Here is a discussion topic: Is the movie about split personality or complicated murder?
Let me talk about the conclusion of the host’s viewing of the movie. After watching the first time: this is a murder that the boss instructed cobb to carry out. Bill for the dead ghost. This is the most intuitive plot shown to us by the movie, and it is also the final plot that many people insist on.
At the same time, I have two questions:
First, the scene at the beginning of the movie is a person (let's call it A) wearing gloves and fiddling with things in a box. An echoing segment at the end of the movie is Bill flipping through the same box. We know that this box belongs to the heroine. So are these two fragments duplicated? Why put the clip of A playing with the box at the beginning of the movie?
Let's answer the first question first. The answer is no. There are two reasons. Firstly, Bill did not wear gloves when turning the box, but A wore them; secondly, A was not turning the box, but loading the box. The evidence is the stack of uncreped banknotes. Later, Bill turned the box. When I gave the paper money lens, it was folded up. And when Bill opened the box, the order in which things were placed is the same as the order in which A was loaded. The evidence includes the stack of banknotes and photos. So we can conclude that only Bill opened the box after A loaded it. Some people may say that the heroine may also open her own box. I think there is no such possibility. This box does not exist for the heroine. The reason why I say this lies in the beginning fragment. From the paper money without creases, we can know that this box did not originally exist, but A created it. If this is really the heroine’s box, then it does not appear all at once. It should be accumulated a little bit with life. Some people may say that this is the heroine who put a wad of money in the box by the way. Then ask who will wear it. Putting rubber gloves to organize your box? If the heroine herself has a similar box, A doesn't need to create another one, because it doesn't matter what the box contains. What's important is that there is such a box with little secrets.
Then we have another question, what does A do to make this box? The answer is easy to come to. Cobb once talked about the meaning of the box in detail: everyone has his own box, which is a unique collection in the world, which is a display of privacy. We also know that when Cobb and Bill were stealing the hostess’s room, Bill was attracted by the photos of the hostess’s room. He stole the hostess’s underwear at the suggestion of Cobb, but Bill really fell in love with the hostess when he opened the box. Later, in other words, it was Cobb's box theory that worked for him, and the importance of the heroine's box is self-evident. So who is A? Who wears rubber gloves in the movie again and again? The answer is cobb. In other words, cobb used the heroine's stuff to forge a box to evoke Bill's love for the heroine.
But the mystery of the box does not end there. There is a small detail at the end. The police found the hostess’s ID photo, underwear and an earring from the shoe box under Bill’s bed. In other words, Bill’s box (this box is also fake) , Also forged by cobb) confirmed the fact that he was the murderer. The box is more important to Bill.
But this is not all of the boxes. The two important boxes in the movie are fake, but they play the role of real boxes. The fake box proves the fake privacy, tells the fake facts, and creates a fake owner different from the person. In this sense, the fake box symbolizes the mask of the person in the movie, and it seems that it is shaped by others at present ( The creators of the two boxes in the movie are cobb).
But this is still not the full meaning of the box, we will talk about it later.
Then we return to the second question: Why should this clip be placed in the beginning of the movie? It is actually easy to be overlooked, because at the beginning we did not know the meaning of rubber gloves, its users, the owner of the box, the meaning of the box, and so on. In other words, only after watching the whole movie and we try it again, we can notice this clip. What does this show? On the contrary, the opening of the movie becomes a follow-up to the ending, which is a new ending. When we are re-aware of the new opening, we will watch the movie from a new perspective and get a different viewing experience. This also proves to some extent that the ending of the film is not the ending of the film. After reading this, you should be able to guess the conclusion of the host, don't arguing with me, we will discuss it in detail later.
At the same time, we bring up another image emphasized in the movie-rubber gloves. The role of rubber gloves is to hide oneself (just the opposite of the box, which exposes oneself). Interestingly, rubber gloves are also related to cobb.
At the same time, rubber gloves and boxes are related to Bill's personality, that is, voyeurism. Voyeurism has two meanings: hiding oneself and peeping at others. The corresponding ones are rubber gloves and boxes.
Speaking of this, it involves the host's second question, which is the meaning of following. The title of the movie is “following”, which translates as “following”, which refers to Bill’s behavior of following others. Bill does call his own behavior “following”, but this word also appears in the movie with another meaning: that is, the first in the movie. In one sentence: the following is my explanation, where following means "following", but at the same time it still has the signifier of "following". No matter how strange the coincidence is in the work, it is not a coincidence. It's the ingenious design of the writer. Then we can translate this sentence into: "Following is my justification." At first I heard a very inexplicable sentence, but in fact it is not. Use following to defend yourself, what to defend? If you say "the following is my vindication", it is easy to understand, vindicate that you were robbed of the nightclub, but what to justify by following? We know that "following" happened very early, before we met cobb, and it was because of "following" Bill that we only met cobb, so what to justify by following?
