When I saw this last night I couldn't help get the feeling that the all the characters on the train were meant to be him at different stages of his life with the kid representing his inner demons.
Am I way off the mark here or does anyone agree?
Yeah your way off the mark stmol. The film is'nt about death or life but how different people react to different situatons. The woman took the the easy way out by stepping off the train in mid-journey but the Kid wanted to end his life on a high by killing some Gards. The reason Donnelly did'nt die is because he had his Faith all his life but became lost when his wife passed away. The end is a perfect example of this when he put away the picture of Jesus but the one of his wife was still showing representing that she will be always with him including his faith and that is what he realised at the end.
Well couldn't he have killed himself? or was the gun out of bullets?
shareI believe the earlier poster is incorrect. Donnelly's faith has gone. He is fully intending to kill himself at the end, he just has no bullets left.
shareI don't know if Donnelly meant to go through with it completely. He got nervous and dropped the gun, and the shot went off. Then he realized what he was doing.
shareMy memory may be shady, but after he drops the gun isn't he disapointed that ther aren't any bullets left?
shareIt is kind of the inverse of a scene from Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters," where Allen's character considers suicide w/ a shotgun, changes his mind, then drops the gun & it goes off. Interestingly this is a movie where Allen's character toys w/ converting to Catholicism, and Gleeson's character turns down the picture of Jesus.
shareWell if the movie was as simple as - no bullet left ohh hell I couldn't shoot myself when I could because I shot the rabbit with the bullet left - then everything else displayed in the movie would be just to make the movie longer and no other reason. You can see it many ways. 1. no bullets left - god was present at the time for him just like the kid had argued and/or warned him. 2. Death of the rabbit turned on a new light of warning in his head. etc etc....
One thing to point out - and which I thought was really important was the story that the kid tells about the blown out cow. Great analogy about human behavior and why people do the things they do when everything seems so messed up.
There is more to the meaning of it all, but maybe next time i'll write more.
I expect more in a movie of this kind though.
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Actually, the gun misfires. [I watch movies with captions on =P and it even says <gun misfires>] and he looks down, somewhat surprised, to see smoke billowing up from the chamber.. normally, when a gun fires, as the bullet is travelling down the barrel it causes a vacuum behind it, bringing pretty much all smoke created with it. Hrm -- Watching it on youtube, the timing seems off, however, the barrel would be smoking, not the chamber, if it had properly fired.
shareyeah he pulls the trigger while its aimed at him head. there is definitely a sound of the hammer hitting. i think it surprises him, he drops the gun and the impact on the floor fully discharges it.
so he did go through with it, but fate intervened. (god only had a six shooter = his wife, two cot deaths, the bereaved mother, the kids mother and the kid)
I think that the guy's wife was one of the cot deaths that was mentioned and the sixth death is the rabbit.
*eviecrep uoy tahw enifed enoyna tel t'nod ,tra fo tuo tnereffid gnihtemos sekat enoyrevE*
Just setting out to be a weird little film and thats what it was, probably the only reason I liked it...
I am the son of a man named Tom.