[Plot Explanation: (Modern Version Similar to Western European Mythological Fables)]
On Saturday morning, Jess took her son to Greg's 8:30 p.m. out to sea (the note on the refrigerator reads: Greg, the triangle harbor 8:30, which she reminded herself to use), but because her son spilled paint and delayed the time, Jess drove the express train not to be late, resulting in a car accident, and the mother and son died on the spot, and the time of death was 8:17, that is, the time when Jess's watch and the wall clock on the ship stopped forever. Jess's soul remembers that there is a covenant that has not yet arrived at the time of her death, so she asks the God of Death to take her to the port to see Greg, and she promises that the God of Death will come back to die, but she breaks the promise and never returns, so there is a later surrender. (However, jess who dies in a car accident in the movie wears the same clothes as jess who was killed at home...) ）
Two conversations between the ship and the taxi are key to understanding the film's theme: as a group of people on board pass through the corridor and see the ship's name Aeolus, it is mentioned that Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, is punished by God for endlessly pushing the stone up the mountain and watching the stone roll down the mountain. Victor wondered what great sin Sisyphus had committed to suffer from, to which Sally replied, "He cheated death. No, he made a PROMISE to death that he didn't keep". No, it should be said that he made a promise to death, but did not keep it)
At the end of the film, Jess takes a taxi to the port, and the driver (i.e. Death) says, "I'll leave the meter running... you will come back won't you? (I'll keep the odometer on, and you'll be back, right?) Subtext: You can only go to the dock to have a look, and after reading it, you will come back and continue to take the hearse to the underworld, because the fate of your death is an immutable fact) Jess replied: "Yes, I... This PROMISE is the key, the promise of Jess to death, and the amazing coincidence of Sally's commentary on the ship.
So the theme of this story is a futile struggle of a soul who does not want to admit her dead, and she wants to go against the laws of nature to restore lost life, restore lost love, and make up for the harm she has brought to her son. And all this doomed her to fall into the purgatory created by her own heart, an endless cycle.
This film is the protagonist Jesse's infinite loop story, the cycle on the big cruise ship is regular, the film tells a total of 3 Jesse to board the cruise ship in turn, in fact, the infinite cycle, symbolizing a person who broke the agreement of the god of death and was punished (there are lines in the film that explain: violating the agreement with the god of death will be punished, to push a large stone to the top of the mountain, each time to the top of the mountain will roll down, and the cycle begins).
There are actually 2 different Jesse in the film, and the 2 Jesse begin with exactly the same part of the experience, but there is a scene on the ship that will meet, and the 2 people's experiences will be different. (There are also people who think there are 3 Jesse, but I think it's more logical to have 2 Jesse). The film is a fixed story of an infinite loop from the perspective of a Jesse, and we follow this Jesse to analyze the logic of the whole story (note: the following is a serious spoiler) (since there will be multiple Jesse, we will first use A, B, C, D to represent each Jesse that appears):
1. Jesse A and his friends went out to sea in a small sailboat, encountered a storm, the small sailboat had an accident, happened to encounter a large cruise ship, after boarding the cruise ship, the bloodied friend Victor wanted to kill Jesse A, was killed by Jesse A, and then a masked man killed everyone else, and when he wanted to kill Jesse A, he was beaten into the sea by Jesse A (the masked man is actually a Jesse, set to Jesse E).
2. Another group of people board the cruise ship (one of the settings of the story is that everyone except Jesse will come back after all but Jesse dies), and Jesse B gets on board. Jesse A, who is trying to save the people on board (her idea is to kill the masked man of this round and then leave the cruise with the others to go on a small sailboat), he encounters Vido, but mistakenly injures Vido. Jesse A, intent on going to the rescue, points a gun at Jesse B in the restaurant, but he lets Jesse B go. In the theater, he wounded the Masked Man (also a Jesse, Jesse C), saved 2 of them, and then went to find Vido missing; at this time the Masked Man (Jesse C) designed to kill the 2 friends saved by Jesse A with a knife, one of them was injured and ran until he died on the deck, Jesse A chased the friend all the way to the deck, and then she saw Jesse B kill Jesse C.
