# Movies where they let the audience be confused **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2010, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484 "2010-07-13T01:56:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/61 "2010-07-14T20:08:36Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > That was my first thought, too. The “it was all a fantasy” explanation also felt kind of hokey to me, too. I think the “it was all a fantasy” interpretation of _Mulholland Drive_ actually resolves most if not all of the movie’s difficulties and confusions, and in this sense I wouldn’t call it hokey, but I find it nowhere near as ambiguous and compelling as _Inland Empire_, which genuinely can’t be summed up with any such interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/62 "2010-07-14T20:21:28Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Ridley Scott. Who is dead wrong. I don’t care if he was the director, Deckard WAS NOT a replicant. And I even like the original ending too. You’re not alone. I honesty don’t get the dislike for the “fly off in the sunlight” ending; it’s well-foreshadowed and entirely plausible. The alternative ending was no ending at all. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/63 "2010-07-14T20:24:32Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > Impossible? The only way that someone can know what another dreams is if he is a replicant? I had no idea. Why can’t it just be a coincidence that Gaff folds an origami of a mythical animal that Deckard recently had a dream about? It’s not like this never happens in movies, let alone real life. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/64 "2010-07-14T21:14:25Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > Impossible? The only way that someone can know what another dreams is if he is a replicant? I had no idea. What other ways are you thinking of? I suppose he could be psychic, but I don’t recall there being any foundation for that sort of thing in the text of the film. I don’t think we saw Decker keeping a dream journal. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Why can’t it just be a coincidence that Gaff folds an origami of a mythical animal that Deckard recently had a dream about? It’s not like this never happens in movies, let alone real life. I suppose. But generally things that are so specifically emphasized in films are either Checkov’s unicorn, or a red unicorn herring. I personally don’t have any stake in whether or not Decker is a replicant. I just don’t see any reason for the unicorn stuff to be in the movie except to raise questions about Decker’s status. I’d say at the very best, it’s meant to be ambiguous. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/65 "2010-07-14T23:20:26Z")
> [@Jayrot](#): > > p.s. the trailers for Inception look interesting. Something about controlling dreams. Here’s hoping they don’t have the fake news montage explaining it all in the first scene. For months I’ve been doing my utmost to avoid knowing ANYTHING about Inception. Nolan? DiCaprio? That’s good enough for me to be there opening day. I glanced at the poster, didn’t study it. Haven’t read so much as a synopsis. Haven’t watched the trailer, in fact, when the trailer comes on in the theater I either close my eyes/plug my ears/“lalala” to avoid hearing or seeing anything from the film or I run out of the theater until I’m sure it’s over. Needless to say, I haven’t read any articles or reviews. Thanks to the Dope, I now know that the frickin’ movie has something to do with dreams. First from a “spoiler-free” thread (those quotes are sarcastic) where someone said something which I desperately tried to forget after running out of the thread in panic, and now this, because you reminded me what it was I was trying to forget. Thanks a lot. Maybe they will explain what’s going on in the first few minutes, and my ire will look silly, but I really really really wanted to go into at least ONE high-anticipation movie this year a complete virgin regarding the plot. I’m sure it’s all explained in the trailer, which is why I’ve avoided the trailer. Not your fault, but still, damn, I wish I didn’t know it had ANYTHING to do with dreams. Too many trailers give too much away. But, why shouldn’t they? Everyone seems to want to know what movies are all about before they pay their money and step into the theater. If everything’s not explained until the end, movies get derided as “twisty bullshit” like The Sixth Sense or Shutter Island. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/66 "2010-07-15T00:09:22Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > Thanks to the Dope, I now know that the frickin’ movie has something to do with dreams. First from a “spoiler-free” thread (those quotes are sarcastic) where someone said something which I desperately tried to forget after running out of the thread in panic, and now this, because you reminded me what it was I was trying to forget. > > Thanks a lot. Maybe they will explain what’s going on in the first few minutes, and my ire will look silly, but I really really really wanted to go into at least ONE high-anticipation movie this year a complete virgin regarding the plot. I’m sure it’s all explained in the trailer, which is why I’ve avoided the trailer. Not your fault, but still, damn, I wish I didn’t know it had ANYTHING to do with dreams. :rolleyes: Get over yourself. There are multiple trailers and every single one of them plays up the dream angle within the first few seconds. It’s what the movie is freaking about. If knowing that “ruins it” for you (when you actually don’t know anything as that’s like saying The Matrix is about virtual reality), then you need to grow a thicker skin. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/67 "2010-07-15T00:35:49Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > **Last Year in Marienbad** , big winner at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, has been confusing audiences for decades, though it does have a certain conceptual logic to it. That’s what you said when we had a thread about this last year. . . . ETA: Spoiling my own joke to say don’t look for that other thread, it’s just a joke. It works if you’ve seen the movie. