While our readers are already discussing director Zack Snyder’s fantasy-action story of self-empowerment in the comments section of the Sucker Punch review, this is the place where you can discuss spoilers about the movie without worrying about ruining it for people who haven’t seen it yet.
To help steer discussion we’ve added an analysis of Sucker Punch to help clarify some of the details that left some moviegoers scratching their heads.
That said, Snyder does leave some elements of the film up for interpretation – making it impossible to answer everything with absolute certainty.
It goes without saying, this article is full of spoilers. So, if you still plan to see the film, and don’t want anything spoiled for you – look elsewhere.
Does our Sucker Punch explanation match your theory? Find out!
The Dream within a Dream
Following Babydoll’s arrival at the asylum, the film presents viewers with three realities:
- The Asylum
- The Burlesque Illusion
- The Fantasy Realms
Despite the fact the majority of the movie is spent within the context of the burlesque reality, we know from the early images at the beginning, as well as the closing scene with the orderlies, that the dance setting was an illusion Babydoll (more on her later) developed to deal with the horrors of her actual environment.
It’s strongly hinted that the girls are being sexually abused by the orderlies and other employees at the asylum (most notably when the orderlies show reservations about allowing Blue to be alone with Babydoll after her lobotomy). The dark, and most logical, interpretation of the film suggests that Babydoll imagines herself “dancing” (and subsequently dispatching her oppressors in fantasy settings) whenever abuse is taking place, retreating into a world where she has increasing control over her oppressors – hypnotizing them with her dances (in the dancer illusion) and outright killing them (in the fantasy worlds).
After the first few “dances,” Babydoll begins to use this time with the abusers as a distraction, so that the other girls can go around and collect the necessary tools for the escape – essentially sacrificing her body for the sake of the mission – a theme which is revisited in the closing act of the film.
Are the other girls merely representations of different aspects of Babydoll’s psyche?
While it’s possible that, at one point, Snyder intended for Rocket (the little sister), Amber (the shy one), Blondie (the naive one), as well as Sweet Pea (the big sister), and even Babydoll herself (the fighter), to be avatar-like representations of various aspects of Babydoll’s personality – given what we see in the final film, there are a few problems with this theory.
First and foremost, Babydoll sees the girls in the real asylum world. It’s plausible that, as she began to fantasize, she merely superimposed the four girls’ visages onto the non-physical aspects of her own personality – i.e. visible avatar-like manifestations of abstract impulses. However, given the seriousness with which Snyder presents the real world in the closing moments of the film, it’s implied that the people in the fantasy world have a direct connection to people in the real world. Despite minor flourishes, Babydoll is directly interacting with the same people in the burlesque reality and the actual asylum: the burlesque cook is still the cook in the asylum, the burlesque Mayor is the custodian, the burlesque High Roller is the doctor – these people are not avatar-like representations of something abstract – they are rose-tinted filters placed on-top-of real people (who exist in a harsher reality). As a result, it stands to reason that the core girls are real people – real people that Babydoll is interacting with, not just in the fantasy world, but in reality as well.
Furthermore, it’s Sweet Pea who escapes the asylum in the real world, which would be an extremely unsatisfying ending, if there were no genuine connection between her character and Babydoll (who sacrifices her own freedom to make it happen). If the one psyche theory were correct, in a movie about guilt, oppression, and empowerment, it would have made much more sense for almost any of the other girls/personalties to have escaped, especially Rocket – the little sister that Babydoll was unable to save in real-life. Instead, it’s Sweet Pea who escapes – the same big sister who wasn’t able to protect her little sister.
It’s an interesting idea, with cool thematic implications but, given what we see in the final film, tangible evidence of the one psyche theory is either undermined by Sucker Punch‘s convoluted story-telling or other conflicting details.
What is the connection between the fantasy worlds and the reality of the asylum?
By the end of the film, Snyder makes it obvious that many of the events taking place in the dancer reality do have implications in the actual reality of the asylum. Dr. Vera Gorski mentions to the surgeon that prior to her lobotomy, Babydoll started a fire, stabbed an orderly, and successfully ensured Sweet Pea’s escape.
