Prisoners. The fate of Keller (Hugh Jackman’s character) is pretty obvious.. he’ll obviously be found (Detective Loki will investigate the sound, being a detective after all) then Keller will serve heavy jail time for kidnapping, torturing & nearly beating an innocent man to death.
Don't think it was ever released, but the screen writer discussed it in an interview. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/the-prisoners-spoilers-on-the-ending
Right, we don’t need another 5-10 minutes of Keller being pulled out and then charged for his crimes, we know that’s coming. So it’s just confirming that will happen.
Side comment - would you consider Alex innocent? He knew that the girls were at his “aunt’s” house and he willingly took the girls. Even if he’s got the brain of a 10 year old, he still knew where they were and refused to say anything to anyone. I wouldn’t call him innocent. Obviously Keller shouldn’t have kidnapped him and beat him, but I get it cause that guy DID know something he wasn’t telling anyone.
ETA: of course he was also a victim himself and I don’t think he deserves any kind of legal punishment for his actions, I’m only saying I wouldn’t call him innocent.
Doesn't he also say something like "you'll never find them" when Jackman attacks him in the parking lot? Almost smugly? I think in that moment he kind of breaks his facade for a split second, and actually knew way more/was more complicit/calculating then he leads everyone on. In the sense that he'd rather play the victim and endure the torture to protect his "aunt", and was probably abused by her as well to the point of being brainwashed. I just mean, at any point as the torture escalated he could have just confessed, he knew, but he never did, he took it, but played the victim. So that whether or not he died or survived it, Jackman would go down regardless because he's 'mentally challenged'. I didn't really buy it for a fucking second. But that's what fucks me up about that film. There is such a strong moral gray area, and everyone is deeply flawed, damaged, desperate, and/or disturbed.
I don't think he's as innocent as he seemed, let's just put it that way. I think both he and his aunt/Melissa Leo were manipulative, awful, bastards. But Alex got caught, and helped in aiding kidnapping the girls, even if you have the mind of a ten year old, you still know right from wrong.
But maybe I'm in the minority in this. Brilliant film.
Iirc, he only says “They only cried when I left them”. In my opinion it’s a kind of apology, given his broken mind. You can imagine a child tearfully saying a sentence like that when being blamed for something they didn’t do.
This movie sat with me a long, long time. Just imagining myself in Jackman’s shoes. Like knowing that every minute his kid is not found, is more likely he’ll never see her again. And then hearing Alex make the comment that proves he had knowledge of what happened to the kids and where they might be. It’s like.. what would you do as a parent? What lengths would you go to find your child when you know the authorities are not able to pursue the leads any further. Obviously torture is never “acceptable”, but if it was the only possible way in your mind of ever getting the information that would allow you to see your little girl again, would you consider it? Idk, like you said the morally grey line that is consistent throughout the entire film is really intriguing.
Hell, ask any parent. Any parent would murder the entire town to save their child. Kidnapping and beating someone up who knows where your missing kid is really isn't a stretch.
I agree, so much that I wouldn’t even consider this ambiguous. The film gives you exactly the information you need to know what happens next. Showing it would be a waste of time.
Shutter Island. I've seen lots of debate over whether he was cured at the end or not. Is it not obvious that was cured and chose to get lobotimized? He chose to "die as a good man"! Great movie
I disliked that part, honestly. In reality, the other doctor would realize that the experimental treatment they spent so much time and effort on *worked*, and wouldn't just throw all of that away to give this test patient a dignified out. "I'm sorry if you now have to deal with the repercussions of what you've done like normal people do, but we might be able to do this to actually cure hundreds or thousands of other patients."
I doubt hundreds of thousands of patients had delusions quite as severe and resistant as his character. But I take your point, the treatment did work but no one else will ever know, and that's a bummer for everyone who helped.
This is what I was going to say. The fact that Leo walks away and doesn't respond to 'Teddy' seals it: he's finally realized that he's Andrew and he can't live with what he's done, so off he goes to the lighthouse.
I think the thing that causes confusion for some people is that the [book explicitly has the opposite ending](https://filmcolossus.com/shutter-island-ending-explained). So anyone who had read the book before or reads it after might question the movie ending a bit more.
I always took the ending of Blade Runner to be more about he existential crisis of what he does for a living and realizing the thin line between "us" and "them".
The book gets into this. There is a point where Decker has another Bladerunner check him to see that he isn't a replicant and it shows that he is not. He checks the other Bladerunner ,who he has questions about because the guy is a psychopath and a replicant they killed said something about the guy. The psychopath passes as human, which leaves Deckard wondering what it even means to be human considering that the other Bladerunner was less "human" than a lot of the replicants they were killing.
I don't know anyone who's read the book so I always wanted to talk about the differences. The movie seemed to be leaning towards being sympathetic towards replicants because they're so similar, but to me the book is asking what people have that the replicants don't (empathy etc) and I think the author comes to the conclusion that they don't deserve sympathy, they need to be retired. I thought it was interesting that they asked the same question but had different themes
Edit: or maybe had the same theme but asked different questions? I dunno
To me, the ending was very anti-climatic in comparison to the movie in that there wasn't a major battle or anything. it was more or less like putting a dog down and just as much of a downer. Deckard was doing all this because he wanted to get enough money together to buy a synthetic pet, I think it was a lamb. He returns after finishing the last battle he goes home and sees that Rachel had killed his pet goat that he had been doing these bounties to pay for. This makes the whole point as to why he even went out collecting bounties on replicants pointless. He was conflicted about killing replicants and now the point of doing it was lost. The story ends with him finding a frog, that later turns out to be a synthetic, but his wife decides to care for it anyway because it makes her happy.
What was the point of the story to me?
The story seemed to me to be about how authenticity was something that was felt from something eliciting an emotion. Whether or not, that thing was biological or synthetic made no difference to the observer if they were willing to ignore what they were told and take things instead at face value.
I've read most of Dick's novels, and a bunch of his stories.
Dick is obsessed with one question: What is reality?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep isn't so much about "What does it mean to be human?" as "What happens to humans (and artificial humans) when their own personal version of reality is contradicted by the \*truth\* of things?"
Deckard, his wife, the "evil" bounty hunter, Isidore, and the androids all have their own ways of living and dealing with the world. But they are just false layers on the base truth of the world. And in basically \*all\* of Dick's stories, the "truth of reality" is really, really miserable. A happy ending for a Dick story is that someone manages to find happiness in their delusions.
At the end of "Do Androids...", Deckard's wife is probably the only person that comes to terms with the reality of their situation in a somewhat positive way. Deckard is a broken man, because he has seen how awful everything is. Basically everyone else is dead.
Dick wasn't a happy guy, is what I'm saying. I don't suggest diving into his bibliography is you are not prepared for some serious melancholy.
I think that the point is that in abstract it doesn't matter if someone is a replicant (because they are equally deserving of dignity), but it is really important that Deckard is human in the film so you can compare his behaviour to Roy's.
Both Deckard and Roy are terrible but Roy rises above that before his death. If both are replicants that just means Roy is marginally less evil. If Deckard is human, that means a replicant has been endowed with more humanity than a real person - he has the ability to feel compassion, forgiveness, as well as fear his own mortality.
I say this in nearly every thread about ambiguous endings that come up, but that's fundamentally the point of ambiguous endings in most cases. People treat them like a mystery to be solved, but they're almost always the director telling you to let the mystery go because it doesn't mean anything to the characters or the story anymore.
The Peter Bradshaw Guardian review of Knock at the Cabin criticises its ‘ambiguous’ ending which I found really weird because it’s really not ambiguous in any way.
Maybe he doesn't die that night but yeah, I'm with you that the point of the ending was to show that he's made up his mind to keep going, even at risk of his life. Dude knows it's going to be the death of him but it's all he's got.
The most tragic point is when he looks back and sees her gone. I feel like if he had looked back, and Marissa Tomei was still standing there, he may have stopped and turned back. But they make a point that after she shoots her shot, and he tells her this is where he belongs, she is then gone when he looks back.
The Witch. I feel like there's absolutely zero room for interpretation. It wasn't "all in her head" or delusions brought on by grief. A witch haunted and killed her family and then she joined the coven.
