Thoughts on the ending / the entire concept of the film?

I think she doesn't come alive until she has this traumatic thing happen to her like the old man's story. She is essentially 'sleeping' through her life.

Interesting take on the idea of female passiveness and control, I hadn't thought about that. There is that line where the man says, "I've been sleeping through my life," which is interesting. What I really thought the ending was about, though, was Lucy having a vision of death. Earlier, right after she takes the pills, she says something like "Fear of death is the number one hoax." Then there's a shot of them floating around naked in deep, dark water-- which implied danger for me, but they seemed to be having a good time.

Then, when she goes to work the next day, she has a bad reaction because of the hangover and the traces of drugs still in her system, and she gets very close to dying. When she woke up, she was terrified, and I thought it was because she finally had a glimpse of what death was really like, and she almost ceased to exist. That was why she was screaming.

Then there was that last, long scene from the video camera, of them lying together. I kept expecting something to happen that would explain more of the movie, but I think it was supposed to mean that they were going through the same thing internally. Or something. I was a little foggy on the concept of the movie myself.

I won't claim to fully understand the movie, but here's my take on the ending.
I think what happened with Birdman is the clue to why she screamed at the end.

Pretty much throughout the whole movie, she does not show much emotions about anything, no mater what is done to her. Except for when she has to lie besides Birdman as he dies. Her tears are streaming in this scene, making us think that this is the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to her.

Her curiosity about what happens to her while shes sedated leads us to believe that she is probably imagining some petty horrific and hardcore stuff is going on. Instead she wakes up to find that a man has used her for the same purpose as Birdman, to have her keep him company while he dies. As far as she knows, this has happened every time she has been under. And that is why she cries. Nothing nobody could do to her, sexually or physically, is as bad as that.

Throughout the movie we all wondering what extreme and terrible things is done to her while shes sleeping. The videoclip at the end is just showing us that the worst thing that could happen to her, actually did.

It`s been a while since i posted here but i wanted to share this idea, When she is waken up by the other woman she screams and everything but then we see the other woman move away as if it was just a dream, I believe she is dead and she just noticed this is somewhere like hell stuck at thsi room, she really is dead and the video shows they both died there, She overdosed and he committed suicide.

Rogelio Duron de la Garza
www.geocities.com/videojaws

Many people here have given interpretation of the film and its ending. Many of the posts showed certain insights, and the scriptwriter and director undoubtedly intended some message in her film, though what the latter was could be debated. It could be about the passivity of women, or people sleepwalking through life in general, as some have suggested. However, that alone wouldn't be sufficient for a good film made. One problem was that we know absolutely nothing about the Lucy character. We know that she did not connect with people, had zero self-esteem and cared nothing about herself or her body: she made money by participating in medical experiments and allowed coin flips to decide whether to sleep with complete strangers. She was behind in rent but burned a one hundred dollar bill. What was Lucy’s background and history that could help explain such behaviors? We have absolutely no idea about her motives and thoughts. We only know that Lucy cared absolutely nothing about herself, and for that reason it is difficult for us to feel any empathy for the character either.

Unfortunately, the other characters were hardly developed too. One could at least understand better those ancient clients who apparently feared old age and loneliness and the inevitable loss of potency. But what explained their desire to sleep next to an unconscious, naked young woman while they were not allowed to have sex? The old man who died at the end had a long monologue in his first visit about his dead wife and a friend that had a near-fatal traffic accident, but I don’t see how that might provide any particular insight on what finally happened at the end. The whole concept of having a nude “sleeping beauty” in the film appeared rather unnecessary, and appeared to provide just a setup to shock the audience - especially in the finale. As for the ending, I think the death was an accident and not an “assisted suicide” as some posters had suggested. When the lady of the house gave him the drug, she asked if he was “sure” and he said he was, suggesting that he had simply taken a higher dose than considered prudent. I doubt even a dejected old man would want to be found dead in that condition next to a drugged naked woman. If that was indeed his intention, then there are certainly some other deeper meanings in this movie that I have missed.

Somebody put it really well in another thread on this board: Lucy has given away nearly every single part of herself to the world around her. There is nearly nothing left in her life that is intimate or sacred, nothing left that is "hers". She'll have sex with anyone on the toss of a coin, she'll take any drug that is offered, she'll ask people to marry her on a whim, she'll do any job no matter how mundane, humiliating or weird. She has found a way to drift through life. Even the university course she's doing turns out to be meaningless (they're studying boardgames). She has sold nearly every part of her life, everything that makes her human, and she seems to be empty.

But we watch her have one human moment - one moment that is sacred, terrifying, and something she cannot "drift" through: when she lies beside Birdman as he dies. She's faced with awful meaning and truth of what it means to be human. And we see the real human Lucy - crying and shuddering in Birdman's arms as he dies.

Then at the end of the movie she wakes to discover that she's unwittingly sold this part of herself to someone else. The one thing left to her that made her human, the one thing that was sacred and real and awful and *hers*, is now a product. She shares people's dying moments for cash now.

She screams at the end because she doesn't have control over THAT situation.
She's not a passive person, she's a manipulative, controlling little female dog.

And she's frustrated when things don't go her way, when someone is NOT addictive to her and when someone, ANYONE is free to tell her to f off.

Simple as that.




signature :

...something deep and overwhelming...

The key to understand Lucy, which would be key to understanding the film as it is very much a character study, is that she says: "Fear of death is the biggest hoax."

She seems to lack any care, especially for herself. This is evident with her drug use, sex life and the burning of the money. She is completely self-destructive and has lost all desire and want to live, losing the fear of death. It wasn't until her friend/boyfriend, "The Birdman" died that she seemed somewhat curious about life again. Suddenly, she wanted to know what was happening to her while she slept.
Now whether the Birdman died of AIDS or cancer or some other illness or not is unclear and does not matter. In the end, he committed suicide and we are given enough hints that he was dying from an illness through-out the film. Therefore, Clara did not seek assistance or help for him when she found him dying in bed from the over-dose of pills, instead letting him die holding her. His death was the beginning of her waking from her apathetic slumber through and of life. Curiosity returned. Thus, she bought the camera.

As others have suggested, she did not want to die on camera. I do not believe that was her intention at all. Having a near death experience with the over-dose of the sleeping tea and waking up to a dead man was enough to fully wake her and she became afraid of death once more. The film ends with her finally fully awaking to the realities of life and death. She was sleeping though the entire film, in a sense. It ends when she awakes.

If you're looking for more specifics, I would say that, like any arthouse film, it is up to you to decide for yourself. Use your intuition. Films and novels like these are tools to strengthen intuition and I treasure them for it! People can call this pretentious crap but after working in indie film for 10 years and running an international film festival for 2, I can say that this film is open to interpretation and not nearly as pretentious as 80% of the other "art" films I have worked on and screened. I believe there if there is one clear message it is that we all need to WAKE UP!

I hope this helps. :)