The (or my) answer to about 70% of the questions on here
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Triangle
hlshin — 10 years ago(February 09, 2016 12:53 AM)
To those asking about why she doesn't do things differently when she's back, why she keeps doing things over and over, how she can escape the loop, etc etc:
PS: this is purely, and obviously, my interpretation having studied mythology and the way the movie has chosen to interpret Sisyphus.
This movie references Sisyphus because it makes yet again another reference to mythology: Charon. Sisphus and Charon (again, in my opinion) explain this movie.
As the wife exclaims on the boat, Sisyphus "cheats death" and therefore is sentenced to rolling a boulder up a hill. As he nears the top, the boulder falls back down, and he spends his afterlife doing this process over and over again, hoping that each time he will complete the punishment and be finished.
Charon was the ferryman of the underworld. He guided recently passed souls into the underworld after death (and in some mythological tales, the living could pay to be ferried to the underworld and back in order to visit dead souls).
After the accident, the screen gets darker as the taxi appears. In the original accident that sets off the loop, Jess (original Jess) dies. (Perhaps for having been a "bad" mother, she is sentenced a punishment, much like Sisyphus, and will be condemned to doing her punishment over and over again.)
When the ferryman (taxi driver) asks Jess (Jess's soul) where she'd like to go, Jess attempts to cheat death by going back to the harbor to try again - hoping for a different outcome where she will be reunited with a son who does not die in the accident (the original Jess in the dress) - rather than accepting the accident and subsequent deaths that her actions caused.
Jess falls asleep on the boat, and when she awakens, she explains that she had a bad dream but cannot remember what it was about. As this movie is also a supernatural horror, this is perhaps just one adjustment they made to try to fill in a plot hole. As she cannot remember the past she is trying to change, she boards the boat (some interpret this as purgatory rather than the punishment), unaware of the loops she will re-do. This is her punishment resetting. Jess is therefore starting at the bottom of the hill with her boulder, getting ready to roll it up this hill, only to do this over and over again. As Jess did not answer Charon correctly the first time in order to cheat death, he will continue to deliver Jess to her punishment over and over again. She doesn't change her answer and choose a different option just the way Sisyphus doesnt change his mind and choose not to roll the boulder up the hill once again.
As for the seemingly real world and pile of seagulls, once Jess dies, everything after is part of the punishment. This includes ringing her own doorbell, killing her "original" (but not the actual original) self, hitting the seagull, throwing it in the pile, and getting in the accident. She is already dead and the accident is just her cycle of punishment nearing the end, about to reset. We do not see the actual original accident. When the movie opens, we witness her in the underworld in the end of a loop (rolling the boulder).
As others mention in their posts: the plot hole is, of course, why after she dies in the original accident she chooses to go to the harbor. I chalk this up to just being a plot hole as many horror/supernatural films tend to have a few. Some say that once she dies, a random punishment is chosen for her. This makes sense as Charon's punishment of rolling a boulder was a bit random. It has nothing to do with his original death. For all we know, her original car accident had nothing to do with her dropping off her son in order to go to the boat, just as a boulder had nothing to do with Sisphyus' original death. The movie doesn't explain enough mythology to explain these plotholes and confusions for those who don't know mythology. -
Sanctus87 — 10 years ago(February 20, 2016 02:20 PM)
Why she chooses to go to the harbor when the taxi driver asks her is quite obvious IMO, she does it to complete another cycle so she can return to the moment when she comes back to the house so she can prevent the accident and save her son.
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Lizard51867 — 10 years ago(February 20, 2016 06:17 PM)
Interestingly, she never pays the taxi driver. They actually use a couple lines of dialogue on this.
-I'll leave the meter running. You're coming back, right?
-Yeah.
-Promise?
-Yeah.
That's not verbatim, but it's close. If she is effectively stiffing the ferryman, that might account for the punishment as well. -
the_notorious_bid — 10 years ago(March 18, 2016 02:16 PM)
I haven't watched it, recently
I have watched it a few times on cable.
My belief, concerning the mother wanting NOT to be as bad as she was:
She knows what she has done and wishes that she hadn't done them OR she has NOT had a psychotic break and there really are "less sane" versions of the mother committing these atrocities.
Hmm Does she become more sane, less sane or does she remain the same as these loops continue?