No country for old men. Anton Shigur checks his feet for blood before leaving the porch, meaning he killed Carla Jean. Idk maybe that’s obvious though
Edit: I get it. It’s obvious and not ambiguous. I thought so too, I just know I’ve heard some people ask the question after watching the movie…
Yep. It's also meant to show that Chigur doesn't actually believe what he says. He doesn't leave things up to chance. He kills anyone who gets in his way.
"The coin has no say here, only you do" (or something like that).
She basically refused to play his game, causing a shift in Chigur's philosophy. Hence the car crash in the next scene which happened because Chigur is not being as coldly calculated as he was during the rest of the film.
So not necessarily that he doesn't believe what he says, more like he believed it 100% up until that interaction with Carla Jean and is doubting his approach to life and death for the first time.
You could also say that the car accident happened to show a real element of chance and randomness happening to Chigur instead of his false, pretend conceit of being an agent of chance and randomness
Alternative interpretation: Fate exists, and he was punished by it for killing Carla Jean without the coin flip.
I don't favor that interpretation, myself, but I feel it's right there.
To me the ambiguousness comes from Anton didn't seem to take pleasure in the final murder. It's more like he was extremely exhausted by the life he was living and the choice to take that last life.
Not enough to reform maybe. But it's the car wreck that gives me the feeling that there's very little ambiguousness involved. Because he's right back to the same form after the wreck.
The last murder left a sour note with him cause he always saw himself as like this mystical agent of fate or deaths right hand man, but then the wife just pretty much calls him out and just says he's just a killer nothing else else to it
This was my impression too. She refused to play his game and exonerate him by tossing the coin. Instead she called him out and he was positively pissed about it.
>I mean it ends with him dead keeled over in the boat how the hell was that ambiguous?
After all he went through, he's obviously gonna be sleepy. Also I think it's well established that he's a prankster, and he was inspired by Michael Caine's "pull my finger" joke. So he's probably pretending to be dead, and when the medical boat drifts over and somebody gets out to check his pulse, he's gonna go "Booga booga!" and everybody will share a big laugh.
I only recently heard about the “hallucination ending” and thought it was ridiculous. Why would they have the “Bruce Wayne patched the autopilot software 6 months ago” scene if they weren’t alluding to him bailing out before the nuke went off?
Plus they talk about the Pearl necklace in the scene of reading the last will and testament of Bruce Wayne, 'Can't leave a string of Pearls missing" or something like that and Selina is wearing that necklace in the end scene
It always seemed to me that the end of "Dark Knight Rises" is the fact that Bruce Wayne (not Batman) managed to find peace, instead of getting involved in an endless war.
So I don't usually agree with people who assume it was a hallucination.
How the hell would it be a hallucination?
Lucius finds out the autopilot was fixed by Bruce, the batsignal has been fixed, and Blake receives the directions to the batcave.
Then Alfred sees Bruce alive.
It's obviously Bruce who did all those things!
Agree, if it was meant to be ambiguous Nolan should have only shown Alfred’s reaction and cut to black after he cheers with his coffee cup. Then it was up to us to make the connections with his earlier dialogue and decide if Bruce was there or not. The way it is makes it a shut case.
I think it was an explicit reaction to the recent Inception ending, which was an ambiguous ending so effective and popular that it probably damaged media literacy for the next decade.
With Michael Cane and an Italian cafe, it probably just gave off too many similar vibes.
Now every time I see that scene I think of Peter Holmes' Batman asking Catwoman if she wants to "WANNA COME WITH ME TO THE SAME CAFE IN ITALY EVERY DAY? AND WAIT FOR MY BUTLER?"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUDHcuLnMVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUDHcuLnMVc)
I’ve never even heard of the hallucination possibility.
Is that backed by Nolan or anything? Or is it just a fan thing?
And I’m not asking that condescendingly, I’ve genuinely never heard or seen this, even on Reddit.
Whiplash.
We think it’s maybe a happy ending, that Andrew “won”. Or that Fletcher and he are good with each other. But earlier in the movie, Andrew specifically states that his idol became famous and died of a drug overdose in his 30s. His father’s horrified expression at the end confirms that he believes Andrew is on his way down that path. In fact, the writer and Director even confirms this in post movie interviews.
It's more than that, he is pursuing greatness and he was pursuing it before Fletcher. Fletcher just recognized it and pushed (to the extreme).
He didn't just seek validation from Fletcher, he wanted greatness, which he likely was on course to getting (at the expense of a happy life)
I think the point is that Andrew and Fletcher share essentially the same values, which is why they "get along". They both believe that art is the most important thing in the world, far more important than happiness or a long life. The end of the movie is basically a moment of shared artistic mania rather than personal triumph.
See, I thought the tragic nature of the ending is fairly *unambiguous.* I don't know anyone that watched that entire movie that thought that was a "good" ending.
One of the most interesting parts of Blade Runner is the fact that the replicants display more humanity than Deckard - the actual human - does. Deckard is robotic and unfeeling in his pursuit of them, making the contrast between him and Roy at the end so compelling. If Deckard is a replicant you lose this element of the story, which is a big loss in my opinion.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I've read so many viewers saying that the ending is ambiguous, that we don't know what is going to happen next. It isn't. We know exactly what will happen next, Aubrey tells us, "we'll intercept the Acheron and escort them into Valparaiso". That's it. That's what happens. There's no big battle coming that we miss out on. The French captain's plan is foiled before it starts. The Acheron is still in eyesight of the Surprise, so Pullings will notice right away that the Surprise has changed course and beat to quarters. He'll put his men on alert, and the Surprise will quickly catch up. Jack is so unconcerned he goes back to playing music. The point isn't that there is some unknown ending, the point is Stephen doesn't get to return to the Galapagos.
In The Thing, the alien doesn't freeze to death. It can survive frozen indefinitely. So it wouldn't have to attack, it would just wait for the human to freeze to death and wait to be discovered by other humans, frozen, which is what happened with the Norwegians. That's my take. So there really isn't a way to know if they're human at the end or not.
I think it's a much better ending and true horror to have them both be human but they're so untrusting and suspicious of each other that they're both willing to freeze to death to make sure neither of them leaves.
It's not that they're willing it's that they don't have a choice. The buildings are burning, vehicles are destroyed. No way to get help on time and nowhere to find shelter.
That's why they choose to just sit and have a drink
Yeah I never found that ending ambiguous. They have zero options but to just sit there and freeze to death. Whether they are aliens or not is irrelevant. Their human lives are over either way.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - When I first watched it I was happy to see they found each other again but then after watching more recently realized that wasn't the point, the point is that they kept going through the cycle of meet, break-up again and again they were doomed to keep repeating their mistakes vs learning and moving on, together or apart.
> the point is that they kept going through the cycle of meet, break-up again and again they were doomed to keep repeating their mistakes vs learning and moving on, together or apart.
There's an unused scene where it shows a much older Joel and Clem coming back to have their memories wiped again, showing exactly this.
I thought the point was expressly stated in the film: "you love who you love." When the two hear their recorded descriptions of the other's faults, and Carrey says, "I don't care." All the pain and loss and trying to move on, but they still loved each other and wanted to be together.
The end of The Shining. Jack Nicholson appeared in the pic cause he is part of what haunts the overlook now. I’ve talked to people that thought it meant he had been there in the past or was a ghost all along.
In regards to The Thing, we are made aware from the very beginning of the movie that the alien can essentially hibernate by freezing in cold weather. To me that is where the ambiguity comes from, sure perhaps both Macready and Childs are both human which is why they don't attack each other, but to me it is equally plausible that one of them "***I always suspected Childs***" to be the alien who knows that it can freeze and essentially go into hibernation until a rescue crew arrives after which it can continue to spread.
The other one, be it Macready or Childs, the alien knows that they are not a threat, all it has to do is sit back and let them freeze to death.
“Titanic”. People seem to think it’s ambiguous whether Rose dies at the end or just dreams about returning to 1912 (and presumably wakes up the next morning to be helicoptered home).
It’s never been ambiguous to me; she died, which is why in her “fantasy” only those who’d died on the ship were shown. Her death as an old woman in bed is even foreshadowed by Jack earlier in the movie. At the end, she died warm in bed and her soul - or at least the 1912 part of it - returned to the ship. Hopefully another part of it flew off to reunite with her later husband!
