MovieChat Forums > Silent House (2012) Discussion > The beer bottles...

The beer bottles...

posted 13 years ago by Mr_Ectoplasma
13 replies | jump to latest

I LOVE this movie. I've seen it probably 10 times since it was first released and I THINK I've decoded most of what was going on, but there's still one ambiguous detail that I have trouble pinpointing— the beer bottles.

They come up a lot in the film; we see them in the house, there's one rolling on the floor when she first encounters her "attacker", and then of course there is the hallucination scene where she sees her younger self in a bathtub full of beer bottles and bloody water.

When I first saw the movie in theaters, I thought that she had been sexually violated with the bottles or something after her dad got drunk (at the end of the film she's holding a beer bottle and she stares at it and drops it suddenly, crying "daddy, it hurts, it hurts").

But the more I've watched it, the more I have to wonder if the bottles just symbolized her father's alcohol problem, and that she associated his alcoholism and, thus the bottles, with her sexual abuse.

THEN someone on this board brought up the fact that she also could have had an alcohol problem herself— if you notice in the beginning of the film after Sophia leaves, she goes and takes a swig of a beer. Not that it's weird for a young woman to drink, but the placement of it in the movie seemed to have some sort of purpose, I'd think, especially since there was evidence of her having self-destructive behavior (the cuts on her wrists).

So, yeah. I'm curious as to what the consensus is on the beer bottles... just a symbol of alcoholism, or something more?

[–] jlfratilla 13 years ago

I was curious about the alcohol bottles, too, especially considering the bath scene. I'm wondering if she had an alcohol problem that allowed her to forget her childhood. I also kind of feel like the bottles represent the loss of innocense and lack of childhood. Alcohol is a very adult thing for a child.

[–] Tyler-A-Arse 13 years ago

They seemed irrelevant until I saw the bathroon scene. I had assumed she was abused with them, but I really have no clear idea.

[–] kat_man22 12 years ago

It seemed to me because of the way she "fed" the beer to her dad while he was tied up that she was mimicking what was done to her, i.e. they got her drunk before abusing her so she would be less likely to put up a fight and/or remember the whole ordeal.

[–] zombieeducation 12 years ago

Ah, nice point, Kat_man! I thought her feeding him the beer was odd, but never really connected it with her childhood, but that makes perfect sense!

[–] SWLinPHX-2 12 years ago

I thought her force feeding him the beer bottle was a metaphor for the fellatio she was forced to perform on him. But I also think it was that the two men were drunk when it happened and also that she buried and suppressed the memories through drinking herself.

Was the "childhood friend" Sophie real? What was her purpose in the film if not? They already had her younger self (as a brunette) to represent the young abused girl so who was the neighbor girl?

Also, there were two men around the pool table (two sets of legs seen) right, during the molestation scene of the girl in the ballerina tutu? That was her and her uncle when she was young, right?

Who was the "monster-man" we saw walking around with the little girl? Who did he represent, how she saw her father or something else?

Finally, wasn't the father's eye socket all torn out and bloody when she first "found him" on the floor?

twitter.com/swlinphx

[–] mph1-3 12 years ago

Yes, I thought his eye was removed when she first found him.

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[–] ajnemajrje 12 years ago

I have two thoughts about the beer bottles

1)Her father was a drinker and may have been drunk when he raped her.

2)Thats what her father may have used to rape her.

The tinkling of ice cubes might have been a sound that scared her as a child as it meant her father was drinking and she knew what was coming.

[–] kporter101 12 years ago

it didn't even occur to me that she might've been abused with the beer bottles (yikes!!) but that does resolve another question I had. In the scene where she's in the bathroom and her younger self is in the tub, Sarah looks at the wall and sees a toilet in which blood is flowing. I think this is right after seeing her younger self in the tub with all the beer bottles. Then she looks back at the tub and there is blood and beer bottles. When I saw that, I didn't entirely get it but it would make sense as an allusion to being abused w/ beer bottles.

On the other hand, if she wasn't abused w/ the beer bottles, the blood in the toilet could still be a sort of distorted flashback to the aftermath of the abuse. The beer bottles could just represent her being given alcohol and/ or turning to alcohol which would explain the holes in her memory.

[–] psdhart 9 years ago

it didn't even occur to me that she might've been abused with the beer bottles

me too :(

[–] summer_wine7 10 years ago

Actually I instantly just saw the beer bottles for what I felt was the most obvious explanations... dad would snatch her to this house to abuse her and drank a lot as well - as though they were 'sin-binge' trips... and he possibly also fed her alcohol to make her less able to fight back.

[–] rupert-ian 9 years ago

I think this is the most likely answer. The people thinking she was raped WITH the bottles are just taking it a little too literally.

Dad got drunk and molested her, and fed her beer as well.