There have been a growing number of what I’ll call “puzzle” movies in recent years – movies that have ambiguous endings that change your perception of the rest of the film depending on how you interpret the ending. Films in this category include Memento, The Usual Suspects, Donnie Darko, etc. These are the movies that cause people to ask, “What the heck happened?” and “What does it all mean?”
In some cases, the director of a puzzle film has come right out and said what the ending really meant, and I am always a bit amused when people reject the proferred explanation or state that the director’s view is merely one possible explanation and that each viewer is free to interpret the movie for himself.
In most cases, however, the director never states what really happens in the film, or what it all means, and this leads me to wonder whether the director actually knows the truth or whether he purposely made a film with an ambiguous ending just so that people would spend time wondering about it.
Personally, although I do enjoy trying to figure out the meaning of a movie like this on my own, I think it’s a cop-out if there is no “real” truth to be had. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle that was purposely cut incorrectly so as to not fit together. In other words, I don’t mind having to watch a movie multiple times to piece together all the clues until the truth is revealed, but I get annoyed when I suspect that there is no truth to be had and that it’s just the director screwing with our minds.
Anyway, I’m wondering what other people think about this. Is it valid for a director to leave it to the audience to figure out what his movie is about, or should the director himself know what his own film is about independent of whatever the audience thinks?
I think the director should definately have an idea what their movie is about. If they don’t, they are just trying to confuse the viewer in the hope that people will think they are cleverer than they are.
From your examples, i think memento and the usual suspects have good stories, and although there is a certain amount of interpretation, the stories hold up well. I imagine there is a strong idea about what these movies are about.
Donnie Darko on the other hand didn’t seem to make any sense at all. I thought about it for days after seeing the movie, and couldn’t understand any of it. This strikes me as a movie where the director didn’t know what the film was about. As a result, I think the film really suffers. I enjoyed the film, but I can’t help but feel like I was just being jerked around.
Yes, yes, yes! The director should know the truth. As someone else said in a Donnie Darko thread, anyone can make an incoherent mish-mosh of a movie, throw it at the viewer, and say “you figure it out!” That’s why I didn’t like DD and Memento–they both failed to answer the questions they raised.
Strangely enough, of the three movies I cited as examples, Donnie Darko is the only one where I’m aware of the director stating (in the DVD commentary) what “really” happened at the end.
Don’t suppose you’ve got a link for that? I’d really like to know what it was about.
I didn’t have a problem with Memento. I thought it was a fairly straightforward story done in a very confusing manner. Once you’ve watched it a couple of times, it sorts itself into the right order in your head.
No link – I just own the DVD and have listened to the commentary track. I’m not claiming that the director managed to successfully explain everything that happened, but it seemed clear that he intended there to be an answer to everything.
The other extras on the DVD help explain things as well, especially the exceprts from the book on time travel.
What it comes down to is that he really was making a science fiction movie about time travel, and it wasn’t just a metaphysical mindf*ck.
I saw it only once, but IIRC, we never find out who killed Lenny’s wife. The story may sort itself into the right order, but I consider the ultimate question of the movie to be “who killed Lenny’s wife?”, and that question remains unanswered. My impression is that the viewer is supposed to spend most of the movie thinking it was Teddy, but at the end we learn that Lenny set himself up to believe that, so that his later self, who wouldn’t remember the set-up, would kill Teddy and believe that he had avenged his wife’s death, even though at the time of the set-up, he knew it wasn’t Teddy.
this is what annoyed me. As an anal sci-fi nerd, I know my way around a temporal paradox with my eyes closed but i couldn’t make sense of DD at all.
[spoiler]I can see how you could think this, but I never felt it was a problem. I always felt that the movie was about Teddys death, rather than the attack on Lennies wife.
Lennies wife wasn’t killed anyway. She died later due to an overdose of insulin (Remember Sammy Jenkins? that was Lennie). [/spoiler]
I agree. You obviously only think you know what happened.
As for me, I’m still wondering what was the significance of the scene toward the end showing him lying in bed with his wife. Was it wishful thinking? A delusion? A resolution of some sort? An indication that she wasn’t really dead after all? A sign that the whole movie was just a dream he was having?
In that particular case – the movie seems to work anyway. The local PBS station once ran it on a Sunday afternoon, and I watched bits and pieces of it as I woke periodically from a nap – my enjoyment wasn’t particularly damaged.
Part of the mystique of the movie, of course, is the cast – I’m not sure a lesser crew could have pulled it off. It’s all about atmosphere.
Another example of “all about atmosphere” – Repo Man. Apparently the fact that I was always thrashed when I saw it (this was way back in the day) had nothing to do with the fact that it didn’t make sense. I’m not going to try to defend that as a classic in quite the same way, though.
