Hi,
I haven´t seen "Michael" and never will because I can not stand the subject.
But since I heard about it, I was wondering what happens to the boy Wolfgang in the end.
I do hope so much he´ll survive this hell, could someone please tell me, if this is the case?
Thank you in advance!
Well , its been several months since I saw the film, but the boy survives.
Before I continue with more details, I'd like to suggest you watch the movie, it focuses mainly on the psychological aspects of the situation, it isn't really graphic,(there is one mildly graphic scene but its not very disturbing-considering the premise of the story). I understand your concerns about the subject but the film isn't crude, and it doesn't try to shock, its very well made in fact and I find their approach both discrete and powerful.
As I recall, towards the end of the film when Michael tries to enter the room where the boy is kept in the basement, Wolfgang throws boiling water from a kettle to Michael's face. Michael manages to lock him back in the room , and then, flustered, he tries to drive (presumably) to a hospital but crashes and dies.
The boy is later discovered by Michael's family when,after the funeral,they go to his house to take care of his things.
That's all! Hope I was helpful :)
Thanx so much, you´ve been very,very helpful!
I feel really relieved to hear that---and considering everything you told me, I might even watch it.
The way you write about the movie it surely sounds very powerful and good made.
It´s strange, although it´s "only" a movie, I felt so bad thinking about the boy and wondering if he´d survive.
Again, thank you very much!
I wouldn't agree with your analysis, Schadenfreude.
We are not sure how much time has elapsed between the family opening the door to the basement and the accident. I think the director is leaving the scene purposefully ambiguous. It is quite possible that the boy may have starved to death.
-- You're going on after Crispy Ambulance! --
Was just at the showing at Berlinale and the director was directly asked this question. He said for him it wasnt an ambigious ending and for him its clear that the boy is still alive. Instead he said that he chose to end the film in this way because it also was the point in which Michael's control or manipulation of the situation has finally ended.
shareAh! Well I'm wrong then. Actually, I met Schleinzer at the London Film Festival and never thought to ask him that.
-- You're going on after Crispy Ambulance! --
I felt the ending was ambiguous, if you consider the time between that usually takes place between a death, a funeral and clearing out of a house. Perhaps a week maybe?
But then, the boy may have had lots of food still in there...
I'd like to think he survived anyway.
Yeah, but if you consider that he had running water and stored food locked up with him then he would have 2-3 months of survival in there.
You can survive .. what 4 weeks if you only have water?
[deleted]
Oh please, funerals are held within 4 days of death. If you're Jewish within 24 hours. There is no reason to believe they did not go over the next day to clean the house. He left the boy twice for days at a time. The boy had food and he had most important of all water. That kid was alive. He had no reason to know what happened to his captor.. He didn't bang on the door or try to get out because he knew it was no use. I have the satisfaction of knowing his family would finally find out his nasty little secret. No only that he would be exposed to coworkers and the public. One of the more frustrating things about this film was watching people chatting with him (and one woman even attempting to have sex with that thing) and none of them suspected. I wanted to bang their stupid heads together (and of course that is how the director wanted us to feel, because it most cases we don't know the monster among us).
shareI am not so sure... If I had to choose, I'd say the mother found a dead boy.
It seems like it took the family some time to clear out the house. For sure the basement was one of the last places the looked.
As for the food. There was non. On normal days the boy ate upstairs with Michael. The time the boy had a stack of food was when Michael went away for a week(end) of skiing. In that case the boy got a supply of food. But the main storage was outside his locked room. So no extra food for the boy .
Fact remains he had running water.
"Oh please, funerals are held within 4 days of death."
Oh please, this may apply to where you're from, but it's not a global fact. Here in Stockholm it is not unusual for funerals to take place only after two months. What is common practice in different places in Austria, I don't know, but this very argument that the boy survived doesn't hold.
I can honestly say that in 20+ years of ministry I have never held a funeral within 4 days of death. A week or two is most usual; 3 weeks is not uncommon; a month or more is unusual but not unknown.
shareIt ends with the screen going black, and the song "Sunny" playing.
You're welcome.
I thought that the ending was totally predictable - I knew that Schleinzer would end the film with the room being discovered with the question of Wolfgang's survival or otherwise remining unresolved, with the addition of his friends' and relatives' discovery of his dark secret.
The whole thing reminded me of that experiment with the cat in the fridge - the last shot (which I predicted the moment that Michael died) left Wolfgang alive and dead at the same time.
I do not wish to sound down on the film as a whole - it certainly wasn't without merit - I just thought it obvious that the film would end as it did, with the question of Wolfgang's survival hanging.
Of course because it wasn't an American made films where every. single. question. is . answered. and. wrapped. up. in. a. neat. bow.
The kid lived.
I believed that.
And the director said so.
And the music told us so, too.
