I don't understand it. What were the writers trying to say? Why didn't she get out?
http://wtflicks.com
Why should she have escaped? Why were you waiting for a happy ending? Is there a possible happy ending in this film?
I think you should think about these questions after having watched Kynodontas ;-)
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If by "how did she get out?" you're referring to the trunk of the car, it could simply be possible that one can only open it with a key (and she hadn't realised), or maybe she's become too frightened to make a break for it.
In terms of what the writers were trying to say, I think they leave the plot ambiguous. However, in terms of plot I think it's implied that the son and the other daughter (who didn't hide in the car) may stay together (recall the scene where they kiss on the bed and turn off the light). If the son who's gone from the start of the film and the daughter in the car both get away, the twins who the father claims are going to be "born" may take the place of the two escapees.
What does it all mean? Well, maybe a lot, but I guess it comes down to the idea that you can be made to do or believe anything if you're sufficiently brainwashed.
A disturbing, yet thought provoking movie.
As for the girl in the trunk, as sheltered as they all were, I sincerely doubt she'd have any idea how to open a trunk from the inside.
As to what it all meant - I don't have a clue.
However I loved the final shot w/ the car.
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She can't get out. She doesn't realize she can't open the trunk from the inside. The father has left the car running and she's going to die in the trunk from the carbon monoxide. Pretty obvious, I think.
shareAgreed. Depressing as hell, but I think this is correct.
shareI thought the same thing. She may already even be dead at the end of that shot depending on how well the exhaust works, or if there's enough ventilation in the trunk for her to live off of.
share[deleted]
Well, thanks for the tech specs, but isn't it possible she could be dead (she is in an enclosed space with little ventilation, at least overnight), do CO standards have anything to do with the trunk/boot of a car, and is the trunk easily opened from the inside (via mechanical or kicking/physical measures, which would use up extra O2)?
shareI'm sorry but I can't believe people who watched such a cerebral movie can't understand why she can't get out of the trunk. She can't because she's INSIDE THE DAMN TRUNK!!! It's not real complicated. Have none of you never seen a gangster movie? You can't get out of a trunk because they're not made to be opened from the inside because they're not made for PEOPLE to be inside of them!!! Stop trying to read so much into it. She's screwed because now she's stuck in the truck. And I didn't see anything indicating the car had been left running. You die in closed space from lack of oxygen. Isn't it obvious?
shareTo know for sure that she can't get out, we'd have to know that the car lacks both an interior safety handle and also access into the car interior from the trunk. But even if she was truly trapped, who knows? Maybe she waits till her father departs, then starts kicking, and someone hears and rescues her. Unlike you, I think the ending is the very opposite of explicit about her fate.
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I don't come from hell. I came from the forest.
It's not airtight. She could have died from heat exhaustion tho.
shareI actually haven't seen this movie, but from what I gather, she does "get out" of her awful situation. Unfortunately, the only way she can do that is to die. Which may even be better than life in that house.
We can rip off my mom's MasterCard again!
formerly imissfreshmanyear
I'll be honest, i never saw this, but i like the idea.
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I didn't think of exhaust, but my final feelings were that she was dead too. Not sure why. Just the whole final scene I guess - the expectation of seeing her open the trunk but that never happening, the way the camera stayed focused on the trunk and how it was just stillness. It spoke of sadness and tragedy to me. Very sad, as I was rooting for Bruce! ;)
shareMy take on it: she might've PHYSICALLY escaped from home and her parents, but they still hold a psychological grip over her, they and everything THEY told her are all she knows, she knows nothing about the world outside and therefore "can't" leave, is too scared. In a way, her father/parents won. They brought her up trying to have complete control over her both physically and mentally and even though she escaped one, she could never escape the other.
It's possibly a comment on parent's influence over their children (like, hey, the whole movie) how even after your kids leave home and are seemingly out of your control, their upbringing still plays an immense part in their everyday life right up until their death whether they want it or not.
I could be totally off, though, it WAS ambiguous.
My take on it: she might've PHYSICALLY escaped from home and her parents, but they still hold a psychological grip over her, they and everything THEY told her are all she knows, she knows nothing about the world outside and therefore "can't" leave, is too scared. In a way, her father/parents won. They brought her up trying to have complete control over her both physically and mentally and even though she escaped one, she could never escape the other.
It's possibly a comment on parent's influence over their children (like, hey, the whole movie) how even after your kids leave home and are seemingly out of your control, their upbringing still plays an immense part in their everyday life right up until their death whether they want it or not.
Let's just all agree she was messed up because of what her parents did, or didn't do. Dead? Probably. Children are so beautifully ignorant, and their parents more so.
shareThe car will be parked there in the sunlight and she will die, unable to escape the baggage compartment. You may then wonder perhaps why didn't she scream or make noise to be rescued. She had been severely punished a number of times for breaking certain rules. I imagine she does not alert anyone that she is in the compartment for fear of punishment. I do not know why she did not make an effort to scream or bang after many hours. I can only assume that she had already suffocated by the time the father left for work. Perhaps there was enough heat present to cause her to deplete her oxygen levels with heavy breathing. One can only speculate at a certain point. However, I believe she unfortunately will not see the light of day again, perhaps for the better (which can be argued as well).
share[deleted]
Yes, I agree with the idea of her dying in the trunk... I guess that she didn't scream for help because either she was too scared of what was out there or she had no idea that someone would actually come to the rescue. As far as we know the children knew nothing about the real world outside except that "outside means death"... unless you are in a car.