3. Another group of people boarded the cruise ship, a new round of Jesse A (because the whole scene that this Jesse encountered was exactly the same as the Jesse in 1, which is repetitive). At this point, Jesse A of the previous round discovered this law (all of whom in a group would repeat themselves after death), so she wanted to use this law to save people, and her plan was for her to kill everyone and then prevent them from boarding the ship when the next group of people boarded the ship. In the last round, Jesse A masked with a gun and prepared to kill, he killed everyone, but when he killed the new Jesse A, he was knocked out of the sea by the new Jesse A.
In this story, Scene 3 and Scene 1 highly coincide, and Scene 3 is Scene 1, which is told from the perspective of Jesse A from the previous round. Therefore, the next batch to board the cruise ship is a new round of Jesse B, which takes place in the same story as 2, and the infinite loop is scene 1 and scene 2. From scenes 1 and 3 above, it can be seen that Jesse E is the Jesse A of the previous round, and finally was pushed into the sea by the Jesse A of this round. To simplify the scene and remove Jesse's friends, this is:
1. Jesse A boards the ship and pushes the previous round of Jesse A into the sea;
2. Jesse B boards the ship, Jesse A tries to kill Jesse B but lets her go, Jesse A injures Jesse C, Jesse B kills Jesse C. Loop Back to 1: A new round of Jesse A boards the ship and kills Jesse A. (Pick up Scene 2, at which point Jesse B should still be alive, on board) Loop 2: A new round of Jesse B boarding the ship, followed by 1, at which point there should be a new round of Jesse A, Jesse B. Compared with 2, it can be found that Jesse C is Jesse B. That is, Jesse B in the previous round will turn into a cold-blooded killer in the next round of Scene 2. So the story has 2 Jesse, a good Jesse A, who wants to save everyone else (by the next round, he's also starting to kill everyone else); an evil Jesse B, who is going to kill everyone. I mean: Apart from the other Jesse C, D, E, these two Jesse are in a constant cycle within a cyclic circle and regularly exchange identities.
To simplify the scene and remove Jesse's friends, this is:
1. Jesse A boards the ship, the previous round of Jesse A kills, Jesse A pushes the previous round of Jesse A into the sea; this scene Jesse A, jesse A of the previous round, Jesse B of the previous round is on board, and jesse B of the previous round is watching.
2. Jesse B boards the ship, Jesse B kills in the previous round, Jesse A injures Jesse B in the previous round, and Jesse B kills Jesse B in the previous round. This scene is of Jesse B, Jesse A of the previous round, Jesse B of the previous round on board.
Starting to move on to the next round, Jesse A, Jesse B automatically upgraded to Jesse A in the previous round, Jesse B in the previous round.
This is the cycle on the boat, and the film is followed by the previous round of Jesse A falling into the water to connect the beginning and end of the film, truly forming a cycle. After Jesse falls into the water, she is washed to the shore, and then she runs home, at which point she kills herself in the family (loop, back to the beginning of the story), from now she goes to the beach to tell her friends not to go to the sea, and then she and her son are in a car accident while they are riding to the beach with her son, and her son dies. A taxi driver (some analysts believe that death) takes her to the beach and asks him to go to an appointment, and death says that she will wait for her, and she also promises death that she will come back when she goes. But she missed her appointment, and in order to save her son, she decided to go to sea and rewrite the cycle. But after a nap on a small sailing boat out to sea, he lost his memory. Then the cycle follows, and the galleon gets into an accident and begins boarding the cruise ship.
Therefore, it can be seen that the first half of the 2 Jesse is the same, both of which went to the appointment after the previous round of Jesse A fell into the water, had an accident, boarded the cruise ship, but after the scene 2 Jesse cruised the ship, and after meeting Jesse in the last scene, he went in a different direction. Presumably, she recovered her memories, knew the infinite cycle, and therefore began to kill people.
The loop point of this dead loop is:
Jesse A in the previous round was always defeated by Jesse A in this round and hit the bottom of the sea;
Jesse B in the previous round was always killed by Jesse B in this round;
After Jesse A fell into the water, went out to sea, slept on a small sailboat and lost his memory.
So there is no way to crack this cycle.
