after all, they've got to work with such talented guys like Owen and Zach, but still hold such a dark view about their lives. I know lots of people that have many less opportunities to be able to realize such a great thing like a big budget feature movie, and yet they lead a much happier existence than the guys who came up with this story. I can't help to think they come out as whiny and jaded.

But still, the movie is ok since it did allow many of us to bring up some questions, to analyze the way we see our own lives. I hope the director and the writers cheer up. Life isn't so bad. I promise.

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