I jsut watched this tonight. Silly me, I kept watching until the end hoping something would happen to make this worthwhile - but it was too artsy and had vague meanings to make anything really clear.
There were three dead clones on the ice, and you thought that the real Elena was dead too, until she motioned to John. The mysterious Mr. Morrison, the assasin in the hat, had some kind of soft spot for John, that is why he showed up at the apartment the night before with the flowers and said something cryptic about his wife loving to watch Elena skate on TV. When the conspirators came to the rink and asked Mr Morrison why he did it, he just told them that the order was to execute girl "5'6", pink dress, white skates, blonde hair" The clones weren't supposed to be there at all but I think Elena's brother had something to do with that.
I am of the opinion that Betsy's brother probably didn't exist, they were doomed to die that way out in the frozen north in case the assassin missed them, but I am cynical that way.
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aristotelis-tsorakidis
18 years ago
Hello.
I agree with joyinvirginia-1 about Mr. Morisson's soft spot for Elena.
I don't think that they were spared in the ring because of the brother. I think it was simply the will of Mr. Morisson; he managed to keep up his 'contract', shooting the person described without actually killing the real Elena.
Additionally, I think that the initial plan was for only Elena to be in the ring, hence the description only described her generally. Instead, the night before the girls asked to practice together, thus providing an alternative scenario to Mr. Morisson.
Finally, I think that Mr. Morisson besides keeping up his contract, also managed to kill the fake Elenas, maintaining this way the image of the skater Elena in the future untouched (somehting that he and his wife admitted to appreciate).
Naturally, there are a lot of questions still unanswered, like
- what is the meaning/symbolism of the always flying brother of John?
- Why put the natural-water-freezing phenomenon on their 'warmest' night? (just because it is a fancy idea? -which indeed it was, it got me..)
- Was their death at the end in the mountains simply due to them miscalculating the nearest houses? (past the fact ofcourse of not being picked-up....) Did they really believe they were going to see houses? So was it an accident? So if there happened to be a shed there they would have survided just the same?...
- I did not understand the way Elena actually died. It seemed as John knew she was going to die then. It seemed as if she died of a 'broken heart' effect... And I didn't get her last words... 'I feel something'... or something like that. What was that about?
- What was the symbolism of the flying people??? (besides the fantastic visual effect...)
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holmswede
12 years ago
I'd like to chime in and answer one of your questions, aristotelis-tsorakidis, the one about how Elena died. After they had been wandering around in the snow, being blasted by a blizzard, the temperature must have gotten quite low and she was beginning to suffer from hypothermia.
Elena's collapse and then later when we see her dozing off while sitting against the tree, and John telling her not to fall asleep, that it was dangerous to fall asleep: all of these are classic and fairly well known symptoms of hypothermia's end stages.
Also, the filmmakers made a point of changing the characters' make up so that they looked drained of color and warmth and their lips were very chapped, showing the dehydration from the hypothermia as well.
It also could very well be that Elena was also deeply weakened by the heart condition that Betsy confessed to her earlier which may have made her much more susceptible to the cold; whereas the hardier John lasted longer in the same cold conditions.
That Elena said she felt something at the end would also follow with hypothermia, when victims say they feel warmer but in fact are nearly completely failing and often too far gone for recovery.
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