1. What was the deal with the empty coffin? Was it in fact empty, a coffin just for show?
2. At the very end a young Martin silences the rattling window by placing his hand on it. Does this tie in with his not believing his mother when she said a man was out there raking?
3. When Andy described the first photo Martin took, was he telling the truth? I was thinking that maybe Andy remembered what Martin expected to see, and he just told him that.
1. It wasn't empty. Martin just believed it was. His entire perspective of others has been distorted by the fact that he believed his mother didn't love him, lied to him constantly and faked her own death to get away from him. In fact, she was simply emotionally reserved and perhaps unable to care for Martin properly because of her illness. I think the ending of the film hinges on Martin's realization of these things, and that's why he's willing to give the friendship with Andy another chance.
2. Martin believed his mother was lying to him about there being a man outside raking leaves, and, subsequently, that the man left because it started raining. I think young Martin puts his hand to the glass to try and feel if there are actually raindrops hitting the window.
3. I've seen the film several times; Martin never tells Andy about the man raking leaves. (At least not on camera.) It's simply shown as a flashback. Andy has no basis to know what Martin expects is shown in the photograph. I was initially uncertain too, because the viewer is never shown the photograph. But Martin is in fact testing both Andy and the memory of his mother at this point. He is trying to learn how to get past his suspicion of both. Since the film is primarily told from Martin's perspective when he's onscreen, we as viewers begin to misperceive or doubt things the same way Martin does. We never see the man raking leaves in the flashback, or what's in the picture later. But, like Martin (and unlike Andy) we know what Martin's mother said was in the yard. So the final description is a beautiful moment in its quiet way. But, yes, I had to rewind to make sure I could trust Andy myself. :)
I agree with everything that CROWJANE29 has written, and may I write that, having read some of CROWEJANE'S postings to other threads about the film, Proof, it is so wonderful to read such beautifully expressed paragraphs which illuminate so brightly the deeper sub-texts in this wonderful film.
shareThank you. :) I've loved the film since I first saw it in 1992.
shareI agree too crowjane - except for one detail.
When his mother is describing the scene in the garden earlier in the film she implores him to "listen". It's a great scene because everybody in the theatre strains to listen with him - perhaps we can hear the raking faintly but what we can certainly hear is the gentle rattling of the window - not loud, barely perceptible really, but loud enough to prevent him (and us) from hearing the man in the garden clearly.
I was going nuts "hold the window still!" I was thinking.
At the end of the film he does just that - not blindly believing but trusting enough to give his mother, and himself, a chance.
To me it was saying: he's not there yet but he's taken the first, most difficult step in his journey to true intimacy.
I think, also, that the rain stops and the sun comes out at the very end, so he may be able to feel the change and feel the light/warmth (remember how he feels the light/shade difference when placing a leaf on the ground in the park). In this sense it could contribute to the positive feel of the ending, that the sun is coming back out.
shareI also felt there was a very positive feel at the end. Martin's controlled and subtle sense of joy on hearing that there really was a man raking leaves in the picture brought me to tears. What a masterful and beautiful piece of performance from Hugo Weaving.
shareI agree--Corwejane's commentary is superb! Thanks for the insights. An old post (from 2000) on the comments pages gets this aspect of the movie entirely wrong. The poster thinks that the mother was lying to Martin. I don't see how someone could come to this conclusion if they had watched the film carefully--rather sad that somehow someone watched the movie and never realized that it was Martin's perceptions that were distorted. I've loved this film for years--I'm glad to see its appreciated here. Its rather a shame that the 2005 Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow overshadows it because of the title. That also is an excellent, but entirely different movie.
share
More thoughts on question #3: Just as Martin has to decide whether to put his trust in Andy, we the audience are put in the same position. I also thought the mother didn’t lie. But you still cannot be completely sure, because it’s not shown. We have to make the same leap of faith that Martin does.
Although we imagine we are watching Martin’s travails quite objectively, we actually experience his blindness subjectively through his flashbacks, because we are given no more information than Martin in determining whether the garden really exists. We are denied the same “proof” that eludes Martin.
Although we see nothing to indicate Andy lied, I couldn’t help thinking about that possibility, which I think is just as important a part of the film. If Andy (or even the mom) had lied, would it have been a good or bad thing? It raises interesting ethical questions.
When Martin touches the window at the end, the rattling stops. I went back to the scene where his mother is describing the man in the garden, and in fact the window is making the same sound there--which, I think, clearly implies that the reason Martin may not have been able to hear the raking is that the window was preventing him from doing so. So what he thought was evidence of absence was actually absence of evidence. His failure to hear the raking, he thought, meant the man wasn't there--but in fact it was only the inability to hear. This doesn't establish the fact of the man's existence, but it removes the disproof of it and makes it possible.
It seems to me the window thus is being used as a metaphor for perception, and not necessarily (only) visual perception; it would make the point, more or less, that sometimes it is noise or interference in one's own perception that keeps him (or her) from seeing or hearing what's actually there.
On the other hand, people actually _do_ lie to Martin. But on the other other hand, his distrust almost creates the lying, doesn't it?
For the record, I don't think we should be certain that the coffin wasn't empty. I do think it's deliberate that we don't know for sure, which is only comparable to so many things around us every day; we assume something to be true when there is no compelling reason to believe otherwise. Civilization is built on such assumptions, maybe to our detriment on occasion, but usually true in the big picture. Coffins that are put in the ground have a person's remains in them, unless there is a very strong reason to believe this is not so. But nobody's going to check up on this in every instance. I haven't. Has anyone else?
Also: It really is brilliant that we never actually see whatever was in the yard, and thus are put in exactly the same position as Martin is.
I just saw this movie last night, and the thing that got me right at the end that nobody has mentioned is that when Andy is describing the picture he makes a point of saying there are no birds, but then right at the very final scene we see Martin as a boy at the window listening to the birds. This totally throws into doubt Andy's description of the picture, even though as others have said he does indeed describe the man with the rake. Did he lie or not? To me, this is the key to the whole movie: that you never ever know for sure what is true. A metaphor for life if there ever was one.
shareInteresting. Now I gotta go see the end again and remind myself of the details.
shareYou'll probably not see this, but - it seems that everyone is assuming the final shot of young Martin touching the glass is from the same day his mother described the man raking leaves. Why?
Also, that was on a sunny day, and of course rain could have come later, but I took it to be a different day as I didn't think the filmmakers had set out to fool the audience - in other words, I went with the simpler explanation. It's because of the rain that I didn't understand the point of that scene. I took it to be the rain that was making the window rattle. As it wasn't raining on the day he couldn't hear the man raking, what then was the reason, if we're to suspect one at all?
Re: 2
What no one has mentioned is that when the rain stopped and the sun came out Martin LOOKED UP. If you have ever known a blind person in real life they do not by habit move their eyes when they sense such things as rain rattling a window, the temperature changing on the window as the sun is coming out, temperature changes... these are all things that hands are used for - which he did - but he also used his eyes and very deliberately *looked*.