Identity rant [spoilers]

Cafe Society
1

OK, I just saw Identity, and feel utterly and deeply let down by the ending. 95% of the movie was smart, engaging, and above all HONEST. Misleading, but without cheating.

[spoiler]The stupid last twist was so LAME-A$$ I mean, WTF? To spend most of a movie setting up the Motel scenario, with such a great payoff, and then to obliterate its interior logic by having TIMMY be the psycho? I fail to understand how an eight, nine-year-old kid, tops, could insert a baseball bat in ANYONE. Let’s not even talk decapitation. Disappearing corpses make perfect sense, given the explanation of what’s really going on, but the physical limitations of the storm/motel scenario should carry with them unbreakable, or at least unbroken, rules. It’s not the Matrix, after all. Nobody’s flying here. All 10 personalities fought for their own survival under the constraints they found themselves in. For Timmy to have done it, he’d have to be the only personality other than Ed to be aware of the exterior reality, and that’s just not supported by the rest of the movie. Psycho ex machina. It reminds me of bad essays written in sixth grade that ended, “But then he woke up. It had all been a dream.” There’s a reason we got D’s for writing those!!!

This movie should so clearly have ended in the drive to the orange grove. Beautiful story arc, good characters, well played. The instant the plot continued, and we saw Paris checking on her Florida clothesline, I had this sinking, horrible, sick feeling that they let Tweety the Intern edit the final sequence, and she couldn’t resist a Friday the 13th moment. And I was right. ARGH!!! Way to hamstring John Cusack’s incredible death scene, Tweety.

Either that or they had test audiences with the IQ’s of hamsters. I feel so ripped off.[/spoiler]

Perhaps when it comes out on DVD there will be an alternate ending, just to make ME happy.

However, I loved Larry’s entire speech about his deep dark secret. Worth the price of the movie for that alone. “So I rented them rooms…they all seemed happy.” I shall choose to forget that the last five minutes of the movie exist. Rather like What Dreams May Come.

2

Remind me what happened at the end of WDMC?

And, re: Identity…

[spoiler]What, you don’t think a, what, 7 year old kid can kill fully grown adults? Or set up giant frickin’ car bombs (hell, I’m 24 and I’m not sure I could build a car bomb)? Or go out in the POURING RAIN, stab people and rig cars to explode and not have anyone notice his soaking wetedness?

Geez, some people won’t suspend their disbelief for anything. :)[/spoiler]

3

Frankly, I’ve blocked a lot out, but he finds/saves his wife, they get a chance to be reborn again on Earth, and there’s a meet-cute of two little kids sailing toy boats.

Way I heard it [from someone who got to attend a private director’s cut screening], the movie was intended to end on a much more ambiguous note. They’re told they have a chance to be reborn, but that they may not ever actually meet again, they take the chance, cut to a woman in labor in war-torn Bosnia? [just dredging the memory channels, could be wrong], and that’s where it ends.

Freakin’ Hollywood.

4

I think you are talking about a different movie.

5

I agree, Salieri2. The ending was terrible. I also chose to forget the last five minutes and found it to be an excellent movie. Maybe we’ll get lucky with the DVD or maybe just hit the “stop” button before things get out of control…

6

Concerning “What Dreams May Come” (Badz, thats what they were talking about in that previous post)

SPOILERS FOR “WHAT DREAMS MAY COME”

At the beginning of What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams (Chris) and his wife, Annie, are mourning the death of their children in a car accident. Williams, a doctor, is coping, but his wife is severely depressed, and she’s barely keeping sane with his help. Then he dies in a car accident (a poorly staged one, but that’s another rant), and goes to heaven. While he’s adjusting, she goes off the deep end and commits suicide. She goes to hell, which turns out to be a nightmarish version of her life in which she doesn’t know who she is and cannot recognize anyone, but still feels the confusion, despair and sorrow that led her to suicide. Which she will feel for all eternity (a pretty good version of hell–having to experience those emotions that led you to try to escape them through suicide, but intensified and unescapable).

Williams is told he can’t save her, no one ever has, but he might lose himself. He tries and fails, then tells his guide that he’d rather spend eternity with his true love than be in heaven without her, and goes to her again. This sacrifice saves her, and leads to the two endings.

In the theatrical version, the two are back in heaven discussing how they’ll spend eternity together. Williams suggest that they go back to Earth so that they can meet each other again, and she agrees. They meet as small children when toy boats they are sailing bump into each other (they had originally met while on vacation in Europe when boats they were sailing in a mountain lake bumped into each other). They look at each other as if they recognize their true love.

In the original ending, it’s Annie who has chosen to go back. She needs to atone for the damage the suicide has done to her soul by reliving a new life. Albert, their guide, explains that she’ll be born a poor girl in Sri Lanka, develop a disorder in her teens that will cause severe chronic sleep disorder. Williams insists on going back to be with her, and Albert tells him it will be difficult, but possible. He’ll be an American who visits Sri Lanka in his twenties, falls in love and marries her, and his love and support helps her deal with her disease. She’ll die in his arms, and he’ll spend the next 40 years alone and mourning her–the same fate she faced had she not comitted suicide. “It’ll give me time to read” he jokes.

This version ends with simultaneous births, one in Philadelphia that goes well, and another in Sri Lanka with a lot of worried faces. The Sri Lankan baby isn’t breathing when she’s born, but suddenly begins to cry when she’s slapped. The implication is that the baby was meant to be stillborn, but was revived when Annie’s soul entered it (or that was my interpretation anyway).

The original ending seems much more powerful to me. What I read at the time, but have no cite for now, is that some of those involved in making the movie were afraid the Sri Lankan baby being revived by Annie’s soul entering it might offend some people, although exactly who would be offended and why I don’t remember. I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, it shows what little regard those making this decision had for their audience, opting for such an easy, saccharine ending. The idea that both of these people would be willing to make a great sacrifice–leaving heaven–to set things right is much more powerful a message to me than the simplistic “love conquers all” ending that replaced it.

On the other hand, I thought the ending of Identity worked well, since it was foreshadowed a couple of times along the way, and I just like dark endings to dark movies.

7

Um, it seems you missed the point. There is no Timmy. Timmy is just a personality. The whole motel thing plays out in Malcolm’s mind as a bad horror movie with a silly ending (the kid did it) because that is the level at which Malcolm can relate to these personalities. Timmy is the both the murderous personality and the dominant one, even though the psychs don’t suspect he’s either, if they even know about him. The motel scenario is how things appear to Malcolm. The “real” ending is that the psychiatrist’s failure to successfully assess which personality is the murderous one leads to his death.

8

Yes, but what the OP fails to realize is that Timmy is THE personality, much stronger than the others. Not as vocal or interesting, but stronger and more malevolent.