So…“reversal of symmetry” is roughly equivalent to “surprise”?
Yeah, something like that. Hasn’t it always kind of been that way? How surprised are you with the mirror scene in Contact? You can watch it again and pay more attention until you get, and then get it better.
By the way “hydrogen times pi” is when everything really inverts. But that’s hard to figure out. When do the prime numbers show up again?
God, I love that movie. Right down to when you finally realize
that not understanding what’s going on is a *good *thing, because it means you’re not broken like the people who understand the design are.
Sounds incredible! If I could pick one movie to live within for the rest of my life as Truman Burbank, I would pick that one!
I’ll have whatever he’s on.
In a Freudian way? By the way, I saw A Dangerous Method and the implicit role reversals between Freud and Jung were startling. Thank God we solve our problems with lithium nowadays.
Fine, I’ll do it. I should have asked more subtly.
How about Shutter Island? When I saw it for the first time, it was an intriguing but confusing story, and I was like, ‘‘Okay, that was a decent twist ending thriller.’’ When I saw it for the second time, I realized how deliberate everything in that film was. When you watch it knowing the end, it changes the entire experience and meaning of the film. It’s a twist within a twist.
Recursively twisting, you mean? Like the dreams within dreams of Inception.
hoenikker writes:
> So “your perception of what is going on” is not an axis of symmetry?
No, it’s not. You don’t understand what symmetry is or what an axis of symmetry is. In any case, from the examples given here, we apparently understand what you really mean, so it’s not worth discussing.
Do you appreciate mathematical poetry? What about Life of Pi?
Anyway, that’s just an aside. Better to do it your way and continue the discussion as if I just disappeared right now.
Not exactly. More like the first and second viewing are two different movies.
- Your standard twist-ending thriller.
- The twist is inevitable. The movie becomes a treatise on the confusion and denial of one very troubled individual, with an added layer of commentary about the subjective nature of reality.
Ahh: so the first case is Inception, and the second case is A Beautiful Mind?
ETA: Thanks for the incredible insight, Neo 
This troll has been banned, so I’m going to lock this.
If there’s a kernel of sense in here somewhere that people want to discuss, feel free to start a new thread.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator