I just watch this on IFC and I thought it was very good, but I think the end left a lot to be desired. I thought it ended very abruptly and with little explaination. I didn't really understand what happened with the helicopter. Was the helicopter a figment of Anna's imagination? If it was real, was Mark really on it and if so why did it leave without Anna? Tell me what you think.
shareIf you remember we find out that Marc has died. Anna goes to the edge of the cliff for the helicopter but it disapears once Anna's mom pulls her away from the edge of the cliff. Plus Anna has most of her dreams while she is really sick. That makes me feel that she only sees these things when she is in danger. Marc was on the helicopter in the sense that if Anna were have died (fell from the cliff) then they could be together. When I first saw the helicopter coming I thought it was suppose to mean that Anna had jumped and now they could be together.
"plurality should not be posited without necessity."
Occams Razor
Call me morbid, but I was hoping for that kind of ending. Her falling, and then her waking up in the "dream world" with Marc forever. But I think A: it's definitely not how the book ended. And B: it would've been an ending ahead of its time.
share
The most obvious metaphor for the helicopter was death, and yes that she would "join Marc" by jumping off the cliff.
However, I disagree that would have been a better ending. That would have made the connection between the two "worlds" explicit. The way the film actually ended, we are still unsure what was real and what was not. I think the film is much more effective that way.
I was hoping she would have jumped. She was annoying.
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What about the picture that Mark drew? Was that real? If so, how did he get it there?
NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!
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You watched this with your 3 year old daughter ?????
shareIt's not like there any bad words or nudity. It more like a kid movie to me anyways.
You Can't Spell Success without U.
I like this film, but like i said before, I would have preferred something slightly different:
- it could be suggested, but not necessarily revealed, that her nightmares are a direct result from surpressed child-abuse which she suffered as a smaller child, when her dad was still living with them. That's why her parents broke up, as he went off to undergo therapy.
- in Anna's nightmares, her father is this scary threatening man who keeps saying peculiar things like "let me in anna", "I'll find you" and "i'm coming". (which he does say in the movie)
- when the "real world" Marc dies, Anna lears that he continues to live happily and freely in her alternative reality.
- Anna who has fallen in love with Marc, is fed up of her stupid Mother who, despite all, decides to get back with Anna's father, whom she now hates and still mistrusts.
- Anna decides to join Marc in her alternative reality for good. In order to leave the real world behind, Marc tells her that he'll pick her up with a helicopter.
- The end scene is that a helicopter does appear, and we see Anna stepping very closely to the edge of the cliff, (hinting that me might fall, as it is shown in the movie) But then Anna grabs onto the ladder and flies off with Marc toward the horizon.
--------- it's not important to show that she actually fell off the cliff. So in my opinion this would've made a better movie.
Any of those changes would have made the film more literal, certainly more mundane, and thus more like the endless dreck that comes out of Hollywood.
What makes this film unique and interesting is its different (non-literal) approach - why mess with it?
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Had decided mixed feelings about the movie.
1980's, writers and educators were unitentionally
building a culture of death, in an attempt to help
children deal with the idea of death and not be
afraid of it. They helped children write their
own wills, plan their funerals, create epitaphs
for their headstones, etc. From the 1960's to
the 1990's, teen and child suicide rose 400%,
an horrific and unheard of leap.
Paperhouse, albeit unitentionally (and this is just
my opinion), created a world in which a child could
kill herself and feel that was a reasonable and even
romantic decision. I was terrified to see Anna at
the cliffs where so many British have, indeed, ended
their own lives. As her mother pulls her away from
the edge, I felt the huge weight of responsibility
land on us, the adults in childrens' lives, to create
a culture of life, and an encouragement to go on
in the face of tragedy and horror.
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Can you cite some books or articles about this? I have never heard of a 400% increase in child suicides and I want to look up more about it. (I did find this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-521049/Schoolchildren-near-sui cide-hotspot-set-homework-planning-funerals.html -- that was recent though, and in Wales, and had to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgend_suicide_incidents this.)
I went to school in the 60s and 70s, but in the U.S. We were never taught to write our own wills, funerals, etc. although children from my generation often did this -- I certainly did, starting when I was around five. It was probably connected to the threat of nuclear war.
What I remember from the 1980s is a handful of high schools across America reporting a seeming "suicide epidemic". They were never sure if there really was one. What would happen is one student would kill himself and a few weeks or months later another one or two kids would do themselves in. The reports might make you think it was dozens. They may or may not have been connected.
About the same time, I heard a sermon by an evangelical Christian radio preacher who warned parents and pastors against teaching too much religion too early. He'd had letters from parents who had beaten the "devil" out of their kids only to find them hanging in a closet. But he said it wasn't just that. Children who heard about Jesus and the glories of Heaven killed themselves out of curiosity. He said these were very little children who had probably been told dying is like going to sleep (never tell a child that) -- they assumed they could visit and come back.
"Suicide epidemic" stories still periodically hit the media. The unspoken connection nobody wanted to make is that a lot of these kids were suffering and desperate because they were gay. There was a time when this was never, ever talked about, never brought up in any context. Lately many of the reported suicides have also been connected to bullying, like the girl in the story I linked to.
Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.
It had a lot of metaphors, e.g. the light house.