However, it remains unclear how involved the other girls were in the actual events in the asylum. Sweet Pea does successfully escape – which could indicate that Babydoll and the other girls were working together much in the same way as she imagined them in the burlesque club reality. That said, it’s unclear how much contact Babydoll actually had with the other girls, or how lucid any of them would have actually been (they all appeared pretty drugged up in the first scene at the asylum).
Similarly, assuming the girls were working as team, it’s still unclear whether or not Rocket, Blondie, and Amber died (as they did the burlesque reality), were lobotomized (like Babydoll), or were simply caught. Whether or not Snyder intended to leave this fact up for interpretation is unclear. Though, given the positive changes that seem to be promised for the asylum (as a result of Gorski’s revelation about Blue), it would make sense that whatever happened to the other girls – their fate wouldn’t be something that could easily be undone.
Continue reading the Sucker Punch spoiler analysis for our take on the Guardian Angel and who is in charge of the fantasies…
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The question i asked my self is when babydoll is fighting she is dancing in the burlesque but what is she doing in the asylum (real world) when she is dancing?
There are strong implications that the girls are raped by the workers in the asylum. So “dancing” might very well mean “getting raped” or at least having sexual intercourse.
Yes, this is also my opinion. Remember also the line after the first dance about “all that twitching and moaning” that Babydoll allegedly displayed during her dance (according, I think, to Rocket). Actually, it is all a dream reflection of her real life twitching (it’s another similar word, not ‘twitching’, but I don’t remember it) and moaning while having intercourse with the personnel.
Think there is a less dark option. At the beginning, the orderly talking to the father exlains that the girls act out their fantasies as therapy and that it can be very amusing to watch them beating or touching each other. The implication is that the staff, especially the men, probably gather to watch the women, finding it erotic.
If that is true, then Baby Doll could be acting out in ways that Blue and the others like and so they gather to watch. I don’t think Baby Doll was raped yet, because in the burleque interpretation of reality, at the end, Blue expresses frustration at not being able to play with his toys.
This may mean he is waiting until the lobotomy to rape her, when she is more compliant. When the orderly goes to rape her after the lobotomy, he seems upset, perhaps because she is “not there.”
directly before Babydoll is lobotomized it clearly shows that all the burlesque escape scenes were true, The mayor/doorman raps the window with an empty hand where before the burlesque scene he used his lighter, cleverly printed with a red dragon,as babydoll saw this upon her arrival she could construct the dragon scene within her mind (whilst presumeably being sexually assaulted by the mayor/doorman as the erotic dances scenes are a fantasy reconstruction of the sexual assault endured by babydoll in reality). As babydoll progresses towards the lobotomy room she passes the cook who reaches for his empty knife sheath, this along with blue’s stab wound confirm that the knife was stolen, and as blue attempts to rape babydoll in the stabbing burlesque scene it can be assumed that blue was stabbed during the similar events in the reality setting. The closet is burnt out which confirms that the escape was real. BEcause the burnt out closet along with other objects appear in both reality and burlesque settings it can be assumed that all events happening in the burlesque setting happened the same in the reality. Whilst each object was obtained babydoll distracts each man with her “erotic dance” this can be interpreted as sexual assault in the reality setting.
so to finish, the escape scenario was carried out in the reality simultaniously whilst the burlesque scene was being enacted. the burlseque scene is merely a construction of babydolls enterpretation of the events, ie. a brighter enactment of the series of events, although still harsh much more glamourous then the reality scene,
sweetpea escapes in the reality realm with the help of the” guardian angel” a construction of babydoll’s who helps her plot the escape.
babydoll merely masks the true evnts with a burlesque reenactement for self amusement and finds self satisfaction before the lobotomy that sweet pea escapes
When Babydoll was lobotomized, they kept referring to her “Paradise.” When Sweet Pea was on the bus, there is a billboard that said something like “Welcome to Paradise.” This leads me to believe that all the realities are fabrications of a lobotomized Sweet Pea.
People keep mentioning this, but I think it misses the point of the movie. Why would Snyder make a film in which the narrator stresses at the beginning and end that “you have all the weapons you need. Now Fight!” and then plot an ending in which the fight was all a fantasy and nothing concrete was accomplished?
The whiskey bottle Baby Doll uses to light the fire also had the word Paradise on its label. Does that mean they were already in paradise? I don’t think so. Baby Doll initially interpreted “being in Paradise” to be the ideal state to which she aspired, escape. By end, she realizes that her paradise is to sacrifice herself so Sweet Pea can escape.
