This movie has too much going on. I like it, the surreal/dreamlike quality to it, but even after watching it several times, and juxtaposing two windows next to each other to see different repeating scenes together, I still have very little idea what is going on in it. Thinking about the time period when the movie was made, WWII period, and observing the repeating image of the key, I decided that the piece is centered on the idea of freedom from control. The WWII period and afterwards was part of the golden age, don’t know if that’s what it was called but it gets the point across I think, of the feminist movement.
Moving on. I believe the repeating images of the knife and key represent freedom. The constant transformation of the knife into a key and the key into a knife essentially associates the two to being the same thing. This represents, when thinking of the ominous figure with the mirror face, a form of escape from something. I think we finally get a glimpse of what she wants to escape from when the man in the film essentially takes over the roll of the mirror faced figure. I think this is further demonstrated by the phone, which is off the hook, that repeats throughout the film. It is always off the hook until the man appears, who hangs it up. I might be blowing that up to be too large, but if I make a few assumptions (which I’ve been doing anyway so why stop now) then the phone off the hook could represent the idea of connection to the outside of whatever cage she believes herself to be in. When the man hangs it up, I think that places him as the one keeping her in the cage. Expanding on that idea, I think the cage is represented by her seeing herself do all the actions over and over again.
I’d say the biggest twist in the film, for me, was a double twist. I believed she was going to kill herself, but when the man appeared and essentially acted in the same manner as the mirror faced figure, I believed that she was going to kill him with the key-knife. It was thus a bit of a fake to the right when she actually did end up killing herself. Though, whether she actually killed herself or just dreamed she killed herself is still up for debate in my mind. The whole thing has a dreamlike quality to it, which is really expounded by the part where she is going up the stairs in what I believe is slow motion, but almost looks like she’s floating up the stairs on wires or something.
That’s really all I can say. I can’t think of anything else, and after writing that I looked up some other reviews, which only confused the hell out of me even more. Some reviews seem to see it in a relatively similar way as I do, but they go into much greater and much more confusing detail.