Overall, I think the director should have a clear idea what the movie is “about” – otherwise it becomes self-indulgent claptrap, as Arcite and others indicate above.
Speaking of Repo Man, that reminds me of the glowing briefcase from Pulp Fiction (which I believe was an homage to Repo Man). Do you think Tarantino actually knew what was in the briefcase, or was he just thinking it was “something incredible that awes everybody who sees it, but I can’t come up with a good example so I’ll let the audience decide what it really is”?
I don’t think Tarantino had anything specific in mind, myself. Pulp Fiction is very aware of the conventions of the genre. One of these convention is the McGuffin; the item, information or person that everyone wants and is trying to get. It’s part of the self-referential irony of the film that its McGuffin isn’t even specified; it’s just the McGuffin, because what a McGuffin actually is isn’t important.
As for Memento:
The brief flash of him lying in bed with his wife with ‘I DID IT’ tattoed on his chest is obviously a fantasy, since he couldn’t possibly have avenged her before she died. I’m inclined to think this scene was there to show us how Leonard mixes memory and fantasy together in his head, thus setting us up for what actually happened to his wife and his fabrication of the Sammy Jankis story
Mr. Tambo, both the Memento SE DVD and the Memento website offer quite a bit of evidence that Leonard did not confuse his wife with Sammy Jenkin’s wife. In fact…
There is a good deal of peripheral material on the DVD and the website that include the police report from his wife’s murder (severe head trauma in the bathroom) and Lenny’s subsequent medical and psychiatric treatment.
People who say that are usually right, or at least are lucky enough to have avoided falling victim to the intentional fallacy. The intent of the director (or, just as importantly, the writer) doesn’t count for much if that intent is not sufficiently reflected in the film.
To invent an example, if Chris Nolan were to announce that the “real” explanation for the events of Memento was that Lenonard was secretly a confused time-travelling android with faulty programming then I would have to accept that as his explanation, but there would be no reason for me to accept it as the “real” or best explanation. Even if Nolan had all kinds of background notes or even deleted scenes that clearly showed Leonard as an android, it wouldn’t much matter because the final film does not reasonably support such a reading.
The movie is the director’s chance to get their message across. It doesn’t matter what they say in later interviews or on the director’s commentary. If they want there to be one and only one acceptable explanation they should make sure that the movie itself points to that same explanation and leaves little room for alternate theories. I think the major flaw in Donnie Darko was that the writer/director created a film that defies logical explanation, then attempted to set forth a definitive explanation on the DVD. Unfortunately, much of this explanation relies on information not included in the actual film, and it isn’t particularly coherent anyway. He’d have done better to either spend a lot more time working out the “real” explanation before he shot the movie or just keep his mouth shut on the subject.
In the case of Memento, I think Chris Nolan knows perfectly well what the movie is about, and it is not about who killed Leonard’s wife. It’s about a man who does not and cannot ever know the complete truth of his situation and who cannot trust anyone, even himself. It’s told the way it is so the audience will be in the same position as Leonard, never knowing what just happened, and never learning what really happened during a crucial time period that Leonard has forgotten. Nolan probably came up with several possible theories to explain the death of Leonard’s wife, but I doubt he has a particular one that he considers the “true” answer because the whole point of the movie is that you cannot be sure of the truth.
Memento spoiler discussion follows:
I think Memento does play fair, regardless of what the “Real” explanation is, or if there is a “real” explanation. We experience things like Lenny does. Just like Lenny doesn’t know what the real past is, the audience doesn’t either. We see what Lenny does, in the “main arc” sequences of the film, and those things are trustworthy, the director doesn’t pull any games except the backwards in time stunt.
But we are pretty much explicitly told that the things that Lenny “remembers” in the flashbacks are not necessarily the truth. The things that Lenny says to people about Sammy Jankis, or his wife, or his condition are not necessarily true. The things that Teddy or Natalie say are not nescesarily true. We can trust that Lenny SAYS them, but not that they are true. When we see flashback footage of what Lenny supposedly saw or did before his accident, we know that it could be unreliable.
The point of the movie is that our memory is a fiction. How can we trust the events recorded in our memories? And so the director is playing fair by making Lenny’s memories unreliable. But if this happened in another movie it wouldn’t be fair. If we see a flashback in “Lethal Weapon 6” that shows the bad guys killing Mel Gibson’s wife it would be unfair for Danny Glover to say “It was all in your imagination, kid!” at the end. But for “Memento” it works.
It would be nice. But don’t forget about all of the other people involved- the screenwriter and the actors may have wildly different views about what is going on (for example, Chris Nolan may have wanted to leave Memento’s ending up to interpretation, while it may have been easier for Guy Pearce to believe his character really killed his wife).
