Who else noticed the two sided ending? The campfire scene when Viggo was alone. The kids 'never' got off the bus. Viggo was just imagining the kids there with him to keep him happy all the way until the end of the movie.
share[deleted]
It might make some of the absurdities of that final stretch more easy to accept, but there's really nothing at all in the film that suggests that's actually the case, is there?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqVy0Az6XAk
there's really nothing at all in the film that suggests that's actually the case, is there?
I also saw it this way. Yes the kids were real at the beginning but their perfection was all a fantasy that came crumbling down when the wife died and they had to interact with the real world. The beginning and end are both fantasy. I didn't see either as literally a dream, I guess, but just that the bookends of the movie were his fantasy world, merged somewhat with the real but isolated world they lived in.
shareThis whole post is a spoiler. If you haven't seen the movie, stop reading now.
Addendum: I take some of what I wrote below back. This morning it occurred to me that the movie is about Buddhism. I now think the movie contrasts reality to fantasy to illustrate suffering and the absence of suffering, respectively. Metaphor, I guess. In doing so, fantasy is present for the duration. These contrasts occur all the time. Throw in some adept story telling and acting, and you have Capt. Fantastic. (Then again, maybe not.)
Original Response: I think there are enough clues suggesting reality, but the fantasy argument is *really* interesting - I like it. Q: How could the children have gotten in the bus and away from grandparents? A: Grandma. At the church she is really put out by her husband's demand that she not spend time with her grandchildren. At home, in the garage, she shows the letter to Ben. It's all dramatized for effect here, but as is sometimes the case, wives suffer the secondary role in public, but can assert power at home. I think it's insinuated that she put her foot down when she understood how much the children loved their father. The earlier phone call between Ben and grandparents when asking about funeral date - Grandma is mediator. Also the scene on the golf course where all the children were showing grandfather what they could do, and he had to see their strength of character and their love and affection for him despite his forcing his will against the will of his daughter. The intellectual strength of the children is also shown to him at some point. One of the messages here is 'compromise'. Ben and Grandfather are at extremes, and love, mothers, and compassion bring them closer to the middle where Grandfather accedes to his wife, Ben accedes to grandparents and ultimately to his wife, by putting his kids in school and not being such a dogged extremist. Both end up realizing, but Ben the most because he's the lead, that you don't have to be so willful and harsh to live a meaningful, cognizant, "awake" life. Finally, Ben admits that the move to the forest killed his wife and he knew it would. He paid the penultimate price for his inflexibility. And poignantly, he was forgiven by the people that mattered the most and that were the most affected by that fatal decision. Compromise and forgiveness. If it was all fantasy this would not have been the message. (And note that I might have really just got it all wrong - but I think the intention was for it to be an uplifting movie.)
My only complaint about this beautiful movie is that they really hammered the points home - they used a sledgehammer when they could have used a normal hammer. In contrast, though an imperfect comparison admittedly, Boyhood was much more subtle, nuanced and for me had a deeper effect. Note also I'm a father so I was looking at the movie less from Ben's POV and more from the childrens' POV, hence why I thought of Boyhood.
When Ben is devastated, staring in to the camp fire, clueless to his next move, the kids just 'slink' out of the bus. From that point forward, there are no arguments and life goes on with out a hitch, when before there was barely controlled anarchy. Life as Ben would direct it if he had one more chance, as a better more moderate father. Sadly all a daydream.
share@ Turnstile78...I agree. The end is a fantasy.
shareI think the ending is the way it is, not an imagination.
First off, the kids were trained to do all kinds of things, it is too easy for them to sneak out of their grandparents' house. Secondly, Ben can't be seen driving around with the kids all days(Police scene), so it make sense that he would have made the compartment for the kids to hide in the bus, and the kids used that.
Ben wants his kids to live a normal live, and has agreed to all the terms. The family did not leave for long, and has obviously gone back to the grandparents after taking care of the mother's last wish, with Bo going to college, the kids going to school, and Ben grows a farm of some sort, likely from the help of the grandparents, who are very wealthy.
I know the ending may seem unrealistic but heck, the whole film is unrealistic, it's a story.
a lot of people here are reaching to fit the fantasy ending.
shareContain spoiler!!!
Films are fiction that tend to be believable, but paradox is that many elements, like for example explosions in action movies, aren't looking even close like that in the real world. But they are making it that way for visual or some other argument. That being said I have noticed something nobody yet mentioned.