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/68 "2010-07-15T00:45:59Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > What other ways are you thinking of? I suppose he could be psychic, but I don’t recall there being any foundation for that sort of thing in the text of the film. I don’t think we saw Decker keeping a dream journal. > > I suppose. But generally things that are so specifically emphasized in films are either Checkov’s unicorn, or a red unicorn herring. > > I personally don’t have any stake in whether or not Decker is a replicant. I just don’t see any reason for the unicorn stuff to be in the movie except to raise questions about Decker’s status. I’d say at the very best, it’s meant to be ambiguous. EJO’s character (forgot his name) was making origami creatures all through the movie. One of them happened to be a unicorn. I think part of the intention at the time was to draw some sort of parallel between unicorns, their association with virgins and Rachel but its main purpose was to establish that EJO’s character made origami figures so that when Deckard finds the one outside his apartment at the end the audience would know that he had been there and left them alive. (My understanding is that Deckard’s voiceovers through the movie were actually the studio’s idea, which is why they were the first thing to go in the first director’s cut.) Now, _Blade Runner_ has had a ridiculous number of releases. There have been multiple director’s cuts, I think. Anyway, the cut with the unicorn dream doesn’t show up until several releases down the line; I think the unicorn footage actually comes from another movie. Anyway, I think Scott just heard the fan talk about Deckard really being a replicant and either liked it or decided to reconsider his original thoughts on the subject and released the unicorn edition while claiming that was his plan all along. While I have no doubt that he now considers Deckard to be a replicant I also have no doubt (for myself) that he _wasn’t_ in the original version of the film. So, it just depends on which version of _Blade Runner_ you happen to prefer, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/69 "2010-07-15T01:24:52Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > That’s what you said when we had a thread about this last year. LOL, well done. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/70 "2010-07-15T01:27:56Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > :rolleyes: Get over yourself. There are multiple trailers and every single one of them plays up the dream angle within the first few seconds. It’s what the movie is freaking about. But I haven’t _seen_ any trailers. I’ve been staying away from everything. I didn’t expect talk about Inception in a thread about older movies or else I wouldn’t have clicked on the thread. I realize I’m odd. It’s not your fault or the OP’s fault, but I still lament _knowing_ what it’s “about.” > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > If knowing that “ruins it” for you I never said it “ruins it” for me, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m excited as hell to see it. I have my plans all worked out. If I didn’t have to work Friday day I’d go to the midnight show, but as it is, I’ll see Inception (and The Kids Are Alright and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) Friday after work. > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > (when you actually don’t know anything as that’s like saying The Matrix is about virtual reality), Well, I went into The Matrix having zero/zilch/nada/none/NO idea what it was about. Hadn’t seen a trailer/read a synopsis or review/hadn’t seen any stills, nothing. NOTHING. It could have been a sequel to Bound or an adaptation of a kid’s fairy tale for all I knew. And it was WONDERFUL, being completely surprised and every single second new and fresh. I kinda wanted that experience with Inception, which was stupid and very silly, in this day and age of Internet blab. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/71 "2010-07-15T02:06:39Z")
Am I the first to mention [Eraserhead](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead)? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/72 "2010-07-15T06:19:33Z")
> [@tanstaafl](#): > > EJO’s character (forgot his name) was making origami creatures all through the movie. One of them happened to be a unicorn. I guess it depends then on whether Adama makes a unicorn and Decker sees it before his dream, or if the only unicorn was after his dream. > [@tanstaafl](#): > > Anyway, the cut with the unicorn dream doesn’t show up until several releases down the line Well yeah, the interpretation pretty much depends on a version of the film with both the origami and the dream. Without both, there’s not much to draw from in that regard. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/73 "2010-07-15T20:05:42Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > What other ways are you thinking of? I suppose he could be psychic, but I don’t recall there being any foundation for that sort of thing in the text of the film. I don’t think we saw Decker keeping a dream journal. He could tell someone. He could have been manipulated into having the dream. A false memory could have been implanted. (It is science fiction after all. Replicants are possible but implanted memories aren’t? In a work by Dick?) > [@](#): > > I just don’t see any reason for the unicorn stuff to be in the movie except to raise questions about Decker’s status. I’d say at the very best, it’s meant to be ambiguous. “Raising questions” and “ambiguous” are a far far cry from “impossible”. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/74 "2010-07-16T01:31:58Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > He could tell someone. He could have been manipulated into having the dream. A false memory could have been implanted. (It is science fiction after all. Replicants are possible but implanted memories aren’t? In a work by Dick?) We’re talking about the film, so it’s not really a Philip K Dick work. But even if it were, it’s a general rule of thumb when leaving something undetermined in fiction, to have some sort of precedent within the story itself that could support an unmentioned solution. I don’t think Dick would make the answer “implanted memories” unless there had been some mention even if only fleeting, of that sort of technology earlier in the story, or some clue to that effect. Otherwise, you are expecting the reader to solve a mystery not by logic or inference, but instead by ass-pull. Likewise, if it’s truly supposed to be ambiguous in the film, there has to be some kind of indication or clue of any possible alternate explanation, or else it’s not really ambiguous. Various explanations could be proffered if this were a real life situation, of course, but that’s not a reasonable assumption for fiction. There’s