【Alternatively】
The film's commentary is often divided into two factions, one advocating the use of the theory of time-space overlap to clarify the logic of reality, and the other advocating that Jess's ghost carried out a fantasy journey after a car accident. In fact, these two explanations are not contradictory, and even the illusion is a complete program that follows strict internal logic.
[1] About the official interpretation
So is there a more authoritative answer? Yes, yes, Jess did die in a car accident in the first place. Please refer to this video interview with Christopher Smith (director and screenwriter):
The director said that the film was "that kind of wearied psychological story" (the director also mentioned that he is a huge fan of Memento, which shows that the film emphasizes psychoanalysis), and when asked where his original concept came from, the director said that he wanted to make a film about: "What would it be like if you go to work and find yourself... Already dead" movie (if one day you go to work as usual and find that you are actually dead), and later add more and more elements to his construction of the script, making the whole story very complicated one by one, but the overall tone is unchanged.
So the whole picture of this story is roughly as follows:
On Saturday morning, Jess took her son to Greg's 8:30 p.m. out to sea together (the note on the refrigerator reads: Greg, the trangle harbor 8:30, which she reminded herself to use), but because her son spilled paint and delayed the time, Jess drove the express train not to be late, resulting in a car accident, and the mother and son died on the spot, and the time of death was 8:17, that is, the time when Jess's watch and the wall clock on the ship stopped forever. Jess's soul remembers that there is a covenant that has not yet arrived at the time of her death, so she asks the God of Death to take her to the port to see Greg, and she promises that the God of Death will come back to die, but she breaks the promise and never returns, so there is a later surrender. (Others say that Jess's "first time" is deliberately to enter the loop, and only by going through another cycle can he see his son again, so that the reasons for the first time on the boat coincide before and after)
Two conversations on board and in a taxi are key to understanding the film's theme:
When the boat passed through the corridor and saw the name of the ship, Aeolus, it was mentioned that Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, was punished by God to push the stone up the mountain endlessly, and then watch the stone roll down the mountain. Victor wondered what great sin Sisyphus had committed to suffer from, to which Sally replied, "He cheated death. No, he made a PROMISE to death that he didn't keep". No, it should be said that he made a promise to death, but did not keep it)
At the end of the film, Jess takes a taxi to the port, and the driver (i.e. Death) says, "I'll leave the meter running... you will come back won't you? (I'll keep the odometer on, and you'll be back, right?) Subtext: You can only go to the dock to have a look, and after reading it, you will come back and continue to take the hearse to the underworld, because the fate of your death is an immutable fact) Jess replied: "Yes, I... This PROMISE is the key, the promise of Jess to death, and the amazing coincidence of Sally's commentary on the ship.
[2] Two related backgrounds of this film
1) Is the Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing stones. After being beaten into the underworld, Sisyphus asked for three days to return to the Yang World to bury his body, but when he returned to the human world, he refused to leave, betrayed his promise, and was eventually captured by Hermes. 2) It is a famous narrative poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The RIME of the Ancient Mariner" (translated as "The Song of the Old Sailor" or "The Ancient Boat Son"), which tells the story of an old sailor who leads his companions out to sea, because he recklessly shot an albatross and brought bad luck to the sailboat, so that the wind stopped the world as if it were still, and the ship that could not sail by the wind was trapped in the middle of the sea. The crew, weakened by extreme hunger and thirst, took off the cross from the old sailor's neck and hung a dead bird as punishment. In the distance comes a deserted ghost ship with a lone banshee, symbolizing The Night-Mare and LIFE-in-DEATH was she. After boarding the ship, the sailor's companions fell to the ground one by one under the curse of the banshee, and their corpses all stared at the old sailor with their eyes open and their dying eyes, as if to condemn his transgressions for causing all the disasters. And only the old sailor could not die in any way, and he spent seven terrible and painful days and seven nights on the ship, and finally repented and began to pray for all living beings, at which point the albatross in his neck automatically fell off and fell into the sea. The apparition of the Virgin Mary gave the old sailor a sweet sleep and had the dead body sail him back to land. The old sailor survived, but he was destined to live alone for the rest of his life in self-blame and resentment against the undead, and he repeated the story when he saw people, exhorting people to be careful in their words and deeds, not to trample on any creature, no matter how weak they seemed.