If the kid died of starvation, the body would stink, and the M's mother would have smelled upon opening the locked door, but there wasn't a sign of the reaction.
shareYes, but why does the movie show us that when his mother arrived there is a lot of junk mail accumulated? its a classic symbol of abandoned house for some time . but yes, maybe he had food in store, so ... we'll never know (don't care what the director say about it)
shareI find it quite amusing that you don't care what the director says about it, since it is a fictional drama. He should know how the ending was supposed to be.
shareViewers can decide for themselves if he died or not. The whole point of an open ending is to let the viewer think about it and decide for himself.
Besides: someone mentioned that he had lots of food in there, this we also don't know. We do know that the kid didn't have dinner the night of the accident and we don't know how much food he had in the basement since the stock that he had was there for when Michael was on that ski trip.
We also don't know the timelapse between the funeral and the day they entered the house to clean. That could have been the day after the funeral but it also could have been a full month after it.
I'm not sure how you could be so sure how the film would end.
It was predictable only in that either he would be found out or he wouldn't, but what was predictable about it otherwise? How did you know the escape would fail? How did you know Wolfgang's survival would be left unresolved?
Alternative scenario: Michael tires of Wolfgang but knows he can't release him so he "finishes him off" and conceals the body. Film ends with Michael walking from the go-kart track to his car with another boy. How did you know that wasn't going to happen? Or any one of a dozen different endings? Being able to imagine any number of endings in advance doesn't necessarily make the film predictable.
I thought Wolfgang would try to escape - who wouldn't after all? - but I was waiting for him to try it throughout the film (and he had countless chances). I was so surprised that he hadn't made some effort to get away that, when he finally did, I was utterly taken by surprise! On the whole, just about everything in the film was unpredictable from where I was sitting!
Some will say the ending is the easy way out;but it makes sense as a conclusion of a movie which refuses any dramatization ;the nasty things the adult did with the child are suggested,and that's a good thing;a scene showing the family discovering the horror would have been irrelevant in a movie which ,even more than Haneke's works,recalls French Robert Bresson's (great simplicity of the screenplay .)
Most likely the boy survived ,mainly after all he had been thru.
I wish I could be like Gladstone Gander.
The ending could be construed as ambiguous, but I think it's safe to say that the boy survived.
As stated, funerals are usually held within a week, and the brother-in-law says, 'I can go to the house this weekend.' So I think the boy was alone for no longer than 10-14 days. I'm quite sure that his captor would have provided for at least this length of time for the boy to be alone.
He had all the necessities...water, food, and toilet facilities.
Some of you say ridiculous things, the funeral is few days after the death, almost always 2-3 days after the death, MAX. The boy was found right after the funeral, alive.
shareThe director supposedly said that the boy was alive when asked at a film festival. However, I'm wondering if that's only because he was put on the spot and had to come up with an audience-pleasing answer.
It's not impossible that the boy lived though considering factors such as the lack of food as well as the inexorable amounts of junk mail outside (which you usually only get once a week), I'd consider his odds of survival to be minimal.
You're talking *beep* There is no reason for the director to lie.
I get junk mail almost everyday, and i live in not heavily urbanized area.
The boy had food.
He was found few days after the funeral.
Why should anyone have anything but utter contempt for your message?
Seriously. You're too much of a moral coward to watch the film but are desperate to know if the fictional character, Wolfgang, survives?
Well, he doesn't. I don't say that to hurt your feelings, I call you a moral coward to hurt your feelings. I also won't say that Wolfgang's death in the personage of real-life victims like him are YOUR FAULT simply to hurt your feelings. I will simply say that is a fact.
We live in a morally bankrupt culture where "happy endings" in films are preferable to dealing with harsh realities of "unhappy endings" or even "somewhat ambiguous endings" such as the one most likely portrayed herein.
Michael kept Wolfgang prisoner, subject to his whims and his ability to "care" for him. When Michael died, much like when he was hit by the car, we should have realized this placed Wolfgang in peril. He was Michael's dependent, though not the kind you can write-off on your taxes.
This is analogous to the problem many countries have with their treatment of sex offenders and other criminals. The people whose job it is to run a prison or treatment facility for criminal offenders have a duty to provide the greatest care for their charges, otherwise, the sentence offenders receive is compounded by the possibility of neglect and death at the hands of people who do not take their jobs seriously.
To say you cannot "stand the subject" is interesting. To "stand" can be seen as "stand up for", meaning advocate on behalf of the victims of such cruelty, as I and others in this forum have. But what in the WORLD business do you have even having a passing curiosity about "what happens" to the victim if you don't even know what happens when he is alive?
Michael, who was a piece of trash for imprisoning Wolfgang in the first place, not to mention the implied sexual slavery aspect, died indirectly as a result of his own actions, at the hands of his victim. This is a form of "justice" you could have enjoyed.
Wolfgang died indirectly as a result of his own actions, but in doing so won a kind of victory, both in Michael's death and in the fact that his parents would likely have "closure" in knowing, as you wanted to know, "what happened" to their son.
You don't really deserve to know these things, until you "stand" to watch it, but if by knowing this your perfect little fantasy world is upset enough to encourage you to learn about the world and do something to make it a better place, I'm happy to upset you.