So...is this a happy ending??

It's a bleak ending, that's for sure. Even if the hypnosis worked, there's really nothing "happy" about what happened and will happen between the two.


Hey there, Johnny Boy, I hope you fry!

Yes. It's the most horrifying happy ending in history.

___________
- Booker, are you afraid of God ?
- No. But I'm afraid of you.

Spoilers in this thread obviously.

I don't think the hypnosis worked... or rather, I think it worked, but not in the way that was intended.

The hypnotist said that Oh Dae-Su would split into two people: the one who didn't know the secret, who she called Oh Dae-Su, and the one who did, called "the monster". The monster would then turn and walk away, aging one year a step until he got to age 70, when he peacefully died. The hypnotist's intent was to make Oh Dae-Su forget the secret. Her problem was that the man being hypnotized is no longer Oh Dae-Su... he has become the monster.

Several times throughout the movie, he reflects on what he has become, after fifteen years imprisonment, and resorting to such extreme violence to get his revenge. My theory is that the hypnosis did nothing but finally strip away his old identity, leaving him to walk away, holding his terrible secret for the rest of his life, until he dies.

I think it is a beautiful ending - not necessarily happy...He made the best of a pretty awful situation because he loves his daughter. No good would have come to anyone from knowing that information.

Wouldn't it make much more logical sense if Oh Dae Su would ask the hypnotist to make him and his daughter forget they ever fell in love? That way they could return to their lives, and maybe Oh Dae could even visit his daughter later, as the father that returns (given that there was a way to not get prosecuted for his wife's murder). That would be a logical happy ending.

I just don't find it logical that a man who is not particularly fond of incest - as the movie seems to suggest - would not choose this as a solution. He would leave his daughter (heartbroken but better than having sex with her) or would do the hypnosis solution I wrote above.

Still can't wrap my head around this choice. Has the director said anything more about this ending?

No, it isn't.

If continuing fúcking your daughter and not feel shame or guilt about it is a happy ending, then I don't want to know what you consider a sad ending 😓😕