The theme of The Old Sailor's Song is about christianity's original sin. Remember Jess grabbing the apple in Victor's hand when he saw the seabird pecking at Downey's body on the deck (Victor took a bite in the restaurant and grabbed it and ran out) and smashed it at the seabird, the apple is the original sin, meaning that all the disaster originated with Jess. In the poem, the crew hangs a dead bird around the old sailor's neck to remind him of his sins, and Jess hangs a picture of her son around his neck, suggesting that the son is like the innocent albatross, hurt by the mother's rudeness and selfishness (Jess always scolds his son because of the pressure of raising children as a single parent), and eventually dies in a car accident caused by his mother. And Jess can only live in repentance forever with a necklace symbolizing his sin.
[3] About the details
1) The time on the ship is static, the first time I looked at the watch in the restaurant was 8:17, and later in the room with the record player, the wall clock behind Jess was still 8:17, of course, Jess's watch also stopped at 8:17 (it can be seen that the mother and son were about to be late on the morning of the car accident). The others' time of 11:30 is the time to advance after the normal sea. It is implied that Jess is stationary in the ship and is stationary (dead), while others are fluid (passers-by, which can accumulate traces on the ship).
2) Room 237 on the ship, like the House Number of Jess's house, shows that the big ship is a nightmare created by Jess (when we dream, we subconsciously recreate the scenes in our lives in the dream). Coincidentally, in the movie "The Shining", there is also a room 237 that must not be approached, which is the starting point of a murder, and in "The Shining", Jack sees a young woman and an old woman in room 237, both of whom are rotting, and it is the ghost of the same woman who was killed in that room. Doesn't this little Easter egg also imply that Jess's youthful flesh is actually dead? The same is true when Jess is alone, the fruit in front of her appears to be rotting.
3) The music on the boat's needle vault record is exactly the same as the melody played by the children's band on the side of the road when Jess drives his son at the end of the film (you have to listen carefully to hear it), which is also the music that Jess left in the subconscious before he died, so it is reproduced in another way on the ship.
4) The pattern on the drum surface of the restaurant on the ship is exactly the same as the pattern on the drum in the hands of a child watching the car accident, which is also reproduced. 5) The wounded and bleeding part of the masked Jess who was shot on the top of the head is the same as the fatal wound on the head of Jess's body wearing a skirt in the car accident, and it is reproduced.
6) Jess's bad luck is similar to the bad luck caused by the shooting of seabirds in "The Old Sailor's Song", jess also has decorative paintings of albatrosses hanging on the walls of Jess's house, and there are many close-ups of seabirds in the film. And albatrosses are famous scavengers who like to eat waste thrown from boats.
[4] What was Jess's psychological transformation when he suddenly became "cold-blooded and ruthless"?
Some people say That Jess has two, one good and one evil, and I don't quite agree. All Jess are inherently good, they are in exactly the same state before they get on the ship, and in the third stage each Jess is very determined to kill the whole ship, and their starting point is to save all the people and go back together, because she believes that after killing everyone, the dead will all be resurrected.
Why did she come to this conclusion? The key is the phrase "It return when they're dead", the first meaning of which is that when the last of each group of 5 people on the ship dies, the small sailing ship will bring a new batch of 5 people, which is the conclusion that Jess finally had an epiphany after witnessing the death of two groups of people. At this time, Jess glanced back at the mountain of Sally corpses behind him, and suddenly said a sentence of "It return when everyone's dead" The return of the sentence not only refers to the return of the dinghy, but also refers to the recovery of all the dead people, and then everyone goes home safely. Because in Jess's eyes, there is no concept that every group of 5 people lives in different individuals in different time and space, and she believes that all the recurring people are essentially the same person, including herself, so after killing everyone on the boat, including herself, everyone will wake up (resurrect) on the boat, and everything on the boat will only be regarded as a nightmare.
Otherwise, by her kind nature, she could not accept that some groups of companions would be sacrificed, some groups of companions would survive such a cruel thing, and she was not yet a selfish woman who could kill her friends for her own selfish purposes. The evidence is that Jess had just told the dying Sally that she would never hurt her a few seconds before making the decision to "kill the light", and after she realized that she wanted to "kill" everyone, she went to comfort the badly injured Vector and said, "Don't be afraid, I can save you." I know how to save you." So she said before she shot Greg: "Now this is not me, the real me is with you in the sailboat." "When I kill you, we can all go back." (This time she didn't use I will return, but We will return.)