Speaking of this, our answer is ready to come out. Bill used to follow to vindicate his sins, which existed before Cobb appeared, but Bill used to follow all his sins to Cobb, and he was instead washed away.
Very interesting answer, which is completely opposite to the intuitive plot in the movie, then we can come to the final conclusion: cobb is Bill’s split personality and Bill’s fantasy.
Maybe some people have to question again, can't the heroine tell cobb and bill? Can't others tell cobb and bill? Didn't cobb and bill fight each other? Can split personality fight and scold each other? Regarding the latter, I suggest to take a look at "Fight Club" and "Fatal ID", where split personalities can still shoot at each other. Regarding the former, what I want to say is, how do you know that the heroine is indistinguishable? What you see is only Bill’s statement (so you understand why most of the movie is told by Bill), what you see is only what Bill sees, and more precisely, the facts you see. It's just the reality after Bill's subconscious reorganization. And there is a very interesting detail. Cobb and bill were caught in the first theft. When the girl was talking, she only looked at cobb. She asked: "What are you doing in my flat?" Two levels of meaning, this is of course caused by the lexical meaning of "you" itself, is it "what are you doing in my apartment?" or "what are you doing in my apartment?" Some people may be troubled on this point and think English is like this, "you" and "you" are stupidly unclear, but isn't this the same as "following"? Why can't two signifiers be realized at the same time? You think that he is a split personality, that is "you", you think that they are two people, that is you. This detail is very clever.
Of course, there is my suspicion of YY. Literary reviews (including movie reviews) are justified. And no matter what you point out, someone will use: "Do you know how difficult the shooting conditions were at the time? Don't you know how normal it is to have some subtle bugs?" I really don't know how difficult the shooting conditions were at the time. You don’t necessarily know what I want to say, and Nolan’s logic is so rigorous that he wouldn’t overlook one or two bugs like this, right?
Don't pay attention to these details, and go back to our conclusion-cobb is Bill's split personality. We have a lot of evidence to reach this conclusion, let us list them one by one below:
1. In the final credits of the movie, there is no bill's name, only the young man. Doesn't this explain the problem? Why isn't it bill? We know his name is bill, are we clear? Bill called himself Daniel Lloyd when he talked to the hostess. This is D. Lloyd, the owner of the card they swiped when they had a meal the day before. Maybe he is for the convenience of swiping the card, but it also shows that Bill is not a simple person. Maybe he also lied when talking to cobb.
2. Bill was a pure person before he met cobb, and he was still pure after knowing cobb. He tried to stop cobb when he knocked over other people’s boxes, and he tried to stop cobb from stealing other people’s underwear (but he also stole it himself) ), it was cobb who lied, cobb was the one who hit, and cobb was the one who cursed. The most funny thing is that Bill is like a ninth-degree disabled life, who doesn’t understand anything, doesn’t know how to use credit cards, doesn’t understand why some people steal other people’s underwear, and says "I never knew there was such a pervert in the world", female What did the Lord say, "come on, are you not so naive, are you?" I also want to vomit like that, are you so naive? Is the Marilyn Monroe poster in your house to block the hole in the wall?
Although I don't like "Fight Club" and "Fatal ID", I am glad that I have watched such split personality movies, which can help me better understand split personality. Taylor in "Fight Club" is Jack's split personality. Jack is as pure as a three-year-old in front of Taylor. All bad things are taught by Taylor and done by Taylor. Isn't this the same as the situation of Cobb and Bill? The existence of the split personality of Taylor and Cobb is precisely to exclude the part of the self that the master personality--that is, Jack and Bill--cannot identify with, but the existence of split personality also splits the character's complete personality, that is, the master Personality is also incomplete, so bill is not a bill, let alone D. Lloyd, but the young man. He doesn't know who he is. He thinks he is bill. He thinks he is not cobb, but in fact it is him. .
3. The police. Some people say that the police are incompetent and have wronged Bill. I will not comment because it turns out that I think so too ==. But it was the police's words that revealed to the greatest extent the fact that Bill was addicted to split personality. The police asked Bill to recall "your side of things" (about your side.), because in Bill's memory, he was just a supporting role. After retreating behind the scenes, cobb was the protagonist and the culprit. This is also the " Jack's positioning of himself and Taylor in Fight Club.