But I don't think that it makes any difference to the symbolism one way or another.
well keep in mind shes probably passed out in the morning, she's lost a significant amount of blood
shareI'd like to think she has complete knowledge of how to operate that trunk from inside and out because it was one of the few objects in her realm she could interact with. The children are so starved for information they explored every inch of that yard and house thousands of times. The crafty director left the camera on the trunk long enough for a chill to run up our collective spines and mouths to hang open. I believe she gets out and meets the right minded people and eventually the father gets slapped in the head with a heavy electronic device.
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I think the trunk simbolizes here an egg shell. Its the sensation that I have. She have to break trough that shell to be born again into another world, a bigger one, with more pleasures and more dangers. For that you have to be brave and aggresive, take initiative, she started that, que question is if she has what it takes to go further.
Very interesting symbolic interpretation. Reminds me of the symbolism in Spoorloos.
I believe that the ending was left open-ended as a thought-provoking device; as to say "Now that you have your freedom, what will you do with it?".
I'm not sure about everyone...but it seemed to say to me that she's "escaped" but still remained very very trapped. Don't ask me to go into too much detail but there was something very symbolic about her choosing the trunk as her route to freedom.
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She doesn't know how to open the trunk, and even if she could she would be afraid to step out.
Remember, it is allegorical.
A child that has been told lies all her life, may try to escape, but she may result into self destruction. In a life trapped into anything from, prison, to drugs, to boredom, to certain death. She may also, only be discovered by her father, alive or dead, and practically there is no escape. Probably the first brother that escaped, had a similar ending.
It's what really happens to most of us, I'm afraid! And even if we make a political interpretation of the movie, nothing changes. None of the children, really questions the parents. They only try to bend the orders and move against them, only between their instructions.
Did you mean that she'd be living with the lies her father had told her even without his physical presence there to reinforce them. I know from experience that even once leaving an emotionally abusive household, I've established a certain set or principles albeit dysfunctional and still cannot get out of this self inflicted prison. This film really got to me. Especially since I never leave the house anymore.
shareShe doesn't know how to open the trunk, and even if she could she would be afraid to step out.
Remember, it is allegorical.
A child that has been told lies all her life, may try to escape, but she may result into self destruction. In a life trapped into anything from, prison, to drugs, to boredom, to certain death. She may also, only be discovered by her father, alive or dead, and practically there is no escape. Probably the first brother that escaped, had a similar ending.
It's what really happens to most of us, I'm afraid! And even if we make a political interpretation of the movie, nothing changes. None of the children, really questions the parents. They only try to bend the orders and move against them, only between their instructions.
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The brother that escaped isn't real. The parents made him up, claiming they ostracized him for being disobedient before any of the children were born. Now he lives in the "dangerous" world outside the fence, alone. That's why they keep throwing food over the fence and thats why the brother "talks" to him through the fence.
They did this to show the children the dangers of being disobedient. After the children got more disobedient, they "killed off" the fake brother, claiming the world's most dangerous animal did it... cat.
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When they first mentioned the brother, I automatically thought the adults (I won't call them parents because really, who knows?) had made him up. And it proved useful after the brother killed that ever so menacing kitty cat.
They're making so much up as they go, why not?
We've met before, haven't we?
That is something that cannot happen. There is no way they can trace it to the father. The girl knows no way, no address, no names, no numbers. She can't take the police to the house.
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Ah ok, ditto.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/ - Best movie ever made.
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I think the ending is deliberately ambiguous, with several possibilities:
- She dies inside the trunk (asphyxia or bleeding).
- She is too afraid to leave the trunk. However, she's following the parents' laws (she lost her tooth therefore she can be in the outside world), so she shouldn't be afraid to walk outside the car or be seen by her father.
- Similar to the previous one, she is not afraid but chooses to stay with her parents because, in a strange way, she loves them. She sees them as her protectors.
- She escapes later. Maybe she was just asleep/dizzy because of the heat. Or waiting for the car to stop.
In this last possibility, discussed here, she would run into Christina at the security booth at the entrance of the factory.
That's a good point. She spied on the mother through the keyhole, and noticed that the phone had to be plugged in before it was used (even if she didn't know what for); she also questioned whether the headband could sparkle in the dark 'without power'. So she is alert to the physical world, and I can definitely see her experimenting with the trunk in secret. The kids clearly had access to the car without the parents around, including its interior, since her brother was shown washing it and bragging to his phantom brother about how well he cleans the floor mats.
Even if she is trapped in the trunk, it doesn't necessarily spell her doom either. If someone passing by merely hears her kicking, she's saved.
