The thing to remember about Diana's "imagined" life is that it is connected to the "real" events in the rest room, and is correctly sequenced (the imagined events themselves occur in their correct order - they progress). All lead up to the point where the imagined Diana says: "I have to go". You think it means that she has decided to attend the memorial service, but what it actually means is that the real Diana has just decided that she is the one who has to die. These two decisions are just one decision, and in a similar fashion the other real events in the rest room link to events in her imagined future (illustrating the Paul Gauguin theme - the lack of much demarcation between what is real and what is imagined). This connection is the most interesting detail of the scripting although I doubt if many even notice it during the first viewing. As to your "three" questions:
1. It is not the young Diana with her imagined husband, just a young blonde. Illustrating that Diana is processing her imagined "best case future" and finding flaws in it. In this case she is realizing that if she lives and has a relationship with the older professor, it will be because he has a thing for young girls which most likely he will continue after they are married.
2. The Catholic school is not a cemetery for the unborn. Maureen and Diana walked by it one day when the church put up crosses as part of a pro-life display. And she liked the name Emma after seeing it on one of the crosses. Later she projected a daughter in her imagined life with that name, and her decision to sacrifice herself for Maureen must factor in how doing so will mean that Emma will not be born. She sends Emma to a private school because she thinks her imagined self will perceive it as safer than the public school; she is certain that her future self will be overprotective.
3. The other mother/survivor is just a random acquaintance that Diana projects into her imagined future. Her identity is not important as she is there to represent the bond that Diana believes she will have with the other students who survived the school shooting. A bond from having shared the experience and a bond from feeling guilty about having survived when so many did not.
reply
share
gkundern
13 years ago
No, she picked the name Emma because her and her friend were talking about it.
reply
share
aimless-46
13 years ago
Actually she flashed back to both occasions, the Emma cross in the pro-life display and the occasion when Maureen was reading baby names to her from a book. But the OP was asking about the pro-life display.
reply
share