I thought John’s character was the only “true” manifestation of his personality; the others were all “false” manifestations. I think. So the idea wasn’t for him to make sure everyone survived, it was for him to make sure everyone else died. Which of course goes against how his character was behaving at the motel - unselfish, helpful to others, etc.
Timmy was supposed to have died, too. My take is that he was just another personality of John’s. He should have died when the car exploded, but apparently he made it through. John thought he was dead, though, and that’s why the doctor was able to bring him back to just the one main personality. Since Timmy wasn’t dead, though, he showed up during the transfer, causing John to kill the driver and the doctor.
The girl and Timmy are not real; they’re both personalities belonging to John. When she finds the key, I think that means she’s about to be killed by Timmy, too (it would be in Timmy’s best interest to kill off all other personalities so he could be the dominant one), and we see this a few moments after she picks up the key.
My take is that John DID escape, but with two personalities - the good John and the evil Timmy. Timmy’s winning.
I think that in the end, John Cusack’s character had died off, leaving only Amanda Peet’s (or so we are led to believe.) In the end, the kid resurfaces and offs her.
It is my opinion that the kid is the only personality left, and that he is firmly in control. Most likely, he is now on the loose as well.
I don’t think any one of the ten personalities was his “true” one - they all could have been. But in the end, only one of the personalities could survive. John Cusack’s character realized this, and decided to sacrifice himself so that he could try to make sure that the final personality would be a “good” one (ie. Amanada Peet’s character). We thought he had succeeded - with Peet in her fantasy orchard, until the little kid showed up. He was the most evil personality, and he arranged for all the other ones to die. In the end he killed Peet, and became the last personality.
Now that I have heard the meaning of the story I didn’t like the movie. Any movie that causes me to go to great lengths to find out what it meant wasn’t worth it to me.
I had to watch The Life of David Gayle twice to understand the ending. It had an intresting storyline but the end was too confusing.
So to wrap this up the evil boy Timmy was the last personality that John kept and he is probably on a rampage killing other people again. What was the stupid doctor thinking when he opened the gated area to touch the prisoner? Hello? He is a serial killer and VERY DANGEROUS!
Yes, but what the doctor had just proven to everyone was that the “good” personality had perservered over all of the others; as far as the good doctor knew, there were no other personalities extant in John’s mind, and he was now a safe, nonthreatening person. The doctor didn’t know that Timmy had survived.
[spoiler]
The child is the murderer’s true personality, or at least is one of the major ones, which is why he’s A) a child, and B) violent. The murderer’s true personality is that of an insane sociopath, obviously, or else he wouldn’t be a murderer.
The John Cusack character was just one of a variety of other personalities; the fact that we identify (no pun intended) with him is just a convenience of the script and of the fact that he’s played by John Cusack. You will note the personality’s name is not the same as the murderer’s name in real life, and wasn’t even the last good personality standing.
The entire murders-at-the-motel thing was a scenario being played out in the killer’s mind. The kid WAS killing off the other personalities, and he was doing it from the beginning, because, well, he’s a killer. John Cusack’s behaviour was perfectly in line with the character of that personality. Only after that personality was made aware of what was going on did he realize every personality but one had to die.
Timmy could put the motel key in Amanda Peet’s orchard for exactly the same reason the bodies all disappeared, and for the exactly the same reason you can imagine yourself flying; it’s all in the killer’s mind. The laws of logic and physics have nothing to do with it.
John Cusack’s character did not survive, he died. We saw him die. The murderer obviously escaped, with the personality of Timmy being his only remaining one, at least at that point.[/spoiler]
Actually, the “true” personality was Malcolm, the big bald serial killer guy. He’s the one who exists in reality. You see him in the unreality of the motel (which exists only in his mind) as the corpse of the previous hotel owner which is locked in the freezer. The small boy, Timmy, has killed off the adult personality of the real person. In other words, of all of Malcolm’s multiple personalities, the only one left is Timmy, who is full of all the rage of an abused and abandoned kid but housed in the body of a large criminal.
Your interpretation makes sense Amanita, but I was looking at it more from the POV that Malcolm doesn’t really have a personality of his own anymore. His body was alternately inhabited by the multiple personalities. Now Timmy’s the only one left, so he’s the default personality for Malcolm’s body - he no longer has a distinct personality of his own.
Well, I mostly agree with RickJay’s summary, however:
I didn’t think Cusack necessarily needed to kill all the other personalities, just the one(s) that were homicidal maniacs. Didn’t the doctor say something like “The personality that did this must not survive”?
And as far as the “twist” in the plot of this film goes, I thought it was poorly done, actually. They spelled it out to the audience verbatim during the hearing. Did some people go out for popcorn or to visit the potty during that scene?
I felt they could have done it without explaining it in such detail.
And since no-one’s mentioned it yet, I thought Rebecca De Mornay was hysterical as a parody of herself! It looked like she had fun doing it, too.
Huh? They spelled out that Timmy was the homicidal personality? Or are you referring to the “twist” that these aren’t real people stranded at a motel in the middle of nowhere? If so then yes, anyone who didn’t know that after the hearing scene was not paying close enough attention.
The “twist after the twist” was that the viewer is led to believe that the homicidal personality was “killed”, yet really wasn’t.