Again, this is a futile shift if it is just a fantasy. It makes less sense that Sweet Pea would fantasize Baby Doll fantisizing all this.
Here are my thoughts on the plot: After seeing the film twice and reading several Interviews of Snyder and some film staff members it became obvious that its very difficult to understand the meaning because some crucial scenes had to be cut. But luckily the content of the two most important ones are available: a burlesque dance which is shown in the credits and and the originally intended ending which Snyder had to change because of a test-audience not liking it. But first things first, there are two main questions on the film: Which world is real and who is the person which the fantasies belong to?
Considering that all super hero fantasies (which Babydoll is dreaming while dancing) are dealing with modern Fantasy-/Videogame-/Pop-culture (World-War shooting, Mechas, Orcs & Dragons, Space robots, Manga-style katana-wielding shool girl e.t.c.) and that the girls use mainly real existing high-tech weaponry, all guns are up-to-date ones and none of them is imaginary futuristic, leads to one conclusion: Whoever is having those fantasies definitely can not live in an asylum or brothel in the 60′s natively. Therefor neither the asylum nor the brothel are real, everything we see in the film is a fantasy (yay – the lobotomies also can’t be real…) Furthermore in the beginning scene with Babydolls stepfather threatening her you can take a glimpse of Babydolls sister’s room. The toys in there seem to be very dark and scary – definitely not the toys a kid would have in a real world.
Now who’s actually the dreamer? Here the hints are also very widespread throughout the entire film. Obvious ones are: SweetPea is narrating the beginning and ending dialogue, SweetPea is pulling of the wig in the show stating she’s the star, before sacrificing her Babydoll is telling the story is SweetPea’s. Less obvious is: During the superhero fantasies (in the war trenches and also in the train) you can repeatedly see a slow-motion scene of Rocket getting overwhelmed and hurt by an enemie from which SweetPea (and not Babydoll) is saving her sister. Since no other scene in the hero fantasies shows one of the heroines getting hurt this strongly implies that SweetPea is pulling the strings in this story.
Now assuming SweetPea is dreaming and the asylum also beeing a fantasy world, what happens in reality (the film makes big efforts tho show that all worlds are linked, so there must be a link to reality, too)? It’s clearly stated that Sweetpea and Rockets had some problems at home (Rocket was telling she and Sweetpea where runaways), the girls have to face sexual abuse mainly from Blue and Mrs Gorski was trying to protect them in the brothel and threating them with care in the asylum. Now the cutted dance scene gives the missing link: Mrs Gorski and Blue where dancing together like a couple. BAM: caring mother, abusive (step)dad, like shown also in the imaginative story of Babydoll. This gets more obvious when taking a closer look the the hero fantasies and the advises of the old man: In the Dragon scene he is warning the girls not to wake the mother, but after the dragon is awake and realized the fate of her child she gets very angry. In the train fantasy the old man tells the girls to drop their throusers of they dare (I don’t remeber the exact words). This alone does not mean that much but considering this fantasy takes place between telling the plan to Mrs Gorski and Blue getting angry the fate of Sweetpea becomes clear: Her stepdad is abusing her and she is afraid of telling her mother.
Now to the originally intended ending: In the very first ending Babydoll gets lobotomized, the meaning should be clear: she found peace by saving SweetPea. After that SweetPea was lobotomized too, she also was in calm with herself because of making peace with her sister (the train/kitchen scene). After that Blue was saying to her “Remember me? Take her downstairs” in the asylum. Then the bus scene was shown, then Blue went downstairs and was trying to rape: Babydoll! Then the police called by Mrs gorski took away Blue. This makes clear which role was played by Babydoll, she took over Sweetpea’s mind during the abuses. It also makes a very nice happy ending because it implies that SweetPea’s mother finally imcriminated the abusive stepdad and saved the girl.
The only thing not completely clear to me is the fate of SweetPeas sister, but I think she died because Babydolls sister died, Rocket died and in the cutted dance scene in the credits you also see her burning in fire and flying to heaven as angel afterwards.