But the involvement of the police made the story extremely complicated. First of all, there are four dialogues between the police and Bill. They are arranged like this on the timeline. Bill finished the story (from following to showing up with the heroine to surrender), and the police denied the existence of the murdered old lady. This was followed by a clip of Cobb killing the heroine, in which two episodes were interspersed with the police asking Bill to recall his own party. Then came the fourth dialogue between the police and Bill. The police found a lot of evidence at Bill's home to prove that Bill was the murderer. The episode of cobb killing the heroine is not what Bill recalled, and it does not belong to the category of reorganizing facts from Bill's perspective as we mentioned earlier. Is cobb true? Secondly, what the police said is very different from the plot that happened in the movie. There are many contradictions in many places, and we have been preconceived. But correspondingly, by explaining clearly the part of the police, we can better prove our thesis.
Let's analyze what the police said and the evidence he provided.
(1) Hammer. The hammer that hits the night watchman is the same as the hammer that hits the heroine, and the hammer was found in the heroine's house. There is no doubt about these two points. The question is the police's inference. If according to the police's inference, Bill first threatened the hostess to tell the safe password, smashed her ten fingers, and then went to steal the money, then why would the hammer be found at the hostess's house? Could it be that Bill returned to the hostess's house after stealing the money and dropped the hammer? Or our previous conclusions are all overturned, bill is just bill, cobb is cobb?
Note here that the police did not mention the night watchman. He said: "One type, I assume, will match the bloke you put in hospital" translated as: "(Blood) One of these probably belongs to the person you entered the hospital. ", then bloke should be referring to the night watchman, but it doesn't seem to be the case, because the police immediately said: "All her fingers......" (her fingers......), there is no transition in between. , This passage is very strange, if you read it down, it looks like the night watchman was smashed by ten fingers, but the night watchman is not a woman. Normally there should be a transition: "One type, I assume, will match the bloke you put in hospital; the other one must be the woman's. All her fingers......" The person in the hospital, the other is that of the woman, her ten fingers...), since the woman who was smashed by the ten fingers was the female lead, then push it backwards, the bloke who was beaten into the hospital in front It refers to the hostess. I guess it may be that the body was placed in the hospital. What does this mean? Explain that the police did not know about the night watchman, which means that the police did not know about the nightclub attack. The fact is true, because apart from this ambiguous bloke, the police never mentioned the night watchman. Although he mentioned the password of the safe, it was also because Bill had already told everything.
There is also a problem of time difference. When Bill tells the story, the real time is when he and the police are sitting at the police station. That is to say, during this time, no matter what new clues the police know about, he has no time to find relevant evidence. Then, the police later took out All the evidence was found before Bill surrendered. In other words, the police suspected Bill before he surrendered. And before Bill surrendered, the heroine was killed. The heroine’s body was found. Bill was suspected. Bill’s house was searched. What was Bill doing during this period? Want to surrender the next morning, and the police found the body of the heroine the next morning)? Are you still following others on the street? And where is the money? According to Cobb, the money should have been taken back, or at least it can be taken back with confidence. If the police knew about the nightclub theft and the night watchman attack before and after the hammer was discovered, they would find the money when they searched Bill’s house and bring it back as evidence, but all the things they brought back were related to the hostess. . Suppose they didn’t know about the nightclub theft and the money was in Bill’s house. Bill, as a suspected murderer, suddenly got so much more money with unemployment benefits. The police would definitely suspect that it was stolen from the hostess’s house. Will follow it back. If the police knew about the nightclub theft and the money was not in Bill’s house, they would definitely ask when they came back, but none of this happened. The police did not mention a word about the money. This means that the police did not know about the nightclub theft. The money is not in Bill's house either. That is to say, Cobb took the money before Bill went to surrender, so Bill didn't find it? If you find out, why don't you say it when you surrender? I just didn't find it, so where is he doing? Why did his confession end when he slammed the door away from the hostess's house, and then what happened between when he came to the police station? Why didn't he explain a word? How did the wound on his face heal in half a day? Only one answer can be used to answer. There is no injury on his face, there is no so-called cobb beating him, and there is no cobb.
What did he do during the lost time that he concealed?
The only thing we know about what happened in this blank file is that Cobb killed the heroine. This paragraph is interspersed with the police's questioning of Bill. But in real time, the two are not at the same time. Cobb killed the heroine earlier. But juxtaposing these two paragraphs makes it easy to give the audience an impression that the two happened at the same time, at least when Bill was not present. However, the blank period that Bill concealed intentionally or unconsciously could not prove his absence. There is quite a suspicion that there is no silver three hundred taels here.