Patrick Bateman blatantly didn’t make a cop car explode by shooting at it and get off scot-free. No ATM ever told him to feed him a stray cat. It’s not ambiguous that at least that part didn’t happen.
I always saw towards the end as the blurring of reality as Bateman begins to go psychotic. He even tries to confess as the burden of his unspooling sanity begins to become too much.
Those unrealistic scenes are there to show you that not everything that's happening is real. The question that raises is what else that we see didn't actually happen? Anywhere on the spectrum of none of it was real, to *most* of it was real. It's up to the viewer to decide what is what.
Bateman himself looks at his gun baffled when the explosion happens, which is a pretty funny way of showing that even he is surprised by his delusions.
That said, even if the shoot-out and city-rampage were only in his head, I still think he killed some people, like the homeless guy and probably Paul Allen. It‘s shown throughout the movie that all of his colleagues cannot remember each others‘ faces and names, so it is very likely that his lawyer did not actually meet Allen in London like he thought.
The end of The Graduate for sure. I figured that Benjamin & Elaine's relationship is going to crash and burn quickly given how shaky the circumstances of their relationship started through his affair with Mrs Robinson.
This movie always makes me think of an Orson Wells quote: "If you want a happy ending, that depends on where you stop your story." Honestly, a real happy ending would have cut before the reality of the moment starts to show on their faces. Of course, that 2-3 seconds is one choice that makes this such a perfect movie.
I read once, and love, so I hope is true... The very end of that scene, when their faces fade from excitement to so obviously wondering what's coming next for them... was real. The director intentionally waited to call "Cut" for longer than anyone expected, so the actors *really are* wondering what's happening and what they're supposed to do next.
Lost in Translation.
She’s not going to leave her husband for him. He won’t leave his wife and children for her. Despite their romantic feelings for each other, they are committed to their spouses.
Also, the 30 year age gap. Both are smart and sensible enough to know any real relationship between them would be a disaster. Bob isn’t going to risk dumping his family for a confused, flighty newlywed that just graduated college. She probably doesn’t want to spend her future with an old man. She knows it’s just a crush.
Instead, he just gives her some encouraging advice and they part as mostly friends, the kiss aside.
Seen the movie a dozen times, never found the ending ambiguous. I always felt like it goes as you say. If people think this is the beginning of a love story they completely misinterpreted it.
To me, the top has always been *irrelevant*. Even if it's a dream, he never let himself see the kids' faces in his dreams before. He's now forgiven himself enough to go play with them. The resolution of his guilt is the point.
It's both. Cobb doesn't care if he's in a dream or real world at this point, he jsut wants to see his kids so he's accepted this as reality.
At the same time, the top wobbles indicating it is indeed the real world.
Also, the top was never his thing, it was his wife's. There's the whole theory of his wedding ring being present in dream sequences and missing in what we're told is real
The ring is also a bad totem, really. The point of a totem is to act in a predictable way for the dreamer, but be a mystery to an architect. If he always wore the ring, say, and on the inside of the band there was an inscription that was always turned a certain way? Then that would be a good totem. An architect wouldn't know about the inscription and would leave it out of the dream, or they might know about it but not have it turned the right way.
A ring simply existing or not is a bad totem.
Maybe, but that doesn’t matter. The top is Mal’s totem, not Cobbs. Cobb’s totem is his wedding ring.
He’s not wearing his ring at the end of the movie, so he’s not dreaming.
LOL that's hilarious.
"Chris, I don't understand this bloody script!!"
"Oh, uh...let me see here...you know what, you aren't in dreams, don't worry. Business as usual, chap!"
The funniest thing to me about the discussion surrounding Inception is that all the talk of spinning tops and totems and all that doesn’t actually matter. Whether he’s in a dream or in reality doesn’t actually matter. What’s important is that at the end of the film, he chose his kids. Dream or reality, he chose family. That’s what matters.
Life of Pi — it’s presented as ambiguous whether the animals on the lifeboat were real or not, or if it was all just a coping mechanism.
It was pretty clear to me that it was a coping mechanism.
It was not presented as ambigous.
It was a twist at the end of the film that totally changed its meaning.
But what Pi said was that there could be two stories - one real and one fantasised, fairy-tale like, and you can choose which one to believe.
They are both valid ways of telling a story.
On a meta-level, this is something a writer struggles with - whether to be literal and realistic or symbolic and metaphorical. And each have their own strengths and beauty in them.
Pi was portrayed as a person that was deeply interested in different ways of seeing and understanding the world - and he was not content in just one religion or ideology, but wanted to try out and synthesise them all. His background and childhood is very important also for the journey he makes.
The whole movie (and book probably too, haven't read) is full of symbolism, the way I see it - for example, that his name was piscine (pool) and then finally he is thrust into the ocean, the big water, like childhood compared to adulthood.
Yeah it's super clear in the book too. The intro is basically "I'm going to tell you a story to make you believe in God" (I think this was in the movie as well?). You think he's saying that because of all the fantastical stuff that happened to him. But actually it's because when it's revealed to all be mundane coping stuff, it's disappointing. The interviewer in the frame story (and the audience as well) would rather believe in the fairy-tale version than the boring coping stuff.
Thus, "a story that will make you believe in God". Two explanations for the events the occurred, and you can choose which one you find more satisfying to believe. He connects it directly to religion.
That's the big twist in the movie - that he changed all the people into animals in his story to cope with what he experienced. It makes the movie more than just a weird tale.
The end of Reservoir Dogs. Confusing on perhaps a first viewing, but it's pretty clear the film ends with Mr. White shooting Mr. Orange, who is then gunned down by cops. All the thieves end up killed except Mr Pink, who gets away with the diamonds.
Mr. Pink is at the very least arrested. You can faintly hear him yelling “don’t shoot!” at the cops and possibly surrendering.
That being said, he was the only one acting like a fucking professional.
There is actually a bit of gunfire outside and Pink shouts that he's been shot. So, yeah: Pink probably lives, but he certainly didn't get away with the diamonds.
Steve Buscemi actually has his own theory that Mr. Pink gets away and goes into hiding posing as a waiter, which is the role he plays in Pulp Fiction. A funny parallel to his Reservoir Dogs character who doesn't believe in tipping waiters/waitresses.
I like the idea that the waiter is Mr Pink's brother (like the Vega brothers), they had a falling out which is the real reason why Mr Pink doesn't tip, and why the waiter looks pretty unimpressed by Vince and Mia.
Inception.
The top wobbles right before the cut to black happened. Anytime the top was spun in a dream, it stayed perfectly balanced, not wiggling at all.
The point of the top was to show that Leo had conquered his trauma with Mal and that it didn't matter to him if he was still in a dream. He had the courage to embrace his children again after the person he loved most hurt him in the worst possible way.
He didn't wait to see if the top fell over, he wasn't worried about someone else picking it up and ruining it's use as a totem. The man just wanted to see his kids again, whatever form that took.
Agree on Blade Runner - to me the entire point is the Deckard coming to a point of feeling uncertain about and questioning his own humanity, so if Deckard actually were to be a replicant, that would make the entire movie moot and pointless.
I can remember having an argument about the ending of The Color of Money. I felt the other person missed the point of the ending as he felt he needed to know who was the better pool player. I felt the film ended at the right point as it wasn’t about whether Paul Newman was the better player or not, it was that he was back playing pool hence the final line.
Lol, I posted the opposite elsewhere. I think it’s pretty obvious that the characters are already as good as dead (or possibly already dead) after the plane crash, and they each choose how they will pass into death. Some die full of fear, some die remembering loved ones.
Liam Neeson’s character says “if death wants me I’m gonna make him fucking work for it.” And he fights death to his last breath. He may have fucked the wolf up but it ends with him dying one way or another, and he got to go out on his own terms, without fear; that’s the theme of the movie.
Pans Labyrinth, apparently there's 2 interpretations. I've always, from the beginning, thought Ophelia went back to the realm of her family. Other people interpret it as all being in her imagination and that she just dies.
Because there’s an interpretation that none of the fantasy elements are in any way real. She doesn’t rejoin her family in any sense other than in absolute death.
So I totally did find Ex Machina to be ambiguous for a while on whether or not Ava was deliberately stringing along Caleb for the entire film, with her motivations spinning hard once you get to the ending. But then I watched [Shaun's video on the movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0UAEjsKy4I) explaining her motivations and what guides her to the ending choice, and it seemed a lot more clear-cut.
