The Ending - Interpretations:

SPOILERS - The Ending


MY INTERPRETATION -

There are two Ting-yins at the end of the film. The one that we followed through the re-cycle world is the one that we see wake up at the end. The one in the study typing is wearing glasses, and through a flashback we can conclude that she is actually the first Ting-yin we see in the film, first seeing her at the conference. The trick would be to work out exactly when Ting-yin stops wearing glasses. Is it an important clue, or just a coincidence? The phone call at the end, of a baby crying, is her unborn daughter, Ting-yu trying to reach her. Why is she still lost, when we just saw her and and Ting-yin re-united?

I have two ideas about the end of the film:

A) When the Ting-yin at the end abandoned the story that we watched for most of the film, she effectively abandoned herself, and therefore her daughter Ting-yu was still forgotten. The phone call at the end was from Ting-yu, and having escaped, the abandoned Ting-yin was also there. The theory could just end there and be as simple as that, though I thought that possibly the ghost that had been present in the beginning of film had actually been the abandoned Ting-yin all along, or perhaps she had become another ghost, just like the one at the start of the film. Ting-yu warned her that if she herself left the re-cycle world at Transit it would make her into a wandering spirit, and therefore if Ting-yi had been abandoned, the same would happen to her. I think that the facial expression of the other Ting-yin is not that of recognition, but of horror, as she doesn't see herself standing at the stairs, but actually sees a faceless ghost.

If the ghost at the start was always the abandoned Ting-yin, and the phone calls were always from Ting-yu. This would make the journey through the re-cycle world a flashback of sorts, and make the film kind of wrap around .. and er .. re-cycle. This would fit the theme of the film, and the fact that the "ghosts" were instrumental is sending Ting-yin to the re-cycle world in the first place, from which she escaped, indicates that perhaps that the events in the film are a repeating and evolving cycle.

B) I think that possibly the daughter, Ting-Yu, was re-incarnated in some way at the end when Ting-yin pleaded with her to come back. Possibly the re-cycle world is actually an afterlife for all things, the gears of creation and re-creation. The Ting-yin shown at the end, and also at he conference at the beginning, is actually somehow, atleast part Ting-yu, and the Ting-yin that we see wake up, and who we followed through the re-cycle world, is the abandoned, and a wandering spirit of Ting-yin. This would also make the events in the re-cycle world a precede the haunting scenes at the beginning, making the film wrap around.

Perhaps the theory is far fetched, but the Ting-yin at the desk did say that she changed the story to be about reincarnation, though it still doesn't quite fit .. yet.

I dunno what do you think?