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Can some who understood everything please explain ...

posted 10 years ago by DontMessWithZohan
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I liked this movie, even though I did not understood everything. Can someone please explain some of the things that I did not understood? From my understanding,

- The whole movie is just an imagination of Neeson as he writes in a room from the beginning of the movie till the end with sorrow of drowning of his son.

- Kunis/Franco story is trying to show the reasonable mistake of Kunis regarding their child, how she is not accepting her own mistake, and how Franco is unwilling to forgive her.

- Brody/Moran story is trying to show how Brody suffering from his daughter's loss is trying to move on by helping someone who is in trouble regarding her child.

- Wilde, I think is Neeson's memory rather than a imaginary character. If not, she is representing Neeson's mistress. So, Wilde, Basinger, Neeson's publisher and Wilde's father are real people one-way-or-other.

My questions are:

1. Is Neeson himself writing a multiple interlocking stories? He is writing the story of Wilde, so he is either writing three stories or he is only imagining two stories while writing a story about Wilde.

2. Why is Kunis character is in Neeson/Wilde hotel, although the two stories are in different cities? Maybe Neeson is only using some parts of his real life event in Kunis/Franco story (like room full of white roses) and there is no deep thought about it.

3. Brody/Moran story is so much unrelated from Kunis/Franco story and Neeson/Wilde story. It is only connected to Neeson/Basinger story. Yet, Kunis' lawyer, Maria Bello, happens to be Brody's ex-wife. I don't know if it has any significance. And why did Maria Bello had to swim and disappear?

4. In the last scene, when Neeson chases Wilde, he also sees Kunis and Moran. My understanding is that Kunis, Brody and Neeson were in similar mental state. So, Neeson seeing Moran in that last scene did not made any sense to me. Maybe he is just imagining hot chicks at that time.

5. What is the meaning of the movie title 'Third Person' justified for all stories?

Thanks.

[–] Judimex 10 years ago

Maybe try not to understand it but put it down to a bad movie but with great actors in it.

If it harms none, do what thou wilt.

[–] Judimex 10 years ago

Maybe try not to understand it but put it down to a bad movie but with great actors in it.

If it harms none, do what thou wilt.

[–] Dr_Sagan 10 years ago

As I'm seeing most of the people in this board got it right.
I decided to post my opinion in your thread as it is the most clean and I do like the bold letters!

Anyway...
Your points are correct. About the questions. Just some thoughts.

1. IMO Neeson in the dark room writes what we saw in the movie between the first and the last shot of him there. So 3 stories. The Neeson/Wilde/Paris story exposes Wilde's "intimate" relationship with her father.

2. The way I see it, this has nothing to do with the book he's writing. It's just an attempt to alert the audience that these 3 stories are not real, so to look them with a different perspective. It starts subtle early in the movie, then becomes more apparent until the end where the characters fade away.

3. Why Bello fades away just as the other imaginary characters. Now, you are right. Although Brody's character was closer to the real Neeson than the imaginary one (he was responsible for the death of his son in a pool because of a phone call), his story with Atias and her daughter, and the scam and the money (all the money he had) seems less connected. Maybe its the anticipation of someone with whom he can't be happy again "no questions asked, about the past" as the Atias character said in the end.

4. Maybe that Atias turned and smile has a significance. The other 2 girls were the guilty feelings and Atias was the possibility of something else.

5. Early in the movie Wilde comments about Neeson writing for himself in the "Third Person" in his journal/notebook.

- No. I just don't understand why you call yourself "He."
- "He" thought this. "She" said that.

The "She" there might have the special meaning the he projects himself to a female character too (Kunis).

And in the last minutes about the color white.

And the color of the lies he tells.

Cosmos hates Google.

[–] terelem-haha 10 years ago

Dealing with guilt by writing a book about it:
1. reasonable mistake can cause accidental near death; kunis/franco storyline; real death in the writers life
2. try to save someone instead; brody/moran storyline; real life affair with wilde's character maybe in order to save her from her father, also moran's daughter is likely to be sex abused.
3. more tragedy: loosing the love of his life because she is involved in the accidental death of his son, hence failing to save her from her father.

[–] IL_Maestro 10 years ago

Nice post and I agree with the previous posters

1. he wrote all the stories including the Wilde story which probably happened but she is not there with him at that moment and she left him earlier after reading his journal
she is a real person but he included her in his story with the other fictional persons having a glimpse of himself

2. She wasn't really there, it is a story he wrote as he never left his room from the first scene so all of it is the story he wrote
if you would remember she was writing the address then someone came in the room but was never shown and also the woman who deleted Brody voice call before listening to it she was not shown, all those were stories a human was writing and therefore like a dream not everything makes sense or shown clearly
also Franco's kid told him "watch me" when he was asleep, that is what Neeson's kid told him before and also Anna told him the same words

3. Brody story has a glimpse of Neeson's real story as his kid drowned in the swimming pool when he had a call that he claimed was for business
his ex wife was Mila's lawyer and Mila was fictional so Maria Bello was also fictional resembling his wife Elaine/Basinger and she went into the swimming pool as Elaine did later in the movie and told him that on the fone near the end

4. He was chasing an illusion, all those didn't exist in reality and he wasn't even there it was the story he wrote
he never left his place in first scene, he was writing what we saw in the movie from A to Z but parts of it were true like a kid drowning and the kid's mom hesitant to swim but later she did it and probably the whole Wilde story with her dad and Neeson happened before that.

5. the title refers to how he wrote his own story, same way he wrote his own journal using a third person
that happens when you instead of using "I" you use "He"
I am not sure how to explain it.

It is never about what happened, it is only how you look at it!

[–] brianreid-44231 8 years ago

Most people on this board seem to grasp the intricate literary conceits that Paul Haggis has used in this movie. It's all a big multi-layered exercise in projecting the author's (Liam) experience into fictional settings as a way to resolve and understand the trauma of his son's accidental death. Which explains the title and why the title helps viewers make sense of a story that would otherwise be riddled with inconsistencies.

In my opinion, the only "real" people in the film are Neeson/Basinger. Consider: There are three "fictional" narratives intersecting -- the Brody/Rome yarn, the Kunis/Franco/New York yarn, and the Wilde-and-father yarn in Paris. Each is a fictional creation of Neeson, with characters acting as surrogates for Neeson (mostly) and in one case Basinger (Bello). The three "plots" -- Kunis' custody battle; Brody's trouble with the Italian gangster; and Wilde's incestuous entanglement with her father -- are all a bit over-the-top and full of holes, proving only that Neeson (not Haggis) is floundering both as a writer and as a grieving, guilt-ridden father/husband. This explains oddities like the multiple cars, the characters fading out at the end, and the note that moves between hotels in New York and Paris.

Who is the Wilde character? I think she is a wistful figment of Neeson's imagination, but based on the woman from his real life with whom he had an adulterous affair. Hint: at the end, when Basinger asks on the phone if "she" is there with him, he says no, she left him two months earlier.

It's all a bit of a puzzle but quite satisfying too, and I admire Haggis' intent here. I think it could have been better if he had developed the Franco character a bit more and maybe given us a bit more backstory on the Wilde character, but otherwise it holds together.