Joe didn't specificly reveal the truth to her, and I don't know any human being who could have just understood from that
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mark11111 — 14 years ago(November 13, 2011 04:09 AM)
Great catch, I was confused also and re-watched the scene of her saying goodbye a the end on my DVR with Subtitles turned on to see exactly what he said, but he never said anything revealing in dialog at least. I felt the same way that she somehow got it, but would have liked it to be a bit more obvious. What would have been nice is if the guy in the coffee shop actually was named Bill or something (I still can't believe she never got his name), then at the end after he came back, he could have said, I am Bill, to make it very clear to the audience that she knows.
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artistathome — 14 years ago(March 22, 2012 01:46 PM)
The ONLY way this makes sense is if Joe Black is able to let Susan get a glimpse of himself as Death. That has to be what has happened because virtually NO ONE would make that leap, that Joe is Death.
That is so stupid.
So Death must be a spirit who can do the impossible.
I loved it when Joe came back and was sort of clueless. I assumed that much of what went on he didn't know about, but some of it was a combinatiion of the two Joe's personalities.
Otherwise this movie makes little sense. -
Silverandwhite — 13 years ago(June 11, 2012 09:07 AM)
" .but some of it was a combinatiion of the two Joe's personalities. ".
I agree with this, I think so because when Susan asks the boy :" What do we do now ?", he answers " It will come to us ": this is the reply Susan gave to Joes question "What do we do now?" after making love, so I really think that, in a way, Death still is in the mind and body of the boy, and the boy consequently remembers.
I really love this film, every time I watch it I feel something special related to life, love between father and daughter, or between a man and a woman .There are great lines in the film. -
ArthurDental — 12 years ago(February 21, 2014 11:41 PM)
They did say it. She said she got a chill when asked who he is, and things other people have mentioned.
I think a lot of people missed many of the nuances in the film, based on what I'm reading here. Part of what made it less appealing than it should've been. -
SexyBrazilian_Muse — 13 years ago(July 08, 2012 04:14 PM)
She didn't figure it out until he returned alone without her father and he spoke on the day they met at the coffee shop. You could see the look she gave after that and her conversation changed as well.
Insert something profound hereand try not to fight about it.. -
paramitch — 11 years ago(July 19, 2014 09:13 AM)
I think Susan's realization came in two phases emotional
and
intellectual.
I think in the scene at the party near the end, when Joe tries to tell her who he is without words, that she knows. You can see her literally shaking with fear (Claire Forlani I thought did a great job with a pretty difficult part) and she tells him she's afraid. She looks terrified. Then she says, "You're Joe. you're Joe," as if to calm herself (that everything else doesn't matter).
Joe meanwhile is upset by her fear and quiets her and says she will always have what she had in the coffee shop.
I think in that moment she absolutely knew who and what he was but couldn't face it.
Then later as she pursues Joe and her father and meets back up with "Coffee shop Joe," you see her put all the pieces together intellectually. She would not have done so without the understanding of what Joe really was from the earlier scene.
The interesting thing to me is that she falls head over heels for this sweet perfect coffee shop guy, who in a 7 minute or so scene gives her the spark she had been missing til then, yet her love for Joe seems even deeper and richer, so that it's like she has lost something in the end when she ends up with Coffee Guy (as sweet and cool as he is).
But as others have mentioned, it's entirely possible that she will have a happy life with Coffee Guy, then be reunited with and recognize Death as her other love at the end of her life. There's a poetry to that idea.I keep thinking I'm a grownup, but I'm not. -
hw5050 — 10 years ago(May 10, 2015 02:09 PM)
Susan, when falling in love with Joe, began to understand and know the finality of life, in other words knowing death, then and only then could she understand what her father meant earlier in the chopper ride about "to make this journey and not fall deeply in love well you haven't lived a life at all. But you have to try because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived"
So only by knowing and understanding death (falling in love with Joe), was she able to comprehend what her father meant about love and living life
She found a great appreciation for life by understanding death. -
sheldonsoong — 9 years ago(April 21, 2016 09:45 PM)
Complications with Bill's body and Susan's thought process aside, what is the coffee shop guy going to tell the family who all know him as Joe Black. Hello Allison, I'm not Joe anymore and your father is also dead across that bridge. Would've been better to end it after they crossed the bridge.