I don't think they had in mind fantasy - did anybody noticed how children were hiding in double floor of the bus? They didn't reappear suddenly. Yes, being that long hiding is maybe impossible because you have to use toilet. Maybe they did it in their pants :). But that's my point - film is fictional and it has to move our imagination to forget about reality. Sometimes they don't succeed completely. Sorry for bad english and cheers!
You are of course welcome to interpret the movie any way you like, but I have to ask if he was going to fantasize his children back with him why wouldn't he do the same for his wife?
And why would he fantasize the boy going off to Nabibia, and the others settling back onto the grid, albeit as fringers, but still going to school and such.
shareI'd say the ending makes more sense as a fantasy. It's too weird how the kids come out of the bus is just the right momento, and not when he stopped before for example. The issue of what happened with the grandparents is never even mentioned. The mother's body is somehow in perfect shape and smell.
sharealmost everything in the last 15 minutes was weird.
why was his son heading to namibia, when he was planing to go to college?
at the end, he is sits there, looking aside wondering, and the kids are there, like marionettes, or ghosts, like they are not really there. too idyllic.
also, the mother's body is in the perfect shape?
where are the grandparents? they just let go the children without knowing where are they going? and, again, if they know, letting them to the misfit father?
he said he will call them in few days after his departure, but somehow they came out of the bus, suddenly?
he said he is leaving the kids, there are no second thoughts about that decision, after his tears in the bus.
he took the blue pill, the story ends, he believes whatever he wants to believe.
last 15 minutes are all fantasy.
i bet 100:1.
I agree, the end was Ben's dying fantasy after he killed himself sitting at the campfire.
shareI just saw this movie, and I agree w/you. The end played like a fantasy to me, esp. w/the kids just coming from underneath the bus like everything was cool.
shareAdd me to the list of people who thinks it was all real and that at no point it was suggested this was a fantasy film where things could or couldn't have happened.
shareAnn Althouse wrote at length about the ending being a fantasy. I highly recommend her blog, which is mostly political. Here are the supporting points she made:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/02/commenter-without-realizing-it-takes-my.html
1. The children emerge from under the floorboards of the bus. Evidence that this is fantasy: How could 6 kids have fit in that compartment and kept quiet enough not to be noticed? How could they fit in that space (which we saw earlier in the movie as the place where they kept the Noam Chomsky poster)? How could they look fresh and unrumpled after they climbed out of that dark, tight space? Why didn't the grandfather — who seemed chummy with the police and intent on getting his way — not get after the father who was driving in a very conspicuous vehicle (a painted schoolbus)?
2. After the children confront him with their need for a mission, we see them in the graveyard digging up the mother's body. Evidence that this is fantasy: Earlier the children had convinced him not to go to the burial ceremony, which he had wanted to disrupt. That was his wish, his wish to fulfill her wish. Suddenly, the children are all in. How could the flashlight-waving group escape detection in a cemetery for the time it would take to dig up the body? Why was the headstone already etched and in place? Why was there no concrete slab blocking access to the casket?
3. We're back on the bus, there's unworldly lighting and music, and we see the children around the opened casket communing with the still-beautiful corpse. They have beatific smiles as they're transported by the beauty of her death. Unlike in earlier scenes, no child takes a dissident view. It's all very weird and all strangely perfect.
4. Suddenly, we're in a beautiful outdoor space on the edge of a cliff — where?! — and the enshrouded body is atop a funeral pyre. The wish is fulfilled, the body is disposed of by burning, and there's thrilling, charming singing and dancing. Clues: Too pretty, too perfect, too over-the-top, too wish-fulfulling. All are forgiven. All are happy.
5. We're in the San Francisco airport, seeing off the ashes, into a toilet (as the mother had requested), and seeing off the oldest boy — except he's not going to college (as was his plan all along thus far), he says he's going to Namibia (which is entirely random and therefore more likely to be a figment of his father's mind (the father had never liked the idea of his going to college)).
6. And lastly, we see the family resettled in some kind of beautiful compromise. The bus has been repurposed into a chicken coop, and the children are gathering eggs and the father is preparing bag lunches: They go to real school now. There's a real house for them to live in. It's perfectly wholesome. And the movie ends with them not scrambling to get to the school bus they're told is coming. They settle in for what looks like the eternal breakfast. All are quiet. The children are reading. The most rebellious son pours cereal for his father — a sign that the younger generation is now self-sufficient — and the father's face goes through 10 different expressions as he seems to be involved in an elaborate mental exercise of absorbing what is happening. A telling, precise detail is that he's drinking yerba mate....