Spoiler alert..............
At the end of the movie, Tommy walks off into the sunset to a quasi-religious song. His messiah-hood has just been overturned, his nascent "ministry" is in ruins. But the song seems addressed to a higher power in an upbeat way. Can we (should we?) assume he has reached a more enlightened stage? Seeing through his own false-idol nature has liberated him more universally? Whatcha got?
Supposedly at the end of the story he goes back to being deaf, dumb, and blind. So he goes back to listening to the same "light" that he's been seeing ever since he became disabled.
I think he had been responding to a higher power all along, and that was the real source of his enlightenment. He wanted to share the experience of his awakening with others, hence the blindfold, ear plugs, and cork. But people were not willing to listen or he didn't do a good enough job of communicating it, so they turned against him. Maybe the morale of the story is that everybody has to find their own path to enlightment, or everyone has to experience it personally for themselves. You can't just try to live someone else's experience.
Thanks for the reply. If you are correct, that is a fairly radical and pessimistic (in the philosophical sense) conclusion, i.e., closing the doors of perception (in response to renewed trauma?). Perhaps consonant with certain Eastern ideas?
shareIt was about exploiting Tommy. His followers realized how commercial it had all become. His mother's nervous breakdown while being bombarded with T.V commercials of soap detergent,chocolate and baked beans, was about her guilt in commercializing Tommy.
shareThat's a good thought Pzachlen I came away with the same feeling. Actually over all the movie was a Mess but I liked the last half the best and it was where I picked up on the message of the movie.
Col. G. Stonehill: Most people around here have heard of Rooster Cogburn.
Also the end of the film has him returning to his place of conception ,in the water swimming up stream as salmon do in returning to their birth place.
shareSupposedly at the end of the story he goes back to being deaf, dumb, and blind.
You're on the right track with those observations. If you accept all the obvious God/Jesus Christianity metaphors that the film has given us since the opening shot, it's pretty easy to draw parallels to the Christian belief that Tommy (Jesus) has returned to his Father's (God's) Point of Origin in the film, ascending the mountain to be reunited with Him at the exact point this Story began.
Lest the above sound religious, I am not in the least. I just grew up Catholic and learned all the original stories in school and Church. Anyone who grows up Catholic/Christian sees all the obvious Jesus/God/Garden of Eden metaphors Russell was trying to weave throughout the entire structure of the film. Sure, there's a whole lot else going on, but this is a big part of it. And Russell's generation (1 before my own) would have had this symbology even more ingrained. :) Cheers
The war is not meant to be won... it is meant to be continuous.