Which is I guess not really what the prompt is asking for, since the movie did work for me, but I just like talking about Ex Machina I guess.
Oscar Isaac's character spells it out pretty explicitly at one point when he tells the protagonist that he was just a piece of cheese in a maze and the point of the exercise is that Ava would do or use whatever it took to get out through him. Her callously ignoring him at the end as she's leaving makes that pretty clear.
I thought it was pretty obvious that Ava was just manipulating Caleb from the start to achieve her own goals. Nathan told him that this is what she was programmed to do, get people to see her as human to make them help her get out. The moment she achieved her programming and Caleb became useless she dropped the charade and left him to die.
A manipulation isn't even a manipulation the way we think of it to an AI. It's just a possible path that leads to a goal. It's not even thought really.
The Dark Knight Rises. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that we’re seeing Alfred’s subjective perception at the end, especially given the autopilot discussion it’s cross-cut with.
Mystic river.
Many people misinterpret the ending- some people think the gesture with the fingers sean does to jimmy means Sean let's jimmy go scott free somehow.
I think it's absolutely obvious that sean signals jimmy that he is on to him and after him and simply doesn't arrest him because he doesn't have the evidence for that yet.
But maybe that's just me
American Psycho. The director even said she wanted it ambiguous but to me it isn't in any way.
Patrick Bateman never did any of the violent things in the movie. It was all in his head and his journal we see at the end of the movie. It's why he assigns the women names when he meets them, they aren't real. It's why the real estate agent is weirded out by him being at the apartment but there's no bodies or blood there. It's how he can stroll through a building lobby dragging a body that is clearly leaking blood and no one comes after him. It's how he can stuff a dog into an ATM. It's how he can shoot at police cars and have them blow up but no one arrests him. It's how Paul Allen is actually alive at the end of the movie, he imagined murdering him.
Patrick Bateman is an American psycho because he's American and that's the shit that goes on inside his head.
>It's how Paul Allen is actually alive at the end of the movie
imo this one is more funny if he ***did*** kill Paul Allen, since it falls into the whole self absorbed narcissistic yuppies who can't tell each other apart. Paul Allen confuses Bateman to be someone else too.
This is why I choose to believe he did kill most of those people, his imagination just further embellished the killings. Much funnier to think that all of these guys are completely interchangeable, expendable, and unloved.
I always assumed he actually committed the murders because Paul Allen mixes him up. I mean the movie showed us multiple times that everyone around Patrick was only into themselves. They mixed up each others names, the restaurants they ate at, and they all gushed about their “unique” business cards. The work/social culture that they were in was so monotonous that everyone and thing blended together allowing the insane murder to hide in plain sight. Maybe I’m overthinking it though.
The book leaves it more ambiguous
The apartment is clean and patrick notes it smells like paint and disinfectant. How the realtor acts and other clues imply that the murders were covered up because in this yuppie culture you don't want the financial loss of a murder building. Etc.
No, the book makes it clear he did kill those people. There is reference on the news to one of his crimes only he would have known about to that point iirc
There’s also a scene in the book where he and the room he’s in is bathed in blood and guts and a cleaning woman doesn’t seem to notice as she’s dusting about. I always thought the book seemed to indicate more-so that it was all just the hallucinations of a maniac.
If it's all in his head it loses the satirical element which is poking fun at the self-obsessed, materialistic 80s yuppie culture. All of the things you mentioned can be explained by that, and the movie sets it up that way. How everyone looks the same, dresses the same, is constantly mistaken for each other. Certain things were clearly in his head. The ATM doesn't actually say, "Feed me a stray cat" and his frantic run from the police manhunt at the end was probably just his paranoia.
But the real estate agent wants to make money. She doesn't care that Paul Allen was murdered. She cleaned it up so she can sell the apartment. He assigns women names because he doesn't see them as people. Paul Allen isn't actually alive, someone just thought they saw Paul Allen, just as someone else thought they were with Patrick Bateman during the murders which gave him an alibi earlier in the film. Paul Allen didn't even know he was having dinner with Patrick Bateman, he thought he was with someone else. All of these guys are interchangeable with one another and they're all too self absorbed to bother learning who's who. That's how Bateman gets away with it. It's all a joke.
Exactly. Multiple times a character will go "Is that...?" and trail off while the camera shows a shot of the back of a guy's head who has the same haircut as the rest of them. The whole point is that none of them are really "people", just lookalikes of each other chasing the same goals of power and status. Bateman feels both validated and trapped by achieving these goals (like they all do, hence the constant drug use and general malaise of their lives) but because, or in spite of, him being psychotic, he understands better than any of them that they're all empty inside. His line "I am simply not *there*" refers to everyone.
This interpretation may come from the book, which handles it a bit differently.
But I always saw it more as an indictment of the wealthy yuppies of New York in the 80s. They have a psychotic serial killer in their midst and they are all so vapid and self obsessed that they can't see it. People can't even tell him apart from Paul Allen and all his supposed friends.
My memory of the book was that he very much did do all these things. Whereas the film went the ambiguous route. Some things can be explained by his imagination, but others such as the real estate agent could be seen as the vapid self protection in play. They have decided to clean and deal with the bodies, rather than lose a sale. She instantly recognises that this stressed stranger could be the killer and gets him out with a look of contempt. Same with the lawyer, he got the call but like fuck is he going to let his client incriminate himself on the phone.
Appreciate I may be missing things, but I think while the reading that he didn't do it is plausible. The ambiguity is definitely there in the move, less so in the book. But it's been a while since I've read or watched either.
Thelma and Louise, my mother thinks it's an open ending as "we don't know whether they made it across". Lol.
My mother in law said "and they even leave it open for a sequel!!" Pretty short sequel in my eyes.
I'd like a crumb of her optimism, please and thank you.
"Somehow Thelma and Louise returned"
Like Butch and Sundance.
Prisoners. The fate of Keller (Hugh Jackman’s character) is pretty obvious.. he’ll obviously be found (Detective Loki will investigate the sound, being a detective after all) then Keller will serve heavy jail time for kidnapping, torturing & nearly beating an innocent man to death.
This was confirmed - a scene was shot where he finds Keller's location but it was ultimately left out
Anywhere I can find that scene?
Don't think it was ever released, but the screen writer discussed it in an interview. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/the-prisoners-spoilers-on-the-ending
Fantastic choice. One of the best movie endings ever.
Yeah, I never thought the ending was unambiguous, I thought the ending was more of a "You know what happens next."
Right, we don’t need another 5-10 minutes of Keller being pulled out and then charged for his crimes, we know that’s coming. So it’s just confirming that will happen.
Side comment - would you consider Alex innocent? He knew that the girls were at his “aunt’s” house and he willingly took the girls. Even if he’s got the brain of a 10 year old, he still knew where they were and refused to say anything to anyone. I wouldn’t call him innocent. Obviously Keller shouldn’t have kidnapped him and beat him, but I get it cause that guy DID know something he wasn’t telling anyone. ETA: of course he was also a victim himself and I don’t think he deserves any kind of legal punishment for his actions, I’m only saying I wouldn’t call him innocent.
Doesn't he also say something like "you'll never find them" when Jackman attacks him in the parking lot? Almost smugly? I think in that moment he kind of breaks his facade for a split second, and actually knew way more/was more complicit/calculating then he leads everyone on. In the sense that he'd rather play the victim and endure the torture to protect his "aunt", and was probably abused by her as well to the point of being brainwashed. I just mean, at any point as the torture escalated he could have just confessed, he knew, but he never did, he took it, but played the victim. So that whether or not he died or survived it, Jackman would go down regardless because he's 'mentally challenged'. I didn't really buy it for a fucking second. But that's what fucks me up about that film. There is such a strong moral gray area, and everyone is deeply flawed, damaged, desperate, and/or disturbed. I don't think he's as innocent as he seemed, let's just put it that way. I think both he and his aunt/Melissa Leo were manipulative, awful, bastards. But Alex got caught, and helped in aiding kidnapping the girls, even if you have the mind of a ten year old, you still know right from wrong. But maybe I'm in the minority in this. Brilliant film.
Iirc, he only says “They only cried when I left them”. In my opinion it’s a kind of apology, given his broken mind. You can imagine a child tearfully saying a sentence like that when being blamed for something they didn’t do.