I don’t understand how the original poster of this discussion could say Babydoll killed her sister. Am I the only one that noticed this or am I wrong? The bullet didn’t ricochet off of a light bulb (that sounds ridiculous in itself). It smashed through the light bulb and hit the piping on the wall, which was shooting out steam immediately after. I thought this was to show that the bullet clearly did not hit her younger sister. I thought perhaps the father went too far with hitting the girl or the blood was from her being sexually abused.
Like I said, I could be completely wrong here. Any insight all?
The bullet richoeted off the heating pipe (heavy metal pipe to hold high pressure steam) and struck the sister. Do you really think that if Babydoll knew her stepfather had just killed her little sister that she would not have shot him instead of just pointing the gun at him while he was calling the police? She ran away because of what she had just done.
For those of you the end was “Anticlimactic” didn’t pay close enough attention to the plot, and there was one. Your probably thinking “What? Why wasn’t there a huge battle? Why didn’t she imagine the mobsters as orcs or something as she revealed herself allowing sweet Pea to escape? This movie has no plot and can’t even give us an action packed end.” Well, if you did pay attention you would realize that she only retreated into the fantasy world when she was afraid. The burlesque illusion was already her reality. The third level was her way of dealing with fear instead of facing it. The fact that she DIDN’T go into the fantasy world when rescuing sweet pea meant that she had finally conquered her fear. She was free. It wasn’t a climax in terms of action, but in terms of plot. Snyder sacrificed action for a well rounded plot, and as a fellow writer, I comend him for that.
Mawhonic’s post a couple earlier than this is a thoughtful, plausible interpretation. I’m not prepared to make it my interpretation, however. Instead, I want to suggest how to cut through a lot of the speculation and find an interpretation that is inspiring and meaningful.
The thing that strongly impressed me was that the film had a clear message. It was stated in the opening narration: that guardian angels are not there to fight our battles but to “shout through demons, if they have to” to get us to fight. In the middle of the movie, Dr./Madam Gorski tells Baby Doll first that “you control the world of your imagination” and second “You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!” Shortly thereafter, the Wiseman in the temple tells her the same thing. At the end, the narrator again emphasizes, by way of a series of rhetorical questions, that each of us has all the weapons we need to fight our own demons.
Now whichever interpretation you want to argue for HAS to support this message. I will argue that some interpretations support this message, while others do not. I’ll be interested for others to offer differing ideas.
I think the movie is a kind of mythical retelling of the events that brought Baby Doll and Sweet Pea into each other’s lives. Baby Doll is liberated from the asylum because of the heroic sacrifice of Baby Doll. But the story is being told from far into the future, perhaps, when Sweet Pea has grown to be an old woman, sharing the story of her young life. But her real point is the one described above, about the importance of fighting no matter the odds. The message is the most important thing; the details are not important.
Myths change with the retelling, incorporating new things into the old. That would explain the odd mix of weaponry, the photocopy machine in Blue’s office, rock and roll music from the late 60s, in a night club from the early sixties, as imagined from an asylum in the 50s.
The key features are that Baby Doll responds to the promptings of her inner guardian angels’ voices, fights for her survival, and in the process, identifies with her fellow traveler’s so much, that she sacrifices her own freedom for at least one of them to be free. That is why we see all the evidence at the end that the things we saw in the brothel/night club scenes had real analogues in the asylum reality. Sweet Pea really is free of the place in the end. This supports the message that we must all fight for ourselves and others.
Making the whole story in the mind of Sweet Pea and saying that at the end, she is still not really free of the asylum, makes the message of the film fall flat. How can we be inspired to fight if the events we thought really happened were all in someone’s imagination and did not result in any true liberation. The Wiseman’s promise that Baby Doll would be free if she found the five things would be a lie. Why even tell Baby Doll to fight? Why not tell her to curl up in a corner and retreat into a pleasant fantasy?
Now Mawhonic’s spin, that it is a dramatization of a real family situation, an abused girl’s fantastic retelling of the mundane events that led her mother to save her from her abusive father could support the message, since the fight, however it was inspired and whoever actually fought it, took place and produced a positive result.
