Is it just me? I had no difficulty following the story most of the time but that last scene in the clinic puzzled me. Do you think it was meant to be real, or could one or both of the characters have been hallucinating or "telephone walking" it?
"I have excellent peripheral vision. On a good day I can see my ears."
I think it was part of the telephone walking; how Aloys badly wanted to be with Vera. I like how he rejected her outside his door, looking at his projection of Vera beside him. This film plays on so many levels of meaning that really, it's up to you what you take away from it.
My question: why was it that he stole things? The gum (this was before he had his tapes stolen) and those black things (?) at the chinese restaurant.
Yes . . . I think it was a thoughtful ending - an unambiguous happy ending would have seemed out of keeping with the dominant tone of the movie, which is preoccupied with unfulfilled potential and the idea that there is an unbridgeable gulf between ideals and reality. But I liked the way they at least kept it open-ended.
I don't recall noticing that he stole things - perhaps I'll have to watch it again when it comes out on DVD.
"I have excellent peripheral vision. On a good day I can see my ears."
I interpreted it as he had a nervous breakdown after his father's death and ended up in the psychiatric clinic which he imagined it to be like home. There Vera was his psych neighbor, but he refuses to realize that he's sick. So she's luring him out as such as to open up, to see more clearly and dare to "come out" from himself.
It's like Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
For a good chunk of the film I thought that Vera might have died, and he was imagining everything. But by the end I disregarded that. I'm still not sure, one way or the other, if it was "telephone walking" or he really went to her in the hospital.
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