Hi folks,
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Lists and Recommendations
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 11, 2017 06:12 AM)
Hi folks,
to explain what I mean: There are movies which tell a story but don't give us a clue to understand some important details, or where there is an "open end" (e.g. will the characters make it back from the desert where their plane had crashed, or are they to die there? or, another scenery: when we see some lone survivors of an unknown catastrophic event (pandemia, war, natural disaster) but no explanation is given what actually had happened; and we don't know whether those who are still alive will, finally, manage to overcome the chaos and "begin from the start" at another place which is not devastated?
Or, some mysterious events are depicted - and the viewer is left speculating what it was. No solution, no clue, nothing!
Example 1 (Caution: Spoilers!!)
Temps du loup - Mother, daughter and son, wandering through a rural part of France, the whole area seems to be deserted, at some point they meet other people who concentrated at a railroad station, hoping some day a train will come and save them. BUT we don't know what had happened, nor do we get a clue whether indeed, some day "the army, paramedics, etc. will come and save them all" - or are they doomed to die from starvation, sooner or later Interesting movie but left me puzzled, asking myself, now what was THAT?
Example 2 (again, spoiler warning
Picnic at Hanging Rock
A forgotten gem from Australia - purportedly based on real events (but that wasn't the case) - one day, a group of teenage school girls vanishes while on a trip near a place called Hanging Rock eerie atmosphere, just a minimum of blood (if any); really this is a good movie but again we don't get any explanation what has happened!
Example 3 (more spoilers, hahaha)
Anyone who watched "Burnt Offerings" and has a definite explanation what exactly was it all about? We don't know what was the real nature of the "evil" which was connected with the house and as there are NO survivors left, we wouldn't even get an eyewitnesses' testimony, afterwards. Pretty eerie movie, too (AND I love Lee Montgomery's early performances, especially in that movie!
There must be lots more which leave BIG holes in the plot - I don't mean factual errors, but just things that are left unexplained - and the viewers can only guess and will never know for sure what was going on
Here's one to show that it IS possible to tell a mysterious story without leaving us standing clueless in the end - Brecha (Spain, 2009, I think): I had to watch it two or three times before I got the clue for the strange behaviour of the main characters (Jose Ramon Lafita was just brilliant!); but in THIS case, at least there ARE some explanations. Lots of flashbacks, not all of them in chronological order, very difficult to understand An intelligent movie; you can't just leave the room for some minutes now and then continue - on the contrary you'll stick to the TV from 1st to last minute, I think
And this one - Luminous Motion (starring Eric Lloyd): Again, I thought, what the hell was that? Just some days before, I had watched Eric in the wonderfully easy-going comedy Dunston Checks In, and then got surprised by that very, very strange movie. (Took me quite a while to find a region 2 copy!) Eric was adorable in both movies, but I still don't know what to make of "Luminous Motion" was it in part a mixture of reality and dreaming/nightmares/illusions, or what??)
Last not least - WHY did in Walkabout (1971) the father try to kill his own kids, then shot himself, leaving these two alone in the outback?? I love and hate it at the same time when movie directors confront us with such riddles!
Kind regards
sprendlinger -
eolloe — 9 years ago(January 13, 2017 05:12 PM)
I didn't read any of your spoilers, so not sure if this is what you mean.
anything by David Lynch
Caché
Swimming Pool (2003)
Benny's Video
One Hour Photo
The Hunt
Doubt
Enter the Void
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Post Tenebras Lux -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 11:53 PM)
Hello eolloe,
interesting list, thank you!
As an afterthought - several of Jodorowsky's movies don't make sense either I didn't mention them in my original posting because I (don't)* think such strange pieces of celluloid like
Santa Sangre
or
Montana Sagrada
(The Holy Mountain) aren't movies at all but rather senseless sequences of torture, gore, and violent scenes.
Perhaps I should have mentioned that I like movies about unsolved crimes (The Black Dahlia, for instance) too; but I think it's better to start another thread, under that headline, later on
Kind regards
sprendlinger
*) Edit Jan. 25: leave out "don't", otherwise the phrase makes no sense. Thanks to OldSamVibes who noticed the error -
OldSamVimes — 9 years ago(January 22, 2017 04:45 AM)
because I don't think such strange pieces of celluloid like Santa Sangre or Montana Sagrada (The Holy Mountain) aren't movies at all but rather senseless sequences of torture, gore, and violent scenes.
You don't think that or you do think that? -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 25, 2017 02:05 AM)
Hello OldSamVibes,
you caught me!