But I think the tale is more like a classic myth and as such can fit a variety of situations, including the one Mawhonic describes. Put another way, it has qualities of a dream, not in the sense that it never really happened, but in the sense that dreams have of combining symbols from different sources and having minor inconsistencies and sudden shifts of perspective. I think that is why it strikes such a strong reaction in the people who watch it with their brains turned on. The mythic skeleton of the story probably bears many more interpretations. But the final result still needs to support the message of the narrator: “You have all the weapons you need. Now Fight!”
Great movie. I can’t decide between three *takes* and am not sure there is enough evidence to come to a conclusion.
Take 1 and 2 assume it is Sweatpea’s dream.
In take 1 is that there is a conspiracy to escape in World A (real world asylum). B World is Baby Doll’s rationalisation/escape but there is a direct connection between A and B as she submits to rape to allow her co-conspirators to enact the plan and get the items. In A World she has to forgo escape for some reason to allow Sweetpea to get out. The fate of the others is unclear. I find this the least compelling scenario as it seems to “twee” and simple.
Take 2 is that there is no conspiracy to escape in world A. Babydoll is truly mad here, doing random destructive acts, helping a girl to escape (doesn’t matter who) and getting raped. In World B she turns these events into a meaningful narrative peopled with inmates she may in fact have only had a passing connection with. The escape in world A is turned into the Sweetpea escape fantasy. The lobotomy is welcomed because it allows permanent escape into some form of World B / oblivion.
In both these takes World C is merely a higher form of escape from World A abuse.
Take 3 is that it is Sweetpea’s dream. She escapes into World B and turns Baby Doll into her guardian angel (Sweatpea is the narrator at the beginning saying sometimes Angels appear as young girls – ie Baby Doll). Here World B is an escape but still a mental prison. Initially Sweatpea fights against the possibility of escape (ie against Baby Doll) but then accepts the freedom via Baby Dolls messianic style sacrifice (“this is your story”). Sweatpea sees the random destructive acts in World A done by BabyDoll and weaves them into her redemption tale – including Baby Doll’s final lobotomy/sacrifice. The bus scene is happening here in World B – note it is in colour and features fantasy characters – this is *somebodies* alta world. In take 3 this is Sweatpea – still in a fantasy state – turning World B into a happy story. Whether she is actually still in the asylum or not is irrelevant.
There are other takes, however, I am finding my brain melting though as it is.
Personally I find option 2 the darkest and most probably “correct” take, but take 3 is the “cleverest” though probably too complex to be “true”.
I’d be interested to know how you interpret the narration at the end, if you have prefer the darkest or cleverest interpretations you have outlined.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, I don’t see how the message that we all have guardian angels who speak through odd people at odd times to inspire us to fight can be supported by any interpretation in which the fight so vividly and creatively portrayed is ultimately for nothing.
Well I guess SP (the narrator) was inspired in the real world to fight, escape and roll on.
However BD is far more tragic and dark – she clearly came to see her role as sacrifice and due to mental issues escape to oblivion
The world C fights provide us with Heavy Metal fanboy joy, and BD with a heroic vent against her powerlessness, a possible off-set to real world rape and expression of her own will to fight. Her struggle was important to her as it allowed SP to escape and “live for us all” and let her embrace oblivion in peace hence the final scene. Its just not a very conventional victory!
Ahh correction to my post – “Take 1 and 2 assume it is BabyDolls dream”. ***sigh**
Also is it my imagination or does BabyDoll not say anything in the real world”?
Hi Bob, I liked your post because it is organized. Although this forum is getting thicker every day, and there is no time to carefully go through all the posts, I believe that the discussions over here might well be more interesting than the movie proper, so I decided to join in.
I do not have a clear final personal opinion about the movie, as I did not really pay much attention to the plot initially, because I found the screenplay rather poorly thrown together (as opposed to the extraordinary sound-image-fx combination).
[Actually, while writing this I realized I actually did find some explanations on the go - so some conclusions at the end
]
Please note the following details that seem to contradict or, on the contrary, sustain one or more of your takes:
- the layers of worlds are as follows: all C world episodes are encapsulated in the B world, and all the B world is encapsulated in the A world, taking place between the lobotomy start and end; this strongly suggests Babydoll is the dreamer.
Here is an interesting, yet quite obvious remark to your line “In both these takes World C is merely a higher form of escape from World A abuse” – yes, true, and even better said, world C ONLY occurs during sex episodes. This has to be right, since it is clearly and strongly implied by the containment of all fighting scenes within world B dance moments (which are reflections of world A sex moments).
