I didn't think the endings were necessarily unbelievable, although they aren't necessarily what I would have expected or wanted to see. Maybe that's the point.
"The girl committing suicide. Sure she was strangely suicidal from the start, but to kill herself over the neighbor's kid she barely knew and that her mom ddn't break down in tears about it?"
Perhaps a little melodramatic, but Casey's death certainly wasn't the only thing driving Zoe to suicide. It was just a trigger. It was her emotional disconnect with her mother, and her feeling of meaninglessness, that had been wearing at her for years. People who commit or attempt suicide often are prompted by some incident or change in their lives--losing a job, divorce, but those things aren't the cause, just something that brings them to the head of the mental breakdown that had been brewing for years.
Perhaps Zoe's suicide is more important for Tess' (the mother's) character. She's already had a rough life, and with each difficulty, her ability to deal and form bonds with others continues to disintegrate. Now that her daughter is gone, though she loved Zoe, she'll never get the chance to express that, and all she has left is her music, which she sings to try to comfort herself. Sometimes, though we don't like to recognize this, that's all people have left.
"The big pool cleaner guy killing the girl. What? Why? Maybe I missed something."
Yeah, that threw me, too. But thinking more about it, that's often how an assault or murder happens; someone just snaps, without others really understanding it, and often it's the guy who doesn't seem violent at all. Jerry had been so frustrated with his wife's sexual conversations with other men (even if done without any real desire) versus their lackluster relationship, made more difficult by the demands of their kids, that when confronted with another woman's sexuality, he lashed out.
Sometimes, people lash out at another when that person confronts them with a quality that they despise in their real source of turmoil. It feels "safer" that way. This film is also about the violence and cruelty that lurks inside all of us--and underlies a lot of sexual interactions/relationships.
"The fisherman's wife going to the funeral of the dead girl her husband found. The temper tantrum was enough... this was just overkill."
It makes a lot more sense in the powerful Raymond Carver story "So Much Water So Close to Home," where you clearly see that the wife identifies with the rape/murder victim, and feels driven into despair by her husband's apathy. There's even a part where she's on her way to the funeral, and feels threatened by another motorist who stops and offers to help her, as if he's the killer and she's the next victim. I think in this film it just solidifies that she is trying to make up for the lack of respect her husband showed.
"In general the whole earthquake was a little bit lame, I don't see what it added to the story. Most of the story lines were good, but a few needed extra development."
I guess it was just another device used by Altman to try to tie everything together, and to have nature reflect the human violence that had come to the surface. The reactions of the characters to it can also serve as one final display of their true natures.
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