Interesting...this movie is certainly one that spurs a lot of thought.
Tommy may have been attracted to Rebecca, and just not really understood it. Rebecca is his mother, she gave birth to him and raised him, even if he was a clone of someone else...but there is a chance that the original Tommy's attraction to Rebbecca caried over genetically.
She certainly seemed to take it a little too far sometimes as he was a kid. The way she would touch him and etc. To her, this was just the boy she sort of fell in love with when she was a kid, it was the kid version of the man she grew up to love.
But in reality, this was her son. That's sort of the interesting conflict of the whole film. She is the mother of an exact replicate of the man she loved...it's a very interesting dynamic.
She obviously wants to have a relationship that she never got to have with this boy/man...but at the same time it's wrong, because THAT Tommy isn't the man she loved no matter what she tries to think, that Tommy is her son, who she carried, gave birth to, and raised.
I think that's part of what the whole repetition of 'who are you?' is from, he's sort of asking her, 'Are you my mother, or my lover?'
As far as the 'thank you' at the end...I think he sort of is thanking her for her intentions. Tommy died, and she wanted to give him the chance to live his life, even if it was as another individual...maybe that's what he was thanking her for?
A Clash of the Titans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmBSnt1oHuE
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xxkungfuchickxx-71-963384
13 years ago
I agree that Tommy was feeling confused because there was always this strong sexual tension between him and Rebecca. Especially when they were rough-housing on the beach, just watching that scene turned my stomach in knots because I knew that the uneasy feeling of awkwardness was brewing very quickly.
Rebecca wanted to avoid mourning her beloved Thomas because death is what we all dread as well as the thought of inevitably losing and coping with the death of the people who we love. She reacted on impulse and failed to think about if she would be doing something that she would later on regret. Rather than mourn the death of Thomas and slowly but eventually learn that her pain would heal one day at a time, she condemned herself to fate far worse than death. She couldn't be honest with him and herself for that matter.
This movie is still in my mind after I watched it this morning and it really touched me. What made me cry was as the movie ended the credits came in a reversed direction and I thought about how Rebecca's character sacrificed her entire young adulthood and happiness for Thomas to have a second chance at the life she had envisioned he'd spend with her romantically instead of maternally.
You could see that she was aging and was also struggling with insomnia as Thomas grew older and her attraction to him only became stronger and stronger. Each day that Thomas lived there was a little part of Rebecca that died inside. Such a sad film.
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CosmicTang
13 years ago
very nicely said kung.
i'd just like to add; i think guilt had a huge role to play in her decision to clone him. It shows in the scene where the clone Tommy asks her why they stopped on the road and she reluctantly responded. I don't think she felt guilty because she had to pee causing them to stop, that was just the reason she gave. If she hadn't insisted on joining him there would have been no need to pull over, and that was something she had control over.
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nettwench
13 years ago
Really wonderful analysis - I hadn't really thought about that part of it, that she was avoiding the mourning. People will do anything to avoid pain in life, but it always delays the inevitable, experiencing real emotional maturity and growth of character. It was like her relationship with Tommy 1 or 2 never went past her initial childish possessiveness, into a real relationship. I also didn't think about her sacrificing her life for him - but all mothers do that to some degree, don't they? But she unfortunately also sacrificed a child's life to assuage her own pain - that was morally wrong, and led to the inevitable heartbreak at the end.
Ssssshh! You'll wake up the monkey!
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