Moreover, there are two big bugs in the movie about Bill stealing the nightclub. One is the design of the underwear-stripes and spots. I won't argue with you about this. There is another one I haven’t seen, that is, did Bill wear rubber gloves when opening the safe? I can tell you very clearly that he brought it and didn't bring it. He had already put on the gloves when he was preparing the hammer at home. He also had the gloves when he was about to open the safe, but when he started to twist the safe lock, the gloves were gone. This big bug really made it difficult for me to look directly at it. The rhythm of the arrest also confirmed that the police did not know that the nightclub was stolen, otherwise the fingerprints of the magic horse would have been presented long ago. If the reason for the panties is that the actors changed their underwear because the shots were taken within two weeks, then why did the gloves before and after the safe box disappear? Don't tell me that he picked it up. Last second, he was still holding the note with both hands, but he didn't have the gloves to cut the camera? This reminds me of the inexplicably missing bodies in "Fatal ID". I will treat this kind of big bug as Bill's distorted memory for the time being.
(2) Ladies' underwear, photos, earrings. These were all found in Bill's shoebox. Bill said that Cobb framed him. In his account, he did not have earrings and white underwear (he only stole a pair of dark underwear). The police said that the hostess was wearing the pair of pearl earrings when she died. I took a closer look. When Bill went to question the hostess, the hostess wore a pair of sparkling earrings, and when the hostess was talking to cobb, she Wearing that pearl earring, and there is really only one ==. This is too nonsense, who would wear only one earring, it seems to be prepared to plant Bill. Another bug, I think this is too detailed, it is definitely intentional. It can be seen that there are also distorted memories in the dialogue between the heroine and cobb, which is also from Bill's perspective. This is not a contradiction. In the movie, until Bill said "That's all", all of the previous plots were actually told by Bill. How did he know that Cobb and the heroine had a conversation behind him? Just like in first-person narrative novels, there will never be inner monologues about people other than "me". Simply put, in the first person, everything is seen by "I", "I" is YY, and Bill belongs to the latter. This also proves that cobb does not exist.
(3) The big boss image behind the way of death. The ten fingers were smashed. First, Bill heard the female lead tell that the boss killed someone like this, and then Cobb obeyed the boss’s order and killed the female lead in the same way. The way of death is secondary, and the main thing is the image of the big boss. I have always wondered what the relationship is between the heroine, bill and the boss. Bill gave the boss a few shots when he was talking to the hostess in the bar. There was no response at all, and he didn't even look at him. And why Bill keeps asking whether the relationship between the heroine and the boss is over. I haven't thought about this, so just skip it~
4. The whole murder itself. This is also very unreasonable. How can a big boss kill someone in the heroine's house without hesitation, why can't he do the same to eliminate the heroine? Have to design such a complicated murder? And there is too much uncertainty in this murder. Once Bill doesn’t take the bait, once Bill doesn’t fall in love with the heroine, once Bill doesn’t take the hammer to steal money, once Bill doesn’t meet the night watchman, once Bill doesn’t throw the hammer at the heroine. Home, no matter where something goes wrong, the whole plan will face upset, so many unknowns simply cannot form a chain of interlocking chains. If it is a random event, there is nothing wrong with it, but it is incredible that it is a preset event. The most reasonable answer is that Nolan has to give us such a story, which is a bit ridiculous. But this ridiculous idea inspired me again. Everyone remembers that a scene that has been interspersed in the movie is Bill typing in front of a typewriter. What is he writing? Since he is a writer, he is probably writing a novel. What novel is he writing? Probably a novel based on the burglary by himself and cobb. The reason we guess this is because he and cobb and the hostess have all said so. But we have never seen him finish the novel, nor have the manuscript, he hasn't read a word, and the police didn't mention any fragments, we just saw him typing. This behavior itself is meaningful, it has nothing to do with the whole storyline, but it appears many times (three times in my memory), it is emphasized by Nolan, so it can be seen that there are two opposite plot lines in the movie , One is the complicated conspiracy we have seen, and the other is bill in writing. So who is telling us the story? I don't need to say the answer.
5. This point was raised by others, and I think it makes sense. Cobb disappears into the crowd at the end of the film. You can say that he completed the task and disappeared, I think it means more than that. The police pointed out that Bill was the murderer who broke the beautiful world he had created for him, and the cobb who rescued him from his sins disappeared.
6. Box. If the whole movie is a complicated murder, then why should the A boxing clip be emphasized in the first place? Why not take a picture of the heroine falling in a pool of blood from the back? Or Bill shouted desperately: "It's cobb!" Or, like the "Tuner", asked the police to solemnly ask: "What else do you want to say?" Why is it just a box? And it's boxing? Sorry if I use complicated murder, I can't see the answer.
In the movie, Cobb and Bill both said: "Everyone has a box", but it is not the case. The heroine has no boxes, Bill has no boxes, and Cobb doesn't even have him. But this box plays a very important role. The box will not tell lies, but if you put different things in the same box, what you say is different, and the box is also different. It's like a person suffering from split personality, his appearance has not changed, but his inner personality is different, he becomes another person. Without even having a split personality, your inner thoughts will change, your whole person will also change, and the whole world you're talking about will also change.
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