Jess's plan should be: kill all the people on board, then wait at the boarding port, prevent the group of people from getting on the ship, and finally commit suicide. She believed that when she woke up, she would return to the original little sailing boat with everyone and restore everything to its original state. That's why Jess forced himself to kill the killer decisively and simply, which was cruel in means, but the starting point was to save everyone. So the hard-faced Jess also killed for this reason, not because she was evil inside, but to arm herself and force herself to be strong.
[5] The circular logic on the ship: 123123123...
On board, there are three experiences of Jess, they start to board the same initial state, the essence is also good.
Type 1 Jess experience (the Jess we've been following along the way):
1) Was killed by Vector Card Neck Vector in the restaurant,
2) Ran to the theater to witness Sally and Downey being shot by the masked man (Jess who counted two rounds before, that is, Type 2 Jess), 3) The masked man with a gun (Jess who counted two rounds before, that is, Type 2 Jess) chased all the way out of the theater and fought and pushed the masked man (Type 2 Jess) into the sea,
4) Push vector onto the hook,
5) Wearing a mask and shooting Greg in the theater, he shoots Sally and Downey on the spot,
6) Chasing Jess from the theater with a gun (Jess in the next two rounds, that is, Type 3 Jess), after a fight, he is pushed alive into the sea.
Type 2 Jess Experience:
1) Meet another self (Jess, who counted a few rounds ahead, that is, Type 1 Jess) and Vector, and are pointed at by another self (Type 1 Jess), and then run away and hide
2) Witnessing the bleeding face of Jess (Jess, or Type 3 Jess) in the shadows stabbing Downey to death
3) Track jess bleeding all the way (jess two rounds ahead, that is, type 3 Jess) hacks type 3 Jess on deck and pushes him into the sea,
4) Push Victor onto the hook
5) Wearing a mask and shooting Greg in the theater, he shoots Sally and Downey on the spot
6) Chased Jess from the theater with a gun (Jess in the next two rounds, that is, Type 1 Jess), and was pushed alive into the sea after a fight.
Type 3 Jess Experience:
1) Killed by Vector Card Neck Vector at the restaurant
2) Run to the theater to witness Sally and Downey being shot by the masked man (Jess, the first two rounds, that is, type 1 Jess) 3) The masked man (Jess who counted two rounds ahead, that is, type 1 Jess) chased all the way out of the theater and fought and pushed the masked man (type 1 Jess) into the sea (*Note: This is the moment when the Jess we have been watching is knocked off the ship),
5) Wearing a mask and trying to shoot Sally and Downey, but instead of being hit by Jess (the next few rounds of Jess, that is, Type 1 Jess), the top of his head and face bleeding, he can only take off the mask and throw a gun and stab Downey to death with a knife.
6) In the end, while searching for the injured Sally, he was ambushed by Jess (the Jess who followed him two rounds later, that is, type 2 Jess), who was killed and pushed into the sea.
So There are only three jess experiences, and only three, and they loop indefinitely in the order of 123123123.
The difference between type 2 Jess and type 1 type 3 Jess in the first half is that type 2 had an experience of being pointed at by type 1 Jess with a gun in the restaurant, although it was let go by type 1 Jess, but it was alert and hidden, so it did not appear in the theater that should have appeared (type 1 Jess appeared instead of her and raised a gun to shoot type 3 Jess on the 2nd floor), so the type 2 Jess hiding in the shadows only witnessed the scene of the injured Type 3 Jess killing with a knife. The Type 2 Jess then followed the Type 3 Jess and hacked the Type 3 Jess to death on deck. The Type 1 3 Jess did not have the experience of the Type 2 Jess in the restaurant, so he appeared unarmed in the theater, was attacked by the masked man and chased all the way to the deck.
