MovieChat Forums > The Life Before Her Eyes (2008) Discussion > Another interpretation *spoilers*

Another interpretation *spoilers*


I know the popular, textbook interpretation of the story is that adult!Diana's life is all in teen!Diana's head (her 'life flashing before her eyes'), but did anyone else think the following is what really happened towards the end of the movie?

Bathroom scene: Maureen survives, Diana dies.

Future: Does actually happen, but Maureen lets Diana live vicariously through her by:

1) Pretending to be Diana
2) Dyeing her hair blonde and wearing clothes that Diana would wear-- basically trying to look like Diana
3) Marrying Diana's professor
4) Calling her daughter Emma because that's what Diana would have chosen for her future daughter.

In this version, you see Maureen show signs of who she really is e.g.

1) uncomfortable in a short skirt in front of the nun-- sort of explained by the scene where Diana takes a photo of Maureen and herself in their 'naughty' clothes in front of the mirror.

2) telling the professor that he's not her husband because it's Diana who would have wanted to marry someone like him.

3) Maureen continues to love and sort of hate Diana after the shooting, as she sees the girl with her husband and imagines that this girl is a 'slut' like Diana.

4) also, she is terrified that her daughter is turning out to be like Diana (rebellious and petulant).

Keeping up the facade of being Diana eventually breaks down, and the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur 'before her eyes' (e.g. thinking that the husband's girlfriend is Diana, imagining blood on her chest/stomach in the hospital, seeing Emma run in the woods when she isn't actually in the woods).

When she says she's 'not a survivor' during the memoriam, she means that Diana (who she's pretending to be) is not.

I'm sure there are holes in this interpretation (e.g. no differences in technology and fashion in the two different times), but this is how I understood the story before checking out this board.

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i think (on this board) it is fantastic that you postulate another take.

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No, what I saw was how Diana's life essentially becomes a Hobson's choice; between sacrificing herself and nothing. In the rest room scenes Wood nonverbally conveyed the process of Diana slowly coming to that realization. The "life before her eyes" literally becomes nothing once she understands the implications of her choices.

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wow..
I just got it

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