no indication that he told someone about his dream, or wrote it down, there’s no evidence that the world has dream manipulation technology or human implanted memories. Further, there’s no motivation for any of those sorts of things to have occurred. Why would someone want Decker to think he was a replicant if he wasn’t? It’s possible there is some subtle alternate explanation, but you’d have to point out actual clues from the film itself for them to be reasonable. Now of course it’s possible that originally he wasn’t a replicant, and they added the unicorn dream in a later version. Someone in this thread thinks that’s the case. But once the unicorn dream was added, I think that leads to an inexorable conclusion in the absence of alternate clues in the film itself. > [@Contrapuntal](#): > > “Raising questions” and “ambiguous” are a far far cry from “impossible”. Probably a better word than ambiguous is ‘subtle’. It’s something not everyone is going to catch the first time they watch the film, but once they do, it becomes hard to find any other reasonable interpretation (unless you really just don’t like the inevitable conclusion and will grasp at anything to avoid it). I’ll concede that it’s possible that it might have been intended as ambiguous, but I haven’t seen any evidence yet that this is true. I don’t see any alternative conclusion in the film itself. When things are truly ambiguous in fiction, there are alternate conflicting clues. But here we only have one clue that I can see, which means only one possible conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/75 "2010-07-16T02:55:32Z")
> [@Rrose\_Selavy](#): > > There are movies like The Usual Suspects where after some deception there is a kind of reveal at the end. Then there are those that don’t, like Mamet’s [_The Spanish Prisoner_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120176/). The movie plays its way through and ends, apparently neatly tied up as your standard caper movie. When I saw it, I was mulling things over for a full 24 hours before it occurred to me that the U S Marshals were fake – the Process was stolen after all.None of this is said in so many words – nor even veiled ones. It is left as an exercise for the viewer to connect the dots of some subtle clues. So subtle I wasn’t sure of my conclusion until I googled a multi-page critique of the movie (alas, no longer up) that agreed with me. ---
**Author:** ![kidneyfailure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9f8e36/32.png) [@kidneyfailure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidneyfailure)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2010, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/76 "2010-07-16T12:05:47Z")
**Perfect Blue**. Great anime, cool premise (paranoid pop singer with guilt issues finds weird website about herself), but it didn’t make a damn lick of sense. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/77 "2010-07-17T07:12:47Z")
> [@Rrose\_Selavy](#): > > There are movies like The Usual Suspects where after some deception there is a kind of reveal at the end. Well, many feel that there is a reveal at the end, but if you listen to the alternate DVD audio tracks, you find that the creators disagree as to what really happened in the movie. I find that astonishing, as the public has kind of settled on a version , and Kevin Spacey won an _Oscar_ for that role. You’d think the creative team on the movie would have decided what the movie was really about. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/78 "2010-07-17T07:22:16Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > We’re talking about the film, so it’s not really a Philip K Dick work. But even if it were, it’s a general rule of thumb when leaving something undetermined in fiction, to have some sort of precedent within the story itself that could support an unmentioned solution. I don’t think Dick would make the answer “implanted memories” unless there had been some mention even if only fleeting, of that sort of technology earlier in the story, or some clue to that effect. Implanted memories (in Rachael) are specifically discussed in the film. Not that I agree with the notion that Deckard is (or even might be) a replicant. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2010, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/79 "2010-07-17T14:34:58Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > …The other possibility (which is the one that I think is true) was that Deckard was a human but people were losing their humanity. If empathy was a defining human trait then it should include empathy towards replicants. By targeting them (ironically for not having empathy) humanity was itself losing its sense of empathy and therefore losing its humanity. This …is a theme that Dick pushes hard. Just went back and re-read ‘DADoES?’ and it’s a strong message in the book. Deckard is burned out, losing his empathy, and afraid that he’s losing his humanity. And Scott picks up that theme. With some some good casting and coaching: Batty seems more “alive” (and appreciative of life) than Deckard. Interestingly, I saw a different cut than almost anyone else (unless you were there the first Friday at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, WI). Someone flubbed the reel change and we missed thirty seconds of the movie. Turns out it was the thirty seconds where Tyrell admits that Rachel is a replicant. So for the rest of the movie I was wondering “Think she could be… no… but she _could_ be…” ---
**Author:** ![Rrose\_Selavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@Rrose\_Selavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rrose_Selavy)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484/80 "2010-07-18T16:53:29Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > Well, many feel that there is a reveal at the end, but if you listen to the alternate DVD audio tracks, you find that the creators disagree as to what really happened in the movie. I find that astonishing, as the public has kind of settled on a version , and Kevin Spacey won an _Oscar_ for that role. You’d think the creative team on the movie would have decided what the movie was really about. ## Or maybe they agreed to disagree for marketing purposes? I suspect maybe they were just trying to make out the movie is still worth watching and not all settled ie: still a potential mystery = a way to shift a few more copies of the DVD etc [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-they-let-the-audience-be-confused/546484.md?page=5)