The difference between the Type 3 Jess and the Type 1 Type 2 Jess in the second half is that the Type 3 Jess did not shoot Sally and Downey but was injured, and found that the opponent already had a weapon, so in order to lure the enemy to take off the hood and throw the gun, instead of attacking with a knife in room 237, while looking for the fleeing Sally, he was attacked by the trailing Type 2 Jess with an axe, at this time the Type 3 Jess only had a knife in his hand and did not grab it, and naturally fell down during the fight, so he was hacked to death and thrown into the sea. Type 1 Type 2 Jess successfully shot Sally and Downey in the theater later, and then chased them to the deck, fought, and was pushed alive into the sea.
So although Jess experienced three kinds, there were only two endings: Type 1 2 was hit by the waves to the shore to start the shore cycle, and Type 3 was hacked to death and pushed into the sea. The 3 types of Jess are inherently kind, and the initial state when boarding the ship is the same. The Jess who finally pushed type 1 Jess into the sea, which looked exactly like type 1 Jess had reacted to (mistaken for type 1 by many people), was actually a type 3 Jess who would grow into a throat-cutting woman, but it was only an initial form.
[6] Why can the son predict the car accident?
The masked Jess ran home from the shore after being pushed into the sea and saw herself in a skirt scolding her son, which was indeed a scene that had happened in real life, and she hacked herself to death in the hope of punishing herself for her past mistakes, which was the embodiment of the strong idea of atonement and repentance.
Why did his son seem to have foreseen the car accident in the car? Because he was Jess's imagination (and it could even be said that the whole ship and purgatory were also made by Jess's heart), how she wished that the end would be that the son did not die himself or die so that he could start over, compensate the child, and be a good mother. But the ending of death is the only reality, Jess subconsciously does not believe in the illusion of peace she has constructed, and her son's cries symbolize the shaking of her spiritual world, and the gensokyo eventually collapses back to the end of the car accident.
Notice that casual Jess kills Jess in skirt and seals her body in a black travel bag and stuffs it in the trunk. But after the car accident, the skirt Jess was directly exposed to the road, the natural force of the car accident should not be able to untie the black bag and take it off, and the skirt Jess had been cut so many times by a blunt object, but the body on the road looked like only a fatal injury on the head.
At the same time, after Jess's car overturned, all the passers-by immediately surrounded her, assuming that Jess in civilian clothes climbed out of the driver's seat at this time, passers-by would not let her go. But what we saw was: the light turned dim, and Jess, dressed in civilian clothes, stood outside the crowd with a sluggish expression, she had no external injuries or smudges on her body, and no one else seemed to see her except the taxi driver dressed in black.
So we might as well say that what Jess sees at this time is the last scene of his own undead looking back at the world after the car accident, and the taxi driver is Hermes the Psychopomp, who says that he is just a "driver", that is, a undead extradition, and he repeatedly emphasizes that Jess cannot resurrect his dead son, saying that all attempts are in vain.
At this time, Jess, because he had realized that he was a dead soul, his mind returned to the state of ignorance and chaos when he had just died, and he only vaguely remembered to go to the port, so he ordered the god of death to go to the port and fell asleep in the car. When she woke up, she promised that Death would come back and got out of the car, but as she approached the port step by step, her mind gradually became clear. The desperate mother was not willing to say goodbye to her son like this, even if she knew that going to sea again would not change the ending, but even if it was just a poor self-deception, it was the only thing that could support her, so she insisted on going to sea and said sorry to Greg.
[7] When did Jess lose his memory, and why did he lose his memory?
Jess hypnotized himself while asleep on the ship, but he could only clear the surface memory, and the deep subconscious still had memories accumulated in the past, so that the Aeolus would have a sense of familiarity, but could not give a rational explanation at the conscious level. Why can Jesus make himself lose his memory? Because "people only want to see what they want to see, only want to believe what they want to believe." Jess wants to forget the fact that she and her son are dead and cannot be resurrected, so that when she wakes up on the sailboat again, she will once again struggle and struggle in vain to get home, even if this struggle must end in failure and deeper despair, but in the process she has at least a moment of "false hope", and the only country where her beloved son can survive is in the land of false hope.
Jess has no choice, because desperate maternal love is an eternal disaster.
As for whether the film is a dream, or a game of death, or the fantasy director of the heroine, he actually deliberately lets the audience come to find the answer by himself.