The lady sitting watching everything from the cafe was the original little person that hid inside the automaton and pretended to be a robot. She owned the house after all. Is this correct or too obvious. Film was well skills.
shareSymbolically yes, thank you. This also would explain something I've remained puzzled by as it seemed to be a dangling loose end: Virgil's comment that in some ways the biggest mystery about the automaton was not that it could move nor even that it could speak, but that it was "always right". Having the real Claire unravel a lot of the mystery makes good sense in that light.
But actual? only if some human lifespans are awfully long. If I remember correctly the automaton is described as "18th century" ...which would only work if Claire were several hundred years old.
I agree. She was the symbolic heart of the mystery and the actual revealer.
shareBesides, I don't think the automaton was the original. I think it was made and artificially aged by Robert for the purpose of luring Virgil to put up with Claire's manipulations. Otherwise they would have taken it too, not used it as a joke.
shareThis was the one part of the movie I didn't get it. If the automaton was real or not. If it was, it would be priceless. If it wasn't, that seemed like an incredible amount of work, far more time consuming and costly to get working than they made it seems. It would be years of planning and mechanical engineering to make an automaton like that, much less have it work so flawlessly.
shareCould there be mass-produced copies available for purchase? Not cheap, exactly, but worth the investment?
shareThere was probably just that one cog with the maker's signature that was real. The movie plays with the idea that in every forgery there's a tiny part that's genuine.
The automaton is literally a plot device. It symbolizes and facilitates the intricate scheme of the plotters against Virgil, as well as moving forward the plot of the movie itself, tying together its themes of deception, manipulation, art, forgery and truth.