I didn't really 'get' this one. The father came out of nowhere and was totally a jerk most of the time to his sons that he hadn't seen in apparently 12 years. I didn't know what he was supposed to be doing for his business, I almost got suspicious when he went to buy what turned out to be the motor, I thought it might be a dead body he was transporting or something! I was totally suspicious of him from the start. He just seemed like a really scummy guy and I don't know why the mother would have let them go with him, she seemed to make sure to distance herself from him, too.
In retrospect I think the opening "Sunday" scene might have been shown out of sequence, with that diving episode occuring maybe ater everything else that we see in the movie, except for the fact that the other boys make fun of Ivan on "Monday"... I think that might make more sense to be out of order though, because I'm sure the event resulting in the father's fall would be very traumatc for Ivan.
That being said, I was on Ivan's side for most of the movie. I didn't really understand why Andei wanted the father to approve of him so much when he'd been out of their lives for so long. I'd be mad at him, too. And especially once he starts pulling all those mean moves - kicking them out of the car repeatedly, hitting them, forcing them to be subordinate to him - I would be afraid of what he would do. I think the older brother was probably in a really hard position, being between the father and his little brother. He would want to protect his brother, which would involve not getting the father angry, and maybe thats why he was such a suck up, to try and keep the father contented enough so that he would not hurt either of the boys, especially the younger one for being so defiant.
This was another movie where I was waiting for something bad to happen. I thought it would happen to the boys though, with the father's attitude toward them. I thought it was very strange that after the freak accident was when all of a sudden both the boys semmed to care about the father - only in retrospect once he had died. With as nasty as he had been to them, that caught me off-guard. I also thought it odd that they felt the need to take the body all the way back with them (also the absence of blood of any kind on the body - a fall from that height wouldve definitely broken something...) even though they had been talking about hurting him and getting away from him, when they were finally free of him, they felt the need to burden themselves with his dead body.
The whole movie was really creepy, and eerie. I still don't know what kind of shifty thing the father was involved in. did anyone else remember the ammunition box underneath the seat of the boat? That seemed to be his reason for going out to the island at all, and we never learn what is inside of it, because after he digs it up he chases Ivan up the tower from whch he falls and subsequently dies. And we never find out what happens to the boys, either - how do they explain this all to their mom? Yeah so...dad kind of had this freak accident after smacking us around for like 3 days....
I don't know if that's believeable.
I too have wondered what the return (and notice those two words I've just used) of those two boys to their mother after all of this would be like...how exactly they would explain all of this (Mom, guess what happened on our vacation...?). But somehow I can also see the mother just shrugging and looking off to the side like she's seen it all already and that she probably guessed this would happen--at least that would seem consonant w/ how we see her behave in those early parts of the film.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the diving scene is shown out of place--but the part right before it at the very start of the movie seems to show the sunken boat that had held the father's body. I have some ideas on what's going on with that...if you're curious ask me tomorrow while we're talking about the film in class...