Now
I see the double negation (I don't think / aren't movies) too! Sorry - I'm not a native speaker of English!
Now and then, some errors
do
occur
; grammar and prepositions are my weak points (I must admit I'm just too lazy to do some exercises, haha) but I hope that on the whole my English is OK, so far
Of course what I meant to say was that in my opinion, the two movies I mentioned are not movies at all
Kind regards
sprendlinger -
this_seat_taken — 9 years ago(January 21, 2017 06:58 PM)
"Doubt" is a special case; the question is whether Father Flynn is guilty. The answer is not open to interpretation, like the conclusions that a glass is half full or half empty are equally valid. It's known that the writer Shanley told the actor Hoffman the answer. So "Doubt" is a puzzle with a solution, but I for one don't know what it is.
-
MikeF-6 — 9 years ago(January 13, 2017 06:11 PM)
A bakers dozen of great puzzelers whose unexplained questions become, not plot holes, but a part of their greatness
L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961)
(Last Year At Marienbad) / Alain Resnais
El Ángel Exterminador (1962)
(The Exterminating Angel) / Luis Buñuel
Le procès (1962)
(The Trial) / Orson Welles
8½ (1963)
/ Federico Fellini
L'eclisse (1962)
(The Eclipse) / Michaelangelo Antonioni
The Servant (1963)
/ Joseph Losey
Persona (1966)
/ Ingmar Bergman
Ulysses (1967)
/ Joseph Strick
Teorema (1968)
(Theorem) / Pier Paolo Pasolini
Castle Keep (1969)
/ Sydney Pollack
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
(The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie) / Luis Bunuel
Primer (2004)
/ Shane Carruth
Children of Men (2006)
/ Alfonso Cuarón
mf
I know that, in spite of the poets, youth is not the happiest season" -
OIF-Retread — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 01:11 AM)
out of curiosity, what do you find puzzling about "
Castle Keep (1969)
"? it is a rather strange movie, but one of my favorites.
i was just wondering if maybe you had some insight on something i had missed.
"I'll do the masterminding around here."
-Sgt. Stryker, "Sands of Iwo Jima" -
MikeF-6 — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 07:01 PM)
There were just some strange happenings that gave what might have been a straight-forward war movie a kind of mystical sheen. There is the eagle's cry that Peter Falk kept hearing and the voice over telling
how the men in the forward foxhole were getting to safety when the camera showed that they had been killed.
Finally, the escape of the final two survivors is presented as something of a transcendence. I guess the "puzzling" aspects are not as strong as in some of the other films listed, but it is, as you say, "a rather strange movie."
mf
I know that, in spite of the poets, youth is not the happiest season" -
OIF-Retread — 9 years ago(January 22, 2017 10:59 AM)
yeah, he eagle's cry was interesting. i assumed it was some kind of forewarning of doom. i'll have to rewatch it and see who else hears it. the scene with Amberjack, Rossi, and Clearboy is my favorite; the narrator happily telling of their miraculous escape, and then harshly cutting away to Benjamin saying all three are dead. i think it is because the narrator is Benjamin reading from the book he will write. in his book he has written a happy fictional ending rather than the truth.
"I'll do the masterminding around here."
-Sgt. Stryker, "Sands of Iwo Jima" -
Franco_Zed — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 05:26 PM)
"more questions than answers"
I might be interpreting this different from what you meant.
The following films have some amount of
unsolved mystery or unexplained events.
I think of them as films that are a puzzle to solve, but they are also open to interpretation, so there is no clear answer to the puzzle.
Mulholland Falls
Donnie Darko
Twelve Monkeys
Brazil
Total Recall
I Know Who Killed Me
eXistenZ
Dark Corners (2006, Thora Birch) It's not very good, but it is definitely strange.
Movies that leave out crucial information either about
huge events that happened before
the story starts or about
how it ends
(open-ended).
Last Night (1998, Sandra Oh)
28 Days Later
Seeking a Friend For the End of the World
Cabin in the Woods
Inception
K-Pax
Limbo (1999, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn)
I haven't seen the films you listed, and I didn't read your spoilers, but I think some of the films above might be what you're looking for.
Hate leads to anger.
Anger leads to the Dark Side.
This is a Haiku. -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 11:39 PM)
Hello Franco_Zed,
you're right, these movies are just what I meant (I know only about one third of those movies you listed, though; but the plot descriptions on imdb and from other sources indicate these movies could be interesting; perhaps I should try and check out the others too ;-).
