ending? SPOILERS!

good questions here. i was surprised by the ending. surprised it happened so soon, that is. was expecting more

ultimately feeling happiness and knowing that I just watched a beautiful film that left a lasting impression

Nice post. Had the same feeling in the end.

[deleted]

I think it's a statement on religion. The whole film seems to be critical of religion in subtle jokey ways that seem like they're just jokes until management's speech at the end. Qohen is dying the whole movie, so he needs to have faith in something, his idea is the phone call for the meaning of life. Then, he dies in the sex suit thing. Management tells him that all of life is just a random one time occurence and he waisted his life waiting for the phone call. Then, accepting that there is nothing after death, Qohen lets the darkness suck him up. The final scene symbolizes him taking heaven and bringing it to reality by making the sun set in his paradise (a stand in for heaven). At least, that's what I got from the film.

I believe the movie works on two levels, and both arrive at the same conclusion,
first of all you have a critique of modern life, its not an accident that he chose to depict the future as an otaku convention, with shut-ins, people partying with their I-pads and virtual reality sex, eating and vacations. (seriously as a completely different point, i cant believe how visionary was demolition man)
These are people completely connected trough net and technology and disconected from regular human interactions, they are living their life in front of the computer. And this influx of information has more costs, even bob says how bored he is at 15 years old, and the need for something new constantly.

Now you have this company, who does god knows what, but is apparently omnipresent(the camera of the ceo replaced the head of jesus at the church), and dedicates its employees to sorting collected data, and solving equations, (im guessing facebook evolved into that),the main secret project, is proving that the universe was an anomaly and that anomaly will be corrected, if the last scene is to be believed (providing that part is real) The CEO apparently wants to do it to acquire ore or drive its price up, by making people lose faith in the afterlife.

which brings us top the second level of the movie the religious aspect, as you can see there is a lot of religions going around, all announced like buisness, and all equally ridiculous (the church of batman), they even announce themselves as alternatives for people to whom buhddism and scientology have failed, and at the sidelines there is Qohen, a man that by his own admitance, has tried sex, drinking and marriage to fill a vacum in his existance, and now is wating for a phonecall that may or may not be real, but by everyone else's perespective but him, it isn't, to tell him what the meaning of his life is, but his seems to be a modern twisted monastic life, trading the prayer for searching in a computer, and expecting the answer trough a telephone, he even lives in a rundown church, that has "management" as a replacement for jesus.

Now getting closer to the point, the reason q was chosen was because he was a man who had been driven to a meaningless existance in the search for meaning, he was driven by faith, so they used that to entice him to solve this unsolvable problem, when he began to lose faith they used more secular bonuses (the call girl), who promises to fill out his emptiness with sunny beaches and love, the thing is that is still an interaction based on deceit and virtual reality, its not real life, and Q is quick to point it out several times, once by saying that the sun doesnt come down.

now finally on to the ending, whereas the ending is real or not, its stated in the film that it doesnt matter, what does matter is that he traded his own life in search for something that wouldnt come, and had discarded all posibilities to live a real life, in the first VR scene, he was in the call girls world, which was a sunny beach, and transforms it into a vast black hole, at the end the opposite occurs, he turns it into a sunny beach, which still is a fake one, with the twist that he creates the sunset to make it seem more real.

Now:
A)he died and went to heaven (unlikely since the movie seems to be agnostic at best and atheistic at worst, and he still doesnt get an answer, and the beach is digital)
B)he became part of the mancom neural network, and he destroyed it and gave it a new meaning,
C)it all happened in his own head(or soul) as he was told earlier that the answer was inside him all along.

sorry for the long post, i really like this movie, but it seemss that its puzzle and not all the pices are there, normally i can understand puzzling films after 2 maybe 3 watches(only exception was cosmopolis which took 4 watche sto understand completely every single conversation), however i dont see myself comprehending this anymore after watching it another time, it seems that pieces of the puzle are missing, and im sure thats how it was intended to be.