This explains the violence and rage of the Babydoll action figure, meant to reinstate her psyche balance by punishing, in world C, the abusers of world A.
- the final bus scene is, as far as I can say, CLEARLY of world B. However, the boy and the wise man are in it, and Babydoll’s lobotomy is over so, as you and many others noticed, this points towards Sweet Pea.
(not only this, please note that there are many lines where SP is described main character: it is my act, this is your story, etc etc. Also, when the lobotomy starts in A, SP replaces BabyDoll as lobotomized play pretend in world B – this was interesting).
PERSONALLY, I tend to dismiss the Sweet Pea narrator theory, as it has many loose ends. The main is that she is not the dancer – the dancer is BabyDoll, and the dancer is the one generating all the lair of world C. Plus, the whole world B (except final scene) is presented between layers of world A, and not any of them, but exactly during baby’s lobotomy.
However, I myself have some loose ends in the BabyDoll theory, for instance why does BD not dream of her B world as she goes along the A world reality, why all at once, like a memory?
A possible answer is the American Beauty line “I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time…” – ibid, during lobotomy the recent memories flood BabyDoll’s mind, but she gives the overall dark world memories a lighter, quest-like burlesque makeover (B), and the even darker sex memories and even stronger, super-action makeover (C).
Actually, as I write this, I realize this theory might just be right – almost no loose ends, except, so far, for the ending, which I am still thinking about
I will ponder a bit more and further reply. Please let me know, anyone, if you have further comments to the above brainstorming.
Cheers.
Hi Cosmo, I guess your take is similar to my Take 2? ie no real time interlinked escape conspiracy between worlds A and B, rather a post hoc rationalisation of events in A via B.
There is not enough evidence to *prove* how structured the events were in A (ie the 4 objects – random, part of a BD plan or part of a group escape conspiracy). The failure to define the other characters in A suggests the point is either unimportant or that there was little *real* group dynamic.
I’m guessing now that SP was the girl that escaped as this is the only way to explain her verbal narration in a BD centric view. I’m also guessing her escape was the pivot point for BD in making her post hoc rationalisation positive – ie there is a point to my sacrifice. I’m guessing there must have been a self sacrifice moment in the *real* escape scenario. This self sacrifice motif probably to offset the death of BD younger sister.
My major concerns with all this are:
If world B is post hoc – then why the need for World C, there is no immediate imperative to deal with the sex as she is already applying a retrospective interpretation. Why not deal with it within a World B context?
The bus scene – if it is World B and post lobotomy then it must be a BD vision of the success of the real world escape. Yet it is strange that BD is not in it – maybe this symbolises her “loss of self”
The killing of the girls doesn’t seem to make much sense in World B as it doesn’t seem to rationalise anything in World A
This overall “Take” also makes the concept of BD fighting and her guardian angel all a bit moot even though this is trumpeted as the/a major theme. (ie if her crusade was all a split second rationalisation of a pretty mundane series of events, not really very epic).
What do you think?
After reading and commenting on Mawhonics “take”, I would offer an alternative.
To me, the flow of the story is simpler than people want to make it out to be. Girl get’s wronglyfully committed and knows she has five days to do something about it. She finds the will the fight, figures out a plan, gets accomplices, then, at the end, realizes her freedom is a freedom from attachment to her ego self and sacrifices herself so another innocent victim can escape into the real world.
This fits the narration at the beginning and end, and the advice of Madam Gorski and the Wiseman, who are acting as guardian angels.
Mawhonic brings up an interesting point no one else is acknowledging: there are all kinds of modern weapons in the fight fantasies, which neither Baby Doll nor Sweet Pea, based in a 1950s world, would know to visualize. There are other anachronisms, such as music from the 60s and later on the tape player of a world long before these songs were written.
When Sweet Pea copies the map in Blue’s office, it implies she uses what looks like a photocopy machine, which I’m pretty sure did not exist in the 50s. Since this was in the fantasized interpretation of real events, there must have been some way to copy the map in the 1950s reality. Someone else said they spotted a 1960s Ford Galaxy as one of the cars used by the police.
