The Cell was visually impressive and the imagery gave me very cool and freaky dreams, but the plot was weak, and given that, perhaps I’m thinking a bit too hard about this. However, do you think that the characters were actually entering the other person’s mind, or was it all just an illusion? I lean toward the latter, for the following reasons:
[ol]
[li]The horse that the little boy supposedly created for Lopez’s character in his mind turns into a statue that looks exactly like the painting on the wall of her apartment. Ergo, it didn’t come from the kid–she created it. Also, she says the name of the kid’s boogeyman (I’ve forgotten it–monkey something?) comes from Mother Goose–but the “Sing a song of sixpence” thing shows that she’s the one who’s into Mother Goose.[/li][li]In the scene with the neat forced-perspective shot when she thinks she’s awake but really she’s (supposedly) in the killer’s mind, she sees herself in the room where they do the transfer thing–but the killer, being comatose, has never seen that room![/li][li]Nobody ever comes out of the mind with independently-verifiable information that they didn’t have when they went in. Case in point (and monster spoiler): the FBI guy has already seen the crescent-moons symbol in killer-guy’s basement–he ran his fingers over it–and really, his memory is just jogged by seeing it in killer-guy’s mind.[/li][li]All the people whose minds are entered are conveniently comatose and unable to confirm the story of the person who goes in. Even when Lopez and FBI-guy both enter the killer’s mind, they don’t talk about their (supposedly) shared experience at least on camera.[/li][/ol]
The following things argue that the experience was real.
[ol]
[li]They talk about “joint sessions” that happened in the past. Presumably two therapists went into the kid’s head and later compared notes and found that they had truly shared an experience in there–though given the idiotic behavior of characters at other points in the film, who knows?[/li][li]When FBI-guy talks to the killer-as-child, the kid has the mirror signalling device given to him by Lopez. However, it’s also stated that he’s read her “file,” whatever that means, so the signaling-device strategy might have been in there.[/li][li]If the killer is dead in the end, then we are given to believe that Lopez killed him by drowning his image in her mind. However, they never say he’s dead, and thought I could see that his chest was moving in the final shot on him–though my husband points out that you could see the chest of the dead girl moving in that icky supension scene, too.[/li][/ol]
So, I’ve only seen the movie once. Anyone have any more evidence either way? Or do you think the film-maker left it deliberately ambiguous and it’s silly to debate it?
I saw it, and the movie was pretty fascinating, but VERY bizarre. I actually considered those various points myself, but I was so disturbed by the abuse scenes that I couldn’t really come up with any answers. Perhaps I’ll rent it again soon. I know I was no help, but I just thought I’d say I was thinkin along those same lines.
Was anyone else as disturbed as I during the abuse scenes?
Decent movie, and very valid questions about it, but since it’s a movie, the answers provided to your questions may or may not be correct. The reason for this is that not everything is explained perfectly in the movie. There are incongruities in the details of the store that lead to these questions. Since questions regarding movies must be proven with information provided within the movie, answering questions about movies often takes a certain amount of story telling, but I’ll try.
Since the criminal guy, I also forget his name, was brought to the complex where Jennifer Lopez worked in a catatonic state, conbined with the fact that Lopez played a phsychologist that was a virtual unknown prior to landing this job, it is very unlikely that he had a chance to check her file, or an interest in it. Due to this, I’d say that, in the reality of this movie, that they were really entering the other person’s mind.
Also, if you enter an environment, you must make a small change to it, right? If Lopez’s mind was entering the boy’s mind, her mind must change the environment he created. If her mind is tranferred, everything her mind knows should also be transferred, or at least should be accessible. Thus, since this moves the image of the horse with her mind, his brain could perceive this image. With the lack of visual stimulation, due to his condition, his brain used this image to create the horse for her. Or maybe, he used the image of the horse in her house to attempt to make her feel more comfortable. These are just my thoughts, I could be wrong. I didn’t write it.
I didn’t mean the criminal guy, I meant the FBI guy. They say specifically in the movie that he has read her file, and that he should say something shocking and personal to her to help her realize that the world of the killer’s mind isn’t real–he says something about her brother dying in a car accident.
Yah, that’s a valid point. Certainly she makes other voluntary changes, like creating the mirror-signal, etc. . .