I didn't understand why the crazy b-word killed the guys brother. And why did the others just stand there and not try to stop her? After she shoots him, no one calls the police. What was with all of that? Does that crazy nut job even go to jail?
obviously in a heated moment like that there's no in particular direct reason as to why but rather a combination of things;
first and foremost was that the brother said he was going to leave her behind because basically she can't be used in cons etc (and also the brother had began to be much more intimate with the step daughter).
secondly the brother himself said that he cared not about the women in this trip but rather jack nicholson- as this was the big dream they had planned many times in the past. Burstyn was made out to be a crazy narcissist who basically couldn't hear that part and just assumed it was about leaving her only.
thirdly was the sarcastic comment the brother made "I can see it now; matron slays three in love in hotel" or some such- matron being the trigger word. He mocked her age which is of course her subject of crazy obsession.
The others stand there because somebody just got shot and they were probably surprised- i know I was when it happened. People act in all sorts of different ways when something like that happens. We don't see them call the cops- we see it cut to Jack Nicholson at the train; what were shown and not shown was presumably based on cutting out the obvious. They probably did call the cops, or the noise alerted enough people. And in that Burstyn was undoubtedly sent to prison for murder: those things you just have to assume happened.
Thank you! I am so used to not assuming that I didn't try to think of the obvious. That really cleared it up. Guess it isn't so bad to assume.
I think you're missing the point of the film and should perhaps watch it again. The questions you asked are irrelevant because it's all just another tale of David's. That's the way he wanted this one to end. What I wonder about is if Jason ever existed at all, because the parts I believe not to be fantasy are the ones that take place at his work in Philly as well as in his house with his grandfather, and even with the latter ones I'm wondering what to make of (the home movie at the end is a perplexing part of the whole puzzle).
shareYes, thank you. I think too many viewers are taking this movie too literal and not recognizing the surrealism. There were so many crazy scenes like Sally burning all her clothes and make-up, David & Jason having a discussion on horseback, and the Miss America pageant.
I need to watch it again but the first time through I started to think maybe David is dead and in purgatory. Another thought was that he was in his own world living in a "white hospital" as his tape recording says.
However, I have to conclude that he is just making up stories out of bits and pieces of his life.
I haven't seen the film since I last posted here but I'm thinking because the home movie shows two boys this could be some way of David's to come over the grief of possibly losing Jason at an earlier stage in their lives.
shareIt was the surrealism that finally made me give up on this film. Neither my wife nor I could be bothered to watch it through to the end. Another time, maybe ....
shareInteresting because I did not find this film to be surreal. I thought that Dern, Burstyn & the step daughter were simply emotionally, psychologically disturbed people, very narcissistic & delusional. Due to their delusions, they are unable to achieve their dreams/goals, so they fail quite often, yet since they are delusinal, they keep seeking their unobtainable, unrealistic dreams/goals. I found the depiction of these 3 characters, as well as Nicholson's reaction to them, to be quite realistic. Nicholson's character was much more grounded in reality then these 3 flaky, unstable characters. In comparison to Nicholson, these 3 characters brought an air of surrealism to the film because their crazy delusionalism can seem surreal.
share1. I think you may be stretching things a bit far here. The stories David told about his brother and family might have been embellished or "enhanced", but the characters were undoubtedly real. For example, both David's colleague at the radio station and his grandfather mentioned Jason's call. As another example, David in the opening monologue talked about his grandfather putting a toy train in his hamburger that broke his tooth. When he went home, the grandfather said he didn't put a toy train in his burger, but rather something else.
2. In the video watched by the grandfather at the end that you mentioned, the two anonymous small boys were building castles in the sand - used as the symbol for the American Dream. (Btw, castles in the sand used to be a fairly common sight along the boardwalk of Atlantic City; perhaps they still are but I haven't been there for some twenty years. Some of them were really huge). We learn from the film that David and Jason, since they were small children like those boys, had been making "plans". In the film, Jason was the dreamer, always coming up with impractical plans to get rich quickly. But as it often happens, such dreams - like the sand castles - eventually just collapse to the ground.
Yeah, we shouldn't get too caught up in what's real and what's not. I think David's commentaries reflect his passive, withdrawn existence, rater than any allusion to a literal imagining of the entire narrative. The film is a rumination on the American dream, and the brothers are clearly opposites. The horse-back scene shows them as a yin and yang symbol.
"I'm not Spartacus."
If the whole thing is a fantasy, I'm wondering if David accidentally shot and killed Jason.
That bit at the end where he talks about the pistol being kept in the same place as the water guns...