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Was the boat (pond) scene necessary? (Spoilers)

posted 9 years ago by HenryCW
9 replies | jump to latest

Was it really necessary for the women to take Ree to find her father's bones? They took care to blindfold Ree so that she would not be able to locate the place afterwards. But after that, they made Ree tell the sheriff that she found the bag with the severed hands thrown onto the porch of her home! So the question is: why didn't the women actually do THAT instead of telling Ree to lie? Ree would still have got the hands to prove that her father was dead, but the women would then not have to put themselves at risk by revealing their identities. (They were probably not the murderers but were clearly involved). It appeared that the boat adventure with the gruesome scene of cutting of the father's hands was put in to give some tension and excitement for the viewers, but what the women did made little sense.

[–] DeadandBuried81 9 years ago

It was a good build up. I expecting those women to hurt her again, I didn't expect the whole "Dead Dad in the pond, cut off his hands with a Chainsaw moment" I really thought they were going to threaten Ree's life with the chainsaw or kill her.

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[–] twelveboar 8 years ago

I think the women intentionally were doing both (threatening and showing/providing her with her father). Ree was through the looking glass and it was an implicit warning that the road ends here, with this horrible thing, and Ree should pursue no further.

[–] HairynosedWombat 9 years ago

It is possible that the women found the idea of raising the corpse and cutting off the hands gruesome enough not to want to do it themselves so they hatched the plan to get Ree to do the deed. It doesn't need to make sense to us, just to people who live on the edge and do things generally that we would think bizarre.

The masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools.

[–] yukonracer 8 years ago

This is not only a good explanation for the question posed for this thread, but could serve as explenation for many a film characters.

It is often scenes like the pond that are our best incites into character's true motivations and values. When someone does something that seems insane to us, it gives us the opportunity to contrast the decision with our own.

In this case, it seems to me that bringing Ree TP her underwater father was a way of "apologizing", or simply a demonstration of the women's empathy. They killed Ree's dad with good reason (for them, as he was a snitch), but they came to realize that a daughter does not share a father's sins.

[–] liscarkat (18536) 4 years ago

"bringing Ree TP her underwater father"

TP?

[–] Ken1260 9 years ago

It also showed to Ree what would happen to her if she ratted them out.

[–] MoviemanCin 8 years ago

Great point.

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.

[–] Paul_Ke 8 years ago

I thought about that too, why didn't they just really leave the hands in a bag on her porch? My conclusion was that Ree may have doubted that those were really the hands of her dead father, if they'd done it that way. But by taking her out to her dad's actual watery grave makes more of an impression. As an added bonus, they counted on Ree doing the gruesome cutting herself (even though that didn't happen for them).

[–] majandralover30 8 years ago

that and the beating were the most intense action points of the movie to me. when the woman asks here why she let go of the other hand, i was thinking "because it's her FATHER!!!"