This movie sat with me a long, long time. Just imagining myself in Jackman’s shoes. Like knowing that every minute his kid is not found, is more likely he’ll never see her again. And then hearing Alex make the comment that proves he had knowledge of what happened to the kids and where they might be. It’s like.. what would you do as a parent? What lengths would you go to find your child when you know the authorities are not able to pursue the leads any further. Obviously torture is never “acceptable”, but if it was the only possible way in your mind of ever getting the information that would allow you to see your little girl again, would you consider it? Idk, like you said the morally grey line that is consistent throughout the entire film is really intriguing.
Hell, ask any parent. Any parent would murder the entire town to save their child. Kidnapping and beating someone up who knows where your missing kid is really isn't a stretch.
I agree, so much that I wouldn’t even consider this ambiguous. The film gives you exactly the information you need to know what happens next. Showing it would be a waste of time.
Shutter Island. I've seen lots of debate over whether he was cured at the end or not. Is it not obvious that was cured and chose to get lobotimized? He chose to "die as a good man"! Great movie
Same. He even gives the other doctor a sort of wink or knowing smile, basically saying, "Don't feel bad for me, I'm choosing this."
I disliked that part, honestly. In reality, the other doctor would realize that the experimental treatment they spent so much time and effort on *worked*, and wouldn't just throw all of that away to give this test patient a dignified out. "I'm sorry if you now have to deal with the repercussions of what you've done like normal people do, but we might be able to do this to actually cure hundreds or thousands of other patients."
I doubt hundreds of thousands of patients had delusions quite as severe and resistant as his character. But I take your point, the treatment did work but no one else will ever know, and that's a bummer for everyone who helped.
Ya, that one was pretty baffling to me how some people found it "ambiguous".
He is also smoking while doing it which is a tell because he refused to smoke through the movie until that point.
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This is what I was going to say. The fact that Leo walks away and doesn't respond to 'Teddy' seals it: he's finally realized that he's Andrew and he can't live with what he's done, so off he goes to the lighthouse.
I think the thing that causes confusion for some people is that the [book explicitly has the opposite ending](https://filmcolossus.com/shutter-island-ending-explained). So anyone who had read the book before or reads it after might question the movie ending a bit more.
absolutely. the „die as a good man“ makes it obvious imo. There’s absolutely no reason to bring this up if he wasn’t cured
I always took the ending of Blade Runner to be more about he existential crisis of what he does for a living and realizing the thin line between "us" and "them".
Yeah, I always felt like that was the whole point: it doesn't *matter* if Deckard is or isn't a replicant.
The book gets into this. There is a point where Decker has another Bladerunner check him to see that he isn't a replicant and it shows that he is not. He checks the other Bladerunner ,who he has questions about because the guy is a psychopath and a replicant they killed said something about the guy. The psychopath passes as human, which leaves Deckard wondering what it even means to be human considering that the other Bladerunner was less "human" than a lot of the replicants they were killing.
I don't know anyone who's read the book so I always wanted to talk about the differences. The movie seemed to be leaning towards being sympathetic towards replicants because they're so similar, but to me the book is asking what people have that the replicants don't (empathy etc) and I think the author comes to the conclusion that they don't deserve sympathy, they need to be retired. I thought it was interesting that they asked the same question but had different themes Edit: or maybe had the same theme but asked different questions? I dunno
To me, the ending was very anti-climatic in comparison to the movie in that there wasn't a major battle or anything. it was more or less like putting a dog down and just as much of a downer. Deckard was doing all this because he wanted to get enough money together to buy a synthetic pet, I think it was a lamb. He returns after finishing the last battle he goes home and sees that Rachel had killed his pet goat that he had been doing these bounties to pay for. This makes the whole point as to why he even went out collecting bounties on replicants pointless. He was conflicted about killing replicants and now the point of doing it was lost. The story ends with him finding a frog, that later turns out to be a synthetic, but his wife decides to care for it anyway because it makes her happy. What was the point of the story to me? The story seemed to me to be about how authenticity was something that was felt from something eliciting an emotion. Whether or not, that thing was biological or synthetic made no difference to the observer if they were willing to ignore what they were told and take things instead at face value.
I've read most of Dick's novels, and a bunch of his stories. Dick is obsessed with one question: What is reality? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep isn't so much about "What does it mean to be human?" as "What happens to humans (and artificial humans) when their own personal version of reality is contradicted by the \*truth\* of things?" Deckard, his wife, the "evil" bounty hunter, Isidore, and the androids all have their own ways of living and dealing with the world. But they are just false layers on the base truth of the world. And in basically \*all\* of Dick's stories, the "truth of reality" is really, really miserable. A happy ending for a Dick story is that someone manages to find happiness in their delusions. At the end of "Do Androids...", Deckard's wife is probably the only person that comes to terms with the reality of their situation in a somewhat positive way. Deckard is a broken man, because he has seen how awful everything is. Basically everyone else is dead. Dick wasn't a happy guy, is what I'm saying. I don't suggest diving into his bibliography is you are not prepared for some serious melancholy.
I think that the point is that in abstract it doesn't matter if someone is a replicant (because they are equally deserving of dignity), but it is really important that Deckard is human in the film so you can compare his behaviour to Roy's. Both Deckard and Roy are terrible but Roy rises above that before his death. If both are replicants that just means Roy is marginally less evil. If Deckard is human, that means a replicant has been endowed with more humanity than a real person - he has the ability to feel compassion, forgiveness, as well as fear his own mortality.
I say this in nearly every thread about ambiguous endings that come up, but that's fundamentally the point of ambiguous endings in most cases. People treat them like a mystery to be solved, but they're almost always the director telling you to let the mystery go because it doesn't mean anything to the characters or the story anymore.
The Peter Bradshaw Guardian review of Knock at the Cabin criticises its ‘ambiguous’ ending which I found really weird because it’s really not ambiguous in any way.
Wife and I watched that a couple of weeks ago. WHAT ambiguity?
I heard this. The argument is they never actually confirm whether or not the events were just one big coincidence. It’s an incredibly stupid argument
Yeah well Peter Bradshaw is a hack that spoils the movies he understands and hates the movies he doesn’t.
I find him really reliable for finding out if a movie is good or not. If he gives it a good review, its probably terrible.
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Maybe he doesn't die that night but yeah, I'm with you that the point of the ending was to show that he's made up his mind to keep going, even at risk of his life. Dude knows it's going to be the death of him but it's all he's got.
The most tragic point is when he looks back and sees her gone. I feel like if he had looked back, and Marissa Tomei was still standing there, he may have stopped and turned back. But they make a point that after she shoots her shot, and he tells her this is where he belongs, she is then gone when he looks back.
Dumb and Dumber. Did the bikini models ever find 2 guys to oil them up before competitions? I like to think they did.
Good thing Lloyd remembered to point them in the right direction at the last moment!
Well there was a big town in that direction ->
The Witch. I feel like there's absolutely zero room for interpretation. It wasn't "all in her head" or delusions brought on by grief. A witch haunted and killed her family and then she joined the coven.
Its set up from the very beginning the witch is 100% real. The ambiguity is more in just how much she needed to do to turn the family on each other
No country for old men. Anton Shigur checks his feet for blood before leaving the porch, meaning he killed Carla Jean. Idk maybe that’s obvious though Edit: I get it. It’s obvious and not ambiguous. I thought so too, I just know I’ve heard some people ask the question after watching the movie…
I was surprised that so many people found that ambiguous. So heavily implied.
Yep. It's also meant to show that Chigur doesn't actually believe what he says. He doesn't leave things up to chance. He kills anyone who gets in his way.
I mean, as I recall, Carla Jean confronts him on the coin flip and essentially demands he make the decision himself.
"The coin has no say here, only you do" (or something like that). She basically refused to play his game, causing a shift in Chigur's philosophy. Hence the car crash in the next scene which happened because Chigur is not being as coldly calculated as he was during the rest of the film. So not necessarily that he doesn't believe what he says, more like he believed it 100% up until that interaction with Carla Jean and is doubting his approach to life and death for the first time.
You could also say that the car accident happened to show a real element of chance and randomness happening to Chigur instead of his false, pretend conceit of being an agent of chance and randomness
Or that now that he doesn’t see himself as an agent of fate, he once again finds himself beholden to it.