As to movies in general, I must admit I don't know much about those which have been made during the last, say, 10 or 12 years I prefer the older "classics"
One really fascinating movie which doesn't solve the mysteries which it presents but
does
give some hints where the truth might be is
Contact- do you know that one?
(Spoiler warning:) It's fantastic that they just don't tell us exactly what has happened to the main character during her trip in space; we are "fed" with some tips and hints but nothing more. So, in the end you don't know what was real and what was just illusion
Kind regards
sprendlinger
- do you know that one?
-
Franco_Zed — 9 years ago(January 20, 2017 12:23 AM)
I love Contact. That's a great example of a movie with unsolved mysteries and an open ending. I liked the novel too.
I hope you enjoy some new movies.
Hate leads to anger.
Anger leads to the Dark Side.
This is a Haiku. -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 20, 2017 01:20 AM)
Hello again, Franco_Zed
thanks for the quick reply!
Some other movies came to my mind where there are unsolved questions / where the end is open to speculation:
(again, I should insert a spoiler warning - but I'm sure you know all 3 of them)
1)
Omega Man- we don't get to know whether Charlton Heston's character makes it, in the end, to a place where there are no mutants and which hasn't been devastated by the catastrophe (and we aren't informed either what exactly was the nature of the catastrophe; I think there are some hints that an experiment with biological warfare got out of control)
On the contrary there's
Road to Perdition
(I think this is from the early 1990ies) where a group of people having survived a war (possibly nuclear bombing included) makes a journey full of dangers, heading westward through the U.S. and, in this case, they finally reach an area where there is clean water and food absolutely unrealistic but I liked the computer tricks, e.g. the giant mutated scorpions in the desert, etc.
- One very scary movie is
The Day After
- I think the horrible consequences of nuclear war hadn't been portrayed so drastically before BUT there are some details which make me suspect they wanted to leave some dimmed rays of hope, towards the end of the movie:
a) When the Army showed up and the surviving farmers met (in the open air, instead of a sheletered room, imagine that!), one of the officers said something to the effect that the polluted earth should be removed some inches (or rather, one foot?) deep - whereupon one of the farmers sarcastically retorts, in a low voice: "Well, and the soil gone, what is left?" (i.e. barren ground! but nevertheless, there IS some "administration" still working, there's not an
absolute
chaos, as depicted in many other post-apocalyptic movies; and some efforts to provide help are shown. Does that mean they wanted to imply, if we hold out long enough we could survive even
that
?
b) The other detail, pointing the same way, is when one of the doctors at the hospital reads the radiation level (by exposing himself to the fall-out, when walking around on the hospital roof - how useless is
that
!) and I am almost sure that the second time he does that, the level is to be said significantly lower than when he checked it the first time. Again, that sounds like, hold out long enough and the Army, National Guard, Red Cross, whoever is going to get us out of that mess Really strange, indeed!
Kind regards
sprendlinger
- we don't get to know whether Charlton Heston's character makes it, in the end, to a place where there are no mutants and which hasn't been devastated by the catastrophe (and we aren't informed either what exactly was the nature of the catastrophe; I think there are some hints that an experiment with biological warfare got out of control)
-
Franco_Zed — 9 years ago(January 20, 2017 02:34 PM)
Hi. Guess what? I haven't seen those movies.
It appears that we are watching different movies from each other.
I definitely like movies that are off the beaten path. Where nothing is really explained, or you can't tell whether an actor is playing 2 different characters or not. Or there's a big twist or 2, like in Sixth Sense.
Right now I'm rewatching the TV series, Orphan Black, season 4. Have you seen Orphan Black? I would recommend it to anyone who likes weird stuff.
Hate leads to anger.
Anger leads to the Dark Side.
This is a Haiku. -
eolloe — 9 years ago(January 20, 2017 03:16 PM)
Omega Man - we don't get to know whether Charlton Heston's character makes it, in the end, to a place where there are no mutants and which hasn't been devastated by the catastrophe
Sprendlinger, it's clearly time you rewatched The Omega Man. -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 23, 2017 06:49 AM)
Hello eolloe,
you're right - now I think I remember C. Heston's character dies shortly before the movie ends, after he had been wounded by one of the mutants (?) - but the others start their journey hmmm - I really can't remember
Anyway, Omega Man is a movie which doesn't give us a final solution (and of course that's better than a Disney-esque (pseudo-)Happy End!
Kind regards
sprendlinger