As for the loop If you are presented with a decision without knowing the outcome, you are likely to make the decision which you feel is best at that particular instance. So, if you make the right turn at Albuquerque, in each following iteration of the loop, not knowing the outcome, you'll make the same decision.
I'm assuming that this continual loop is inevitable. So, if the loop ever "closed" or "completed" in any particular scene, it would support my assumption.
So, in a continual loop (of sorts), which came first: The chicken or the egg?
In Triangle, which came first: The cause or the effect? -
celavstina — 9 years ago(July 29, 2016 06:58 AM)
Yea, but I was wondering why doesnt she just tries to NOT kill them all? Thats my biggest doubt about this great movie Because I remember when she was talking to her self when she saw the boat arriving again: IT COMES BACK WHEN THEY ALL DIE! Isnt it the next logical move NOT to kill them and see what happens?
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GreyHunter — 9 years ago(September 10, 2016 09:46 PM)
Because she's damned herself. She
can't
choose otherwise, not because someone or something is forcing her, but because she's convinced herself it's necessary. And, having no memory of previous cycles, she will always be convinced. This is who she is. She makes choices, and they are ultimately the most honest choices she could make. If they weren't completely true to her nature, at some point she'd make a different choice. But she never does because her choices are reflections of who she really is. It's the perfect punishment the punishment we inflict on ourselves is always more personal and inescapable than anything someone else could inflict on us.
It actually hearkens (intentionally? I couldn't say) to the most famous modern iteration of the theme behind the story of Sisyphus. In Camus' famous essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus," Sisyphus is the ultimate absurdist hero, a man who has defied the Gods by taking responsibility for his own doom. He may be damned, but it's a damnation of his own making, even if it was the Gods who appeared to be the agentys of his circumstances. By making the choice to defy them, he made the choice to be punished, and his endless toil therefore transforms from slavery to an almost ironic symbol of freedom. The Gods can do whatever they like to his body, but they can't change the fact that the defiance belonged to him alone. (But don't take the ending of the essay too literally if you bother to read it. Camus is being quite sardonic even when he's being serious.)
Granted, this is traveling far afield of Jess' doom, but the basic principle applies whatever her punishment, she is the one responsible for it. Not Death, not Charon, not the people around her. Just her. And since peace requires forgiveness, and forgiveness requires letting go of the anger, she'll never achieve peace because she has to be the one to forgive herself, and she'll never allow herself to remember why she needs forgiving. She'll doomed to keep trying to make something right that can't ever be made right, only forgiven. Or, as a wise person once said, you can't fix the past, only move on from it. -
warrior-poet — 9 years ago(September 13, 2016 03:14 PM)
not because someone or something is forcing her, but because she's convinced herself it's necessary.
BOOM
for the entire post. Nice to see someone else who gets it.
I'm something new entirely. With my own set of rules. I'm Dexter. Boo.
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xfastfurious15 — 9 years ago(August 20, 2016 07:21 PM)
I love your explanation of the movie! Except for one thing. She's not in "purgatory", because there is no such thing called purgatory in greek mythology. Purgatory is a Catholic/Christian concept.
Therefore, Jess is basically dead if we're following greek mythology terms. Like you said she cheated death when she made the deal with the taxi driver to kind of go back in time to get back to her son and keep him from dying. Yes she "cheated" death by not being stuck in the land of dead souls. But she's still technically dead because her punishment is she can never return to land of the living because no matter what she does the outcome will be the same.
the only problem is what is the original thing that sets of the accident?? She wasn't always destined to go on the ship, wash up on shore then kill her "bad mother" self. So what caused the accident before she made the deal with Charon? Because her son only freaked out about the blood on the windshield because he witnessed his mom killing her other self with the axe. So if he didn't witness that then he wouldn't have freaked out in the car and she wouldn't have turned her head to calm him, resulting in her crashing.
I bet you're wondering what a place like this is doing in a girl like me-The Mummy -
Joseph_J_Wood — 9 years ago(August 28, 2016 03:29 AM)
Hi. I just posted a similar interpretation. I must have missed your post when I was looking through what people have said. Apologies. I think you're quite right. I didn't think about the ferryman though, that's an extra layer that I didn't notice - I just saw it as analogous to the Sysiphus myth.