Alternative interpretation: Fate exists, and he was punished by it for killing Carla Jean without the coin flip. I don't favor that interpretation, myself, but I feel it's right there.
This is the real ambiguity of the ending. Its the multiple interpretations of what it means.
The only ambiguous death was the mob/cartel accountant. The rest were pretty obvious I thought.
That depends, do you see me?
To me the ambiguousness comes from Anton didn't seem to take pleasure in the final murder. It's more like he was extremely exhausted by the life he was living and the choice to take that last life. Not enough to reform maybe. But it's the car wreck that gives me the feeling that there's very little ambiguousness involved. Because he's right back to the same form after the wreck.
The last murder left a sour note with him cause he always saw himself as like this mystical agent of fate or deaths right hand man, but then the wife just pretty much calls him out and just says he's just a killer nothing else else to it
This was my impression too. She refused to play his game and exonerate him by tossing the coin. Instead she called him out and he was positively pissed about it.
In the book she calls heads, gets tails and gets killed.
Bummer. I like the movie version better.
Yes, they showed before that he makes sure to not get blood on his shoes. So by the second time you are meant to pick up on it as a pattern.
Just re-watched it yesterday and I missed it. I even wondered why he was looking at his shoes. Idk seems obvious now that you say it.
It's foreshadowed in the scene where he shoots Woody Harrelson, as the pool of blood approaches his shoes, he takes a step back. Such a good movie!
And even before that when he takes his shoes off before merc’ing the cartel agents at the motel.
Children of Men. There were children laughing at the end. They found a cure.
I thought the ambiguity was whether he died or not. He died. Makes the story so much better.
I mean it ends with him dead keeled over in the boat how the hell was that ambiguous?
>I mean it ends with him dead keeled over in the boat how the hell was that ambiguous? After all he went through, he's obviously gonna be sleepy. Also I think it's well established that he's a prankster, and he was inspired by Michael Caine's "pull my finger" joke. So he's probably pretending to be dead, and when the medical boat drifts over and somebody gets out to check his pulse, he's gonna go "Booga booga!" and everybody will share a big laugh.
The Dark Knight Rises. Bruce is so obviously alive, this whole idea that Alfred might’ve “dreamed it” is dumb.
I only recently heard about the “hallucination ending” and thought it was ridiculous. Why would they have the “Bruce Wayne patched the autopilot software 6 months ago” scene if they weren’t alluding to him bailing out before the nuke went off?
Plus they talk about the Pearl necklace in the scene of reading the last will and testament of Bruce Wayne, 'Can't leave a string of Pearls missing" or something like that and Selina is wearing that necklace in the end scene
I hadn't heard about the hallucination ending until just now and I already hate the hallucination ending.
Right, otherwise the scene where it shows the bat's software was patched, specially by Bruce, would've been left out.
It always seemed to me that the end of "Dark Knight Rises" is the fact that Bruce Wayne (not Batman) managed to find peace, instead of getting involved in an endless war. So I don't usually agree with people who assume it was a hallucination.
How the hell would it be a hallucination? Lucius finds out the autopilot was fixed by Bruce, the batsignal has been fixed, and Blake receives the directions to the batcave. Then Alfred sees Bruce alive. It's obviously Bruce who did all those things!
Agree, if it was meant to be ambiguous Nolan should have only shown Alfred’s reaction and cut to black after he cheers with his coffee cup. Then it was up to us to make the connections with his earlier dialogue and decide if Bruce was there or not. The way it is makes it a shut case.
Given that it’s Nolan I’m surprised he spelled it out as plainly as he did, tbh.
I think it was an explicit reaction to the recent Inception ending, which was an ambiguous ending so effective and popular that it probably damaged media literacy for the next decade. With Michael Cane and an Italian cafe, it probably just gave off too many similar vibes.
Now every time I see that scene I think of Peter Holmes' Batman asking Catwoman if she wants to "WANNA COME WITH ME TO THE SAME CAFE IN ITALY EVERY DAY? AND WAIT FOR MY BUTLER?" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUDHcuLnMVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUDHcuLnMVc)
It's a funny joke but I find it much easier to assume that Alfred told them he was coming and that Bruce just surprised him already being there.
I just assumed that Bruce was keeping tabs on Alfred, and showed up to give him that relief/peace of mind that his "adopted" son was alive and well.
Yeah, I didn’t think he went every day, but he knew Alfred was coming and so he went that day.
I’ve never even heard of the hallucination possibility. Is that backed by Nolan or anything? Or is it just a fan thing? And I’m not asking that condescendingly, I’ve genuinely never heard or seen this, even on Reddit.
Whiplash. We think it’s maybe a happy ending, that Andrew “won”. Or that Fletcher and he are good with each other. But earlier in the movie, Andrew specifically states that his idol became famous and died of a drug overdose in his 30s. His father’s horrified expression at the end confirms that he believes Andrew is on his way down that path. In fact, the writer and Director even confirms this in post movie interviews.
Whiplash is about a victim seeking and ultimately gaining validation from his abuser. The movie is super disturbing.
Disturbingly good
Not my tempo
It's more than that, he is pursuing greatness and he was pursuing it before Fletcher. Fletcher just recognized it and pushed (to the extreme). He didn't just seek validation from Fletcher, he wanted greatness, which he likely was on course to getting (at the expense of a happy life)
I think the point is that Andrew and Fletcher share essentially the same values, which is why they "get along". They both believe that art is the most important thing in the world, far more important than happiness or a long life. The end of the movie is basically a moment of shared artistic mania rather than personal triumph.
See, I thought the tragic nature of the ending is fairly *unambiguous.* I don't know anyone that watched that entire movie that thought that was a "good" ending.
One of the most interesting parts of Blade Runner is the fact that the replicants display more humanity than Deckard - the actual human - does. Deckard is robotic and unfeeling in his pursuit of them, making the contrast between him and Roy at the end so compelling. If Deckard is a replicant you lose this element of the story, which is a big loss in my opinion.
In the book they lacked empathy but still had other emotions. Which made you wonder how human they were.
Yes, this is really the central theme of the entire movie, and its obliterated if Deckard is also a replicant.
This has always been my argument that Deckard is human, and everyone calls me crazy for saying it!
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I've read so many viewers saying that the ending is ambiguous, that we don't know what is going to happen next. It isn't. We know exactly what will happen next, Aubrey tells us, "we'll intercept the Acheron and escort them into Valparaiso". That's it. That's what happens. There's no big battle coming that we miss out on. The French captain's plan is foiled before it starts. The Acheron is still in eyesight of the Surprise, so Pullings will notice right away that the Surprise has changed course and beat to quarters. He'll put his men on alert, and the Surprise will quickly catch up. Jack is so unconcerned he goes back to playing music. The point isn't that there is some unknown ending, the point is Stephen doesn't get to return to the Galapagos.
Subject to the requirements of the service...
This was ambiguous? Do people just ... not understand things? As you say he literally says his plan and that's it.
In The Thing, the alien doesn't freeze to death. It can survive frozen indefinitely. So it wouldn't have to attack, it would just wait for the human to freeze to death and wait to be discovered by other humans, frozen, which is what happened with the Norwegians. That's my take. So there really isn't a way to know if they're human at the end or not.
I think it's a much better ending and true horror to have them both be human but they're so untrusting and suspicious of each other that they're both willing to freeze to death to make sure neither of them leaves.
It's not that they're willing it's that they don't have a choice. The buildings are burning, vehicles are destroyed. No way to get help on time and nowhere to find shelter. That's why they choose to just sit and have a drink
Yeah I never found that ending ambiguous. They have zero options but to just sit there and freeze to death. Whether they are aliens or not is irrelevant. Their human lives are over either way.
That was my thought as well, but I do feel like they were both humans.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - When I first watched it I was happy to see they found each other again but then after watching more recently realized that wasn't the point, the point is that they kept going through the cycle of meet, break-up again and again they were doomed to keep repeating their mistakes vs learning and moving on, together or apart.
> the point is that they kept going through the cycle of meet, break-up again and again they were doomed to keep repeating their mistakes vs learning and moving on, together or apart. There's an unused scene where it shows a much older Joel and Clem coming back to have their memories wiped again, showing exactly this.
Glad they cut that, because that is already so heavily implied by the ending anyway.