And I think the general way she's presented is significant - her excitement over Rocky, Flashdance, etc. shows her fighting spirit, and her own acts show her bravery and physical toughness. I also think her being 'revived' by her siblings when they pretended to do CPR could be symbolic of her eventual/possible emergence from the trunk.
On another practical level, who knows, the mother could pull a deus ex machina. The last scene with the father and mother shows him telling her to drink her orange juice fresh or not drink it at all. She makes a little angry gesture with her head, looking away from him, and does not drink. She's not just upset about her missing daughter but evidently upset with him. When I saw that I thought, 'Hmmm, was that a whiff of rebellion? and Mom has access to a phone...'
Maybe seeing that her daughter would rather mutilate herself and run away into an unknown and terrifying world than live the life she had was enough to finally wake the mother up. Then the police would go to the factory, etc. etc. It would be nice to think the mother could be inspired by Bruce's determination just as Bruce was inspired by the woman in Flashdance, etc.
So I think the ending is ambiguous, but I agree that we don't need to abandon all hope for Bruce. :)
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I don't come from hell. I came from the forest.
I hope all the retarded people who think its possible to get out of a closed trunk try locking themselves in one sometime soon. The best she could have done is banged on the trunk from the inside. But as shes pretty near death from oxygen starvation and a pretty serious injury I doubt she is conscious.
shareAlso... Its NOT THE BEEPING DOG PLACE HE IS AT WORK. HE WON'T BE RETURNING TO THE CAR ANYTIME SOON
shareThere are medical personnel who've posted on these boards saying her injury was NOT AT ALL life-threatening. You can't bleed to death from a knocked-out tooth. And her oxygen situation depends on a whole host of factors including how airtight the trunk is, how fast she breathes, how long she's in there, etc.
Yes she's in a perilous situation. But she can't just be written off as definitely dead (or alive but definitely doomed), as so many here seem to think.
The ending is obviously supposed to be ambiguous - the situation could go any of a number of ways, and we don't know what's about to happen. In that, we're just like Bruce herself, facing the unknown.
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I don't come from hell. I came from the forest.
I believe she gets out and meets the right minded people and eventually the father gets slapped in the head with a heavy electronic device.
She didn´t get out because the trunk can´t be opened from inside. That wasn´t so hard, was it?
shareEmergency trunk releases have been required on all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. beginning with the 2002 model year.
share[deleted]
The car was quite an old model anyway, I would have thought it was much older than '02. European drink driving laws are a lot stricter than you think too, not in all countries but they are in the minority, certainly not the majority.
Only just finished watching the film, came on here to see what people made of the ending. I at first thought maybe the father killed her, but there isn't any real indication that has happened, the idea of her being too scared to escape after escaping is an interesting one.
"Emergency trunk releases have been required on all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. beginning with the 2002 model year."
Why would it matter if someone drinks in a car?
shareWell, even if it weren't for the fact that we all know this film is not American-made, the license plate gives its non-U.S. origins right away. Not to mention, we don't know exactly when in history the story takes place.
shareThere's no way she could open the trunk. It was European Mercedes Benz model W123, produced from 1976 to 1985. No security lock or something like that inside so I guess girl died there during the day since the car has been left on the (summer) Sun.
sharePlus even if she didn't die of the heat or lack of oxygen, she would have died from carbon monoxide in the last shot of the film.
share@meanyso
This movie takes place in the 90's; the logo on the father's computer screen showed Windows 95. So mid-to late 90's is probable. The Mercedes looked like a 90's design too.
"Don't get chumpatized"! -The King of Kong (2007)
It was actually XP.
share@ryanmichaelwheeler :
Oh...XP! An even more modern period. It was hard for me to tell by the time I looked away from the father and at his PC screen, as the shot only lasted a second thereafter. I didn't go back to double check it. Thanks for clarification.
You know you're Windows. :)
"Don't get chumpatized"! -The King of Kong (2007)
I just happened to see the screensaver with the XP logo when I was watching it. I didn't double check either. Just letting you know!
shareIt would be "your", not "you're". Unless you meant something like, "You know you are Windows", which case...that's cool.
shareThe decor of the house was so 1970s. Reminded me of my grandmother's.
shareThe most logical answer would be that she bled to death in the trunk.
As to what this means, well, the tooth was supposed to be her pass into the outside world, but it ended up removing her from it entirely. Take that as you will.
you can not bled to death due to a tooth ..the blood is not enough to kill you and if you have not a problem with your blood in the end it will stop ..
shareYou can't bleed to death after repeatedly smashing yourself in the face with a metal weight then locking yourself in a car trunk? Thanks, doctor.
shareWell i am not the doctor of the faminy but i know things because i have people who work in the hospital in my family.So yes i kknow some things about medicine .No i am not a doctor and i never wanted to become one .And check this.And it is about 15 teeth pulled .not one.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100405131940AADvMK8
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Is it not obvious? She was in the trunk all night, she clearly suffocated well before the Dad even left to go to work. Why do you think companys started putting latches inside the trunk, because there has been many cases of people being trapped inside and suffocating. And based on the model and year it does not have a latch inside.
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