The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that someone who knows this story well is telling us, the present day audience. This story teller is presenting images and sounds that we in the present can understand and identify with. She is doing this, knowing we will understand that this is conveying the emotional impact of the events in ways we will identify with, knowing that in the real story, they played no part.
I think that a plausible story teller would be Sweet Pea, now sixty years older, now her in her 80s. She is not trying to tell the story in a factual way, but using it as a way to make her point about the power and role of guardian angels (our inner self speaking through others and our own heart). This is a very New Age approach consistent with Snyder’s professed source of inspiration, Richard Bach and his book, “Illusions.”
The other plausible version is that this is a kind of dream of the story teller. In dreams, we often have these sudden shifts situation and odd mixes of past and present. In the New Age view of things, dreams are much like our actual lives, full of important symbols and ultimately in our own control. The narration at the end not only suggests we fight, but that ultimately it is each one of us who “sets demons upon us and at the same time tells us we will never die” etc.
Hello again! It seems that Lanny and myself are very close with our interpretations of the film. I think there are lots of time incosistencies in this dreams that in my oppinion shall point to the way of thinking of it as a story told by a person living today.
Allthough the theory where a grown up SweetPea is narrating the story while looking back would logically explain this I have one big problem with it: As mentioned earlier besides the hard evidences (things are used that where not invented in the 60′s) the superhero fantasies are all made from modern youth’s popculture. I find it highly questionable that a grandma, even when talking about kid’s dreams, will visualize the story with pictures of a generation 50 years ahead.
Which again leads me to the conclusion that this story is telling us how SweetPea has retrieved her will to live by imagining a story where she breaks free from the asylum/brothel.
In my earlier post I just tried to figure the plot, I did not try to make too much interpretation of the film’s meaning there. This I want to add now:
The obvious message of course is that by never giving up and fighting inner or outer demons one will get freedom and peace in the end. But there is a deeper message in the ending dialogue. The key to getting this film’s puzzle together is that lots of the metaphors told us in this movie are actually not metaphors but have to taken by their wordly meaning. I explained in my plot analysis how this is the case with the old man’s advises but its also important with other things. Remember the 5 spreaded all over the film (5 girls, 5 on the plane, 5 on the helicopter), but there are only 4 worlds shown: the asylum, the brothel, the hero-fantasy world and the paradise the girls are in after their lobotomies. In the ending monologue SweetPea is telling us where to find the 5th world by telling us: “who decides why we live and what we’ll die to defend – who chains us and who holds the key that can set us free – it’s you – you have all the weapons you need – now fight”. Considering that all 4 worlds in the film are dream worlds (see my first post for more details) this is a very clever implication that the film’s real world, the 5th world, has to be imagined by us. The 5th world is in the head of the viewer!
Now bringing together that we imagining something and the call for a fight makes the deeper meaning of this movie’s ending: Having some dreams and fantasies is always worth fighting for! This becomes even more clear by considering that the author, comic geek Zack Synder, most likely will have some very hard times in Hollywood’s business world getting the pictures in his head converted into multi-million dollar projects. Just read some interviews on Snyder how frustrating the negotiations during Sucker Punch production where for him…
I’m a little skeptical of this interpretation for two reasons: 1) I’m not convinced Sweet Pea had a lobotomy. There are a few quirky things about the world we see her in at the end, such as the presence of the boy seen in one of the fight fantasies, and the Wiseman/bus driver, and the billboard for the Paradise Diner. But these are in line with what I suggested above as the quasi-dream-like quality of the entire movie or that it is a kind of mythic representation of more mundane events.
2) In the liner notes of the soundtrack CD, Snyder credits Richard Bach, author of “Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah,” as a continuing inspiration. He has the rights to make a movie version of the book. The events of the book are very tame compared to the wild stuff he normally does, but the message of the book is that the “real world” is itself an illusion, one we can change in radical ways using the power of our own minds, the power of imagining the world differently than it is.
Glancing back through the chapters, I have just reminded myself of a central metaphor put forth: life is like a movie. We live many lives, as we watch many movies, in order to either learn something or to have fun or both. It states, “We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe. We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we’re hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we’re victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck.”
He furthers the analogy: “We buy tickets to these films, paying admission by agreeing to believe in the reality of space and the reality of time … Neither one is true, but anyone who doesn’t want to pay that price cannot appear on this planet, or in any space