were they working together or did The Thief just stumble on to the secret of the worm - was The Thief responsible for all of The Sampled?
Your guess is as good as mine, for all we know The Thief and The Sampler could be aliens from the planet Vesuvian who came down to Earth disguised as caterpillars.
Here's a slinky, go play.
i assumed the sampler was the mastermind and the thief was essentially a minion. but who the $#*&^*&*& knows
shareCarruth seems to like to thrown in a "Granger".
Im the Alpha and the Omoxus. The Omoxus and the Omega
Carruth says in his interview that they did not know each other. He also does not say how the sampler knew the infested ones.
See my "Insights and Observations Teaser Trailer" thread.
Carruth has an absolute genius for devising subtle clues that answer questions like these. I'm having a blast teasing them out.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
We do not know the answer to either question.
Who knew first?
Did they know each other?
How long did the blue dust exist?
How long has the thief know about the blue dust?
Did shane steal the money at the bank cause of the blue dust, I think that is a yes.
But if you watch primer and upstream color, you realize Shane Carruth is not about answering,,,he wants his viewers to have unanswered questions.
I met him in washington d.c. what a nice person.
Who knew first?
Did they know each other?
How long did the blue dust exist?
How long has the thief know about the blue dust?
Did shane steal the money at the bank cause of the blue dust, I think that is a yes.
How long did the blue dust exist?I agree with nightmareswin's "we can't know", but perhaps we can set some rough boundaries on the cycle. For example: could the cycle exist before electricity? Could worm-charming be done mechanically? share
I know that the writer/director is silent on the matter, but here are my thoughts:
I can't say for certain whether the sampler knew the thief (or if he did know him that he knew the thief's nefarious schemes), but it feels implied. It also seems clear to me that the sampler knew the orchid seller. The thief obviously knows the orchid seller, but it is unclear whether she knows the uses of the flower (though she clearly knew that the plant were infested with the worms).
Sampler knowing the Thief:
1) The surgery apparatus set up by the sampler is complex and includes anesthesia, it is therefore not something you would just leave up where random people would come.
2) The sampler was clearly expecting a victim as he had the surgery prepared, including a new host pig.
3) He had the summoning music playing. We are not given to understand that he goes out, sets everything up, and plays this music on the off hand chance that a victim happens to be in the neighborhood.
Conclusion: My inference is that the thief somehow alerts the sampler that a victim is coming.
Sampler knowing the Orchid Seller:
1) The sampler specifically says that he has a buyer for the piglets.
2) If he is not receiving compensation, what are his motives for dumping the piglets? If he didn't want piglets then he would have just kept the males away from the females in estrus.
Conclusion: My inference is that dumping them when he could have sold them makes no sense unless he somehow knew his part in the cycle.
Random Opinions:
1) The sampler is at least as bad as the thief in that he not only makes his money through compositions based on the lives of the victims (He had to realize that Kris suffered from the loss of the piglets), but that he was propagating the very thing that allowed the victimization to happen in the first place.
2) The boys playing in the thief's yard seemed to have a relationship similar to that of the victim/pig. It is possible that this relationship is how the thief first discovered the powers of the worms.
^Very interesting, thank you for explaining the plotline further. I still can't make up my mind if this film was truly brilliant, or an incredibly pretentious piece of artsy-meets-lazy screenwriting crap.
Just sayin'...
Oh, I completely agree. My husband hated the film. I opinion on the film vacillates between it being an incoherent and pretentious waste of time or a subtle and cunning thriller...
shareI think the easiest explanation would be that they know each other, based on the sampler's surgical equipment. It's such an exotic solution it seems hard to believe he came across these people by chance and came up with such a bizarre technique as a solution.
It looks like their duties or needs are very different and frequent communication isn't necessary. But does the sampler get a cut, or is he in it just as a voyeur?
That they don't know each other could hold water except that that would mean the sampler is getting these infected people without knowing or caring how or why they got infected. And by pure accident he discovered a way and was medically proficient enough to psychically connect to these people who show up to his sound experiments. He'd rather keep this discovery to himself than tell any medical establishment.
What Carruth has said and what is shown in the movie sometimes contradict themselves, so I'm still on the fence. I don't need to know the origin of it all, but I am very curious about their connection, if there is one.
Well put! This was my biggest question after seeing the movie, and you answered it with impressive clarity.
shareThanks for this post! I think I agree with it completely. It clears a lot of this up. Especially the part about the kids at the beginning having that symbiotic relationship, which I had almost forgotten about at the end of the film.
While all the people involved in the process had different uses for the "worms", and different motivations for using them, I think it would be rather silly to suggest it wasn't a collaborative effort. If they didn't know of one another, it would leave entirely too much up to chance. Far more than there was already.
The original instance was just knowing that he could use the worm to con people out of money. He did it with the woman, which we see. He did it with the man by getting him to steal money from his job. I think we can assume that this was their main motivation of taking money from these people. The other two steps clearly had some sort of financial motivation as well I suspect. Not much reason other than that to do it.
All the other stuff the original mind control is about? The writing down of that book, making them do all this weird stuff? I have little idea on this. I don't understand it.
All the relationships of course are just made inside the process of the worm and this is the emotional aspect of the movie. It doesn't eed to be explained much. We know they suffered the trauma and their lives were "ruined". We see them understand and cope. Eventually breaking the cycle and finding a way to pick up the shattered pieces and restore some hope.
The OP asking this simple question really helped me to piece this movie together a bit better and not feel like everything was so abstract. I was lost in the visuals of it and I couldn't get my mind to connect the dots clearly. Obviously I don't get most of the symbolism, or many aspects of the film yet, but that question, and your answer to it, helped me a great deal to change the way I though about it. I think it's just how each of our minds work that we need something to relate to our thought processes to understand a bit better.
The sampler specifically says that he has a buyer for the piglets.
If he is not receiving compensation, what are his motives for dumping the piglets?
If he didn't want piglets then he would have just kept the males away from the females in estrus.
He had to realize that Kris suffered from the loss of the pigletsWhy? (This conclusion is not at all obvious to me:-)
In my opinion the Sampler was also a victim of the Thief...
share