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Really trying hard to get this... (honestly)

posted 13 years ago by LextheXFile
5 replies | jump to latest

Some help from fans of DLN would be appreciated. I hate feeling like I am not "getting" a movie.

At the beginning, when John Baxter's daughter dies and he sees what looks like blood spreading over his photograph, is that a sign of his precognitive gifts? He seems to sprint outside after that scene. Also, as he is performing mouth to mouth, she moves her arms and visibly moves her head. I thought for sure she had been revived so I was confused when she was dead and started overanalyzing the entire thing.

When he sees his wife on the funeral boat on the grand canal it immediately struck me as a funeral boat so from that point on I was convinced that he was already dead (had died falling from the scaffolding perhaps?). The images of the old women laughing as he is trying to cling to the rope lent me the impression that they were not to be trusted, so again, I was confused by the ending.

I understand that the small deformed midget at the end represents both the serial killer and perhaps death itself, but I found this angle confusing. Why was the killer depicted as a deformed child (the use of the midget dressed up in the same rain coat as his daughter?) My mind even went so far as to think (for a second) that he had gone nuts from grief and was the killer himself, but again, that made no sense.

I didn't dislike the movie, but it *did* confuse me. A lot. I enjoy a lot of movies that people find "slow" or boring so that wasn't it. I just felt completely confused watching this.

If someone could break it down for me, that would be appreciated. I enjoyed Audrey Rose, The Changeling, most Stanley Kubrick movies and many movies from the 60s and 70s that are considered "slow", and I enjoyed the atmospheric quality of this, but it was too dreamy for me to follow.

I was half expecting Donald Sutherland's character to be dead long before the end. When he meets up with the elderly sisters (right before he runs off), the sister who is not blinds seems unable to see him at that point (this is also after he sees his wife coming back on the boat and after he almost falls from the scaffolding). I also thought the priest that lent him the mosaic tiles was creepy, how he angrily steps onto the pieces as DS's character is helped down.

Maybe I am over-analyzing it? I still believe that the murderer/personification of death at the end being dressed like his dead daughter Christine is important, somehow, and not just a coincidence but I don't see the connection. I just am not getting this, and that bothers me.

When I pull the wings off of the fly/ The fly never wonders why I did it.

[–] L0GAN5 13 years ago

I don't think it's possible to over-analyze this film, it is still being analyzed nearly 40 years on and has had books written about it. The main thing to grasp when watching it is that John has precognitive ability and that his "visions" merge with everyday life i.e. he can't distinguish between what is real and what isn't. When John catches glimpses of the dwarf in Venice he is catching glimpses of the events leading up to his death; when he sees Laura on the barge that is a vision of his funeral. In fact, seeing his own death is an instigator of the events that cause it, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As for what the dwarf represents, then that is open to interpretation, and there are many of them. Some viewers see it as a metaphor, others view it in a literal sense. There are arguments for both ways of looking at it: Nic Roeg worked on a film called "Masque of the Red Death" in which death is manifested by the color red; on the otherhand du Maurier was a very literal writer who didn't write in metaphor, and she had a dwarf in her story simply because she mistook one for a child once and it creeped her out. The "cleverness" of the film though is probably not so much in understanding what it all means, but in understanding how it is put together i.e. the visual code it adopts and the associative editing it uses to establish its themes.

[–] LextheXFile 13 years ago

Okay. Thank you Logan. I wasn't born until the 80s and most of the movies I have been exposed to are "supposed" to "make sense". I don't mind ambiguous movies, I just need to know when a movie *is* ambiguous so I don't drive myself bonkers trying to get it immediately. I think many of the people who don't "like" this movie aren't aware that it isn't, perhaps, meant to be completely and easily understand but is more like a dream that works for different people in different ways. The main criticism I seem to find about DLN is that it "doesn't make sense" and I tend to think people, in general, find themselves disliking things that make them feel stupid (and if they don't get a movie they think they "should" get, they tend to feel stupid). Different personality types and all that. Thanks for the comments.

I had never seen the movie before last night (have only seen it once) and I had no idea to expect, but for some odd reason I wasn't shocked or surprised when I saw the dwarf. I seemed to remember after someone telling me about a movie about a dwarf killer dressed in red YEARS ago but I didn't consciously put two and two together while watching the movie. However, maybe subconsciously I did as I wasn't surprised at all.

It was very dreamy. It reminded me of one of my own dreams. :)

When I pull the wings off of the fly/ The fly never wonders why I did it.

[–] PrawoJazdy 12 years ago

This is a very challenging movie. I enjoyed it, I lost it here and there but I enjoyed it.

Glad other people were as confused as I, as well as some varying interpretations to make up my own mind.

That Dwarf woman has to be one of the creepiest images on film though.

[–] Melton (4910) a year ago

It was very dreamy. It reminded me of one of my own dreams. :)

Few filmmakers can achieve this. Lynch and Roeg are two of them.

[–] davodikum (6202) a year ago

I didn't like this movie at all. But I watched the shining not that far after. I felt a bit of the style in parts.