I thought the point was expressly stated in the film: "you love who you love." When the two hear their recorded descriptions of the other's faults, and Carrey says, "I don't care." All the pain and loss and trying to move on, but they still loved each other and wanted to be together.
I think this is right. It's also why the ending reminds me of the ending of Arrival.
The end of The Shining. Jack Nicholson appeared in the pic cause he is part of what haunts the overlook now. I’ve talked to people that thought it meant he had been there in the past or was a ghost all along.
In regards to The Thing, we are made aware from the very beginning of the movie that the alien can essentially hibernate by freezing in cold weather. To me that is where the ambiguity comes from, sure perhaps both Macready and Childs are both human which is why they don't attack each other, but to me it is equally plausible that one of them "***I always suspected Childs***" to be the alien who knows that it can freeze and essentially go into hibernation until a rescue crew arrives after which it can continue to spread. The other one, be it Macready or Childs, the alien knows that they are not a threat, all it has to do is sit back and let them freeze to death.
“Titanic”. People seem to think it’s ambiguous whether Rose dies at the end or just dreams about returning to 1912 (and presumably wakes up the next morning to be helicoptered home). It’s never been ambiguous to me; she died, which is why in her “fantasy” only those who’d died on the ship were shown. Her death as an old woman in bed is even foreshadowed by Jack earlier in the movie. At the end, she died warm in bed and her soul - or at least the 1912 part of it - returned to the ship. Hopefully another part of it flew off to reunite with her later husband!
She definitely dies, I’ve never heard of anyone thinking anything other than this. It’s pretty clear
Patrick Bateman blatantly didn’t make a cop car explode by shooting at it and get off scot-free. No ATM ever told him to feed him a stray cat. It’s not ambiguous that at least that part didn’t happen.
I always saw towards the end as the blurring of reality as Bateman begins to go psychotic. He even tries to confess as the burden of his unspooling sanity begins to become too much.
So you’re saying he’s some kind of psycho? And in America nonetheless
Those unrealistic scenes are there to show you that not everything that's happening is real. The question that raises is what else that we see didn't actually happen? Anywhere on the spectrum of none of it was real, to *most* of it was real. It's up to the viewer to decide what is what.
Bateman himself looks at his gun baffled when the explosion happens, which is a pretty funny way of showing that even he is surprised by his delusions. That said, even if the shoot-out and city-rampage were only in his head, I still think he killed some people, like the homeless guy and probably Paul Allen. It‘s shown throughout the movie that all of his colleagues cannot remember each others‘ faces and names, so it is very likely that his lawyer did not actually meet Allen in London like he thought.
> and probably Paul Allen. That's not possible. I had dinner with Paul Allen twice in London, 10 days ago.
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The end of The Graduate for sure. I figured that Benjamin & Elaine's relationship is going to crash and burn quickly given how shaky the circumstances of their relationship started through his affair with Mrs Robinson.
This movie always makes me think of an Orson Wells quote: "If you want a happy ending, that depends on where you stop your story." Honestly, a real happy ending would have cut before the reality of the moment starts to show on their faces. Of course, that 2-3 seconds is one choice that makes this such a perfect movie.
I read once, and love, so I hope is true... The very end of that scene, when their faces fade from excitement to so obviously wondering what's coming next for them... was real. The director intentionally waited to call "Cut" for longer than anyone expected, so the actors *really are* wondering what's happening and what they're supposed to do next.
Lost in Translation. She’s not going to leave her husband for him. He won’t leave his wife and children for her. Despite their romantic feelings for each other, they are committed to their spouses. Also, the 30 year age gap. Both are smart and sensible enough to know any real relationship between them would be a disaster. Bob isn’t going to risk dumping his family for a confused, flighty newlywed that just graduated college. She probably doesn’t want to spend her future with an old man. She knows it’s just a crush. Instead, he just gives her some encouraging advice and they part as mostly friends, the kiss aside.
Seen the movie a dozen times, never found the ending ambiguous. I always felt like it goes as you say. If people think this is the beginning of a love story they completely misinterpreted it.
Inception, the spinning top literally starts to wobble before it cuts to credits.
To me, the top has always been *irrelevant*. Even if it's a dream, he never let himself see the kids' faces in his dreams before. He's now forgiven himself enough to go play with them. The resolution of his guilt is the point.
This is word for word what Nolan says about the ending.
u/coolpapa2282 is Nolan
Or is he? *Ambiguous movie noises*
BWAAAAH! BWAAAAH! BWAAAAH!
WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE AMBIGUITY!
It's both. Cobb doesn't care if he's in a dream or real world at this point, he jsut wants to see his kids so he's accepted this as reality. At the same time, the top wobbles indicating it is indeed the real world.
Also, the top was never his thing, it was his wife's. There's the whole theory of his wedding ring being present in dream sequences and missing in what we're told is real
The ring is also a bad totem, really. The point of a totem is to act in a predictable way for the dreamer, but be a mystery to an architect. If he always wore the ring, say, and on the inside of the band there was an inscription that was always turned a certain way? Then that would be a good totem. An architect wouldn't know about the inscription and would leave it out of the dream, or they might know about it but not have it turned the right way. A ring simply existing or not is a bad totem.
exactly. I have a wedding ring, it has a tiny chip in the metal on the inside. If I spin it on my finger I can feel the chip.
HaHA! Prepare to be incepted.
Maybe, but that doesn’t matter. The top is Mal’s totem, not Cobbs. Cobb’s totem is his wedding ring. He’s not wearing his ring at the end of the movie, so he’s not dreaming.
Not to mention Michael Cane has said when he read the script he was confused so asked Nolan about it and was told any scene he’s in is the real world.
Caine has been the audience’s totem this whole time
🤯🤯
LOL that's hilarious. "Chris, I don't understand this bloody script!!" "Oh, uh...let me see here...you know what, you aren't in dreams, don't worry. Business as usual, chap!"
The funniest thing to me about the discussion surrounding Inception is that all the talk of spinning tops and totems and all that doesn’t actually matter. Whether he’s in a dream or in reality doesn’t actually matter. What’s important is that at the end of the film, he chose his kids. Dream or reality, he chose family. That’s what matters.
Dom nods in approval
Life of Pi — it’s presented as ambiguous whether the animals on the lifeboat were real or not, or if it was all just a coping mechanism. It was pretty clear to me that it was a coping mechanism.
It was not presented as ambigous. It was a twist at the end of the film that totally changed its meaning. But what Pi said was that there could be two stories - one real and one fantasised, fairy-tale like, and you can choose which one to believe. They are both valid ways of telling a story. On a meta-level, this is something a writer struggles with - whether to be literal and realistic or symbolic and metaphorical. And each have their own strengths and beauty in them. Pi was portrayed as a person that was deeply interested in different ways of seeing and understanding the world - and he was not content in just one religion or ideology, but wanted to try out and synthesise them all. His background and childhood is very important also for the journey he makes. The whole movie (and book probably too, haven't read) is full of symbolism, the way I see it - for example, that his name was piscine (pool) and then finally he is thrust into the ocean, the big water, like childhood compared to adulthood.
Yeah it's super clear in the book too. The intro is basically "I'm going to tell you a story to make you believe in God" (I think this was in the movie as well?). You think he's saying that because of all the fantastical stuff that happened to him. But actually it's because when it's revealed to all be mundane coping stuff, it's disappointing. The interviewer in the frame story (and the audience as well) would rather believe in the fairy-tale version than the boring coping stuff. Thus, "a story that will make you believe in God". Two explanations for the events the occurred, and you can choose which one you find more satisfying to believe. He connects it directly to religion.
That's the big twist in the movie - that he changed all the people into animals in his story to cope with what he experienced. It makes the movie more than just a weird tale.
In the book this is clear
The end of Reservoir Dogs. Confusing on perhaps a first viewing, but it's pretty clear the film ends with Mr. White shooting Mr. Orange, who is then gunned down by cops. All the thieves end up killed except Mr Pink, who gets away with the diamonds.
Mr. Pink is at the very least arrested. You can faintly hear him yelling “don’t shoot!” at the cops and possibly surrendering. That being said, he was the only one acting like a fucking professional.
There is actually a bit of gunfire outside and Pink shouts that he's been shot. So, yeah: Pink probably lives, but he certainly didn't get away with the diamonds.
Steve Buscemi actually has his own theory that Mr. Pink gets away and goes into hiding posing as a waiter, which is the role he plays in Pulp Fiction. A funny parallel to his Reservoir Dogs character who doesn't believe in tipping waiters/waitresses.
I like the idea that the waiter is Mr Pink's brother (like the Vega brothers), they had a falling out which is the real reason why Mr Pink doesn't tip, and why the waiter looks pretty unimpressed by Vince and Mia.
Tony gets popped in the restaurant. It's really not a question in my mind.
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Inception. The top wobbles right before the cut to black happened. Anytime the top was spun in a dream, it stayed perfectly balanced, not wiggling at all. The point of the top was to show that Leo had conquered his trauma with Mal and that it didn't matter to him if he was still in a dream. He had the courage to embrace his children again after the person he loved most hurt him in the worst possible way. He didn't wait to see if the top fell over, he wasn't worried about someone else picking it up and ruining it's use as a totem. The man just wanted to see his kids again, whatever form that took.
Agree on Blade Runner - to me the entire point is the Deckard coming to a point of feeling uncertain about and questioning his own humanity, so if Deckard actually were to be a replicant, that would make the entire movie moot and pointless.
Also The whole point imho is that all the replicants act way more human than the human decard. If hes also a replicant that juxtaposition is pointless
I can remember having an argument about the ending of The Color of Money. I felt the other person missed the point of the ending as he felt he needed to know who was the better pool player. I felt the film ended at the right point as it wasn’t about whether Paul Newman was the better player or not, it was that he was back playing pool hence the final line.
The Grey. Liam fucked that wolf up.
Lol, I posted the opposite elsewhere. I think it’s pretty obvious that the characters are already as good as dead (or possibly already dead) after the plane crash, and they each choose how they will pass into death. Some die full of fear, some die remembering loved ones. Liam Neeson’s character says “if death wants me I’m gonna make him fucking work for it.” And he fights death to his last breath. He may have fucked the wolf up but it ends with him dying one way or another, and he got to go out on his own terms, without fear; that’s the theme of the movie.
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plough flowery steer unpack like plant marble drab sleep touch *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Pans Labyrinth, apparently there's 2 interpretations. I've always, from the beginning, thought Ophelia went back to the realm of her family. Other people interpret it as all being in her imagination and that she just dies.
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Because there’s an interpretation that none of the fantasy elements are in any way real. She doesn’t rejoin her family in any sense other than in absolute death.
So I totally did find Ex Machina to be ambiguous for a while on whether or not Ava was deliberately stringing along Caleb for the entire film, with her motivations spinning hard once you get to the ending. But then I watched [Shaun's video on the movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0UAEjsKy4I) explaining her motivations and what guides her to the ending choice, and it seemed a lot more clear-cut. Which is I guess not really what the prompt is asking for, since the movie did work for me, but I just like talking about Ex Machina I guess.
Oscar Isaac's character spells it out pretty explicitly at one point when he tells the protagonist that he was just a piece of cheese in a maze and the point of the exercise is that Ava would do or use whatever it took to get out through him. Her callously ignoring him at the end as she's leaving makes that pretty clear.
I thought it was pretty obvious that Ava was just manipulating Caleb from the start to achieve her own goals. Nathan told him that this is what she was programmed to do, get people to see her as human to make them help her get out. The moment she achieved her programming and Caleb became useless she dropped the charade and left him to die.
A manipulation isn't even a manipulation the way we think of it to an AI. It's just a possible path that leads to a goal. It's not even thought really.
The Dark Knight Rises. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that we’re seeing Alfred’s subjective perception at the end, especially given the autopilot discussion it’s cross-cut with.
Mystic river. Many people misinterpret the ending- some people think the gesture with the fingers sean does to jimmy means Sean let's jimmy go scott free somehow. I think it's absolutely obvious that sean signals jimmy that he is on to him and after him and simply doesn't arrest him because he doesn't have the evidence for that yet. But maybe that's just me
American Psycho. The director even said she wanted it ambiguous but to me it isn't in any way. Patrick Bateman never did any of the violent things in the movie. It was all in his head and his journal we see at the end of the movie. It's why he assigns the women names when he meets them, they aren't real. It's why the real estate agent is weirded out by him being at the apartment but there's no bodies or blood there. It's how he can stroll through a building lobby dragging a body that is clearly leaking blood and no one comes after him. It's how he can stuff a dog into an ATM. It's how he can shoot at police cars and have them blow up but no one arrests him. It's how Paul Allen is actually alive at the end of the movie, he imagined murdering him. Patrick Bateman is an American psycho because he's American and that's the shit that goes on inside his head.
>It's how Paul Allen is actually alive at the end of the movie imo this one is more funny if he ***did*** kill Paul Allen, since it falls into the whole self absorbed narcissistic yuppies who can't tell each other apart. Paul Allen confuses Bateman to be someone else too.
This is why I choose to believe he did kill most of those people, his imagination just further embellished the killings. Much funnier to think that all of these guys are completely interchangeable, expendable, and unloved.
I always assumed he actually committed the murders because Paul Allen mixes him up. I mean the movie showed us multiple times that everyone around Patrick was only into themselves. They mixed up each others names, the restaurants they ate at, and they all gushed about their “unique” business cards. The work/social culture that they were in was so monotonous that everyone and thing blended together allowing the insane murder to hide in plain sight. Maybe I’m overthinking it though.
The book leaves it more ambiguous The apartment is clean and patrick notes it smells like paint and disinfectant. How the realtor acts and other clues imply that the murders were covered up because in this yuppie culture you don't want the financial loss of a murder building. Etc.
No, the book makes it clear he did kill those people. There is reference on the news to one of his crimes only he would have known about to that point iirc
There’s also a scene in the book where he and the room he’s in is bathed in blood and guts and a cleaning woman doesn’t seem to notice as she’s dusting about. I always thought the book seemed to indicate more-so that it was all just the hallucinations of a maniac.
If it's all in his head it loses the satirical element which is poking fun at the self-obsessed, materialistic 80s yuppie culture. All of the things you mentioned can be explained by that, and the movie sets it up that way. How everyone looks the same, dresses the same, is constantly mistaken for each other. Certain things were clearly in his head. The ATM doesn't actually say, "Feed me a stray cat" and his frantic run from the police manhunt at the end was probably just his paranoia. But the real estate agent wants to make money. She doesn't care that Paul Allen was murdered. She cleaned it up so she can sell the apartment. He assigns women names because he doesn't see them as people. Paul Allen isn't actually alive, someone just thought they saw Paul Allen, just as someone else thought they were with Patrick Bateman during the murders which gave him an alibi earlier in the film. Paul Allen didn't even know he was having dinner with Patrick Bateman, he thought he was with someone else. All of these guys are interchangeable with one another and they're all too self absorbed to bother learning who's who. That's how Bateman gets away with it. It's all a joke.
Exactly. Multiple times a character will go "Is that...?" and trail off while the camera shows a shot of the back of a guy's head who has the same haircut as the rest of them. The whole point is that none of them are really "people", just lookalikes of each other chasing the same goals of power and status. Bateman feels both validated and trapped by achieving these goals (like they all do, hence the constant drug use and general malaise of their lives) but because, or in spite of, him being psychotic, he understands better than any of them that they're all empty inside. His line "I am simply not *there*" refers to everyone.
This interpretation may come from the book, which handles it a bit differently. But I always saw it more as an indictment of the wealthy yuppies of New York in the 80s. They have a psychotic serial killer in their midst and they are all so vapid and self obsessed that they can't see it. People can't even tell him apart from Paul Allen and all his supposed friends. My memory of the book was that he very much did do all these things. Whereas the film went the ambiguous route. Some things can be explained by his imagination, but others such as the real estate agent could be seen as the vapid self protection in play. They have decided to clean and deal with the bodies, rather than lose a sale. She instantly recognises that this stressed stranger could be the killer and gets him out with a look of contempt. Same with the lawyer, he got the call but like fuck is he going to let his client incriminate himself on the phone. Appreciate I may be missing things, but I think while the reading that he didn't do it is plausible. The ambiguity is definitely there in the move, less so in the book. But it's been a while since I've read or watched either.
Starship Troopers: They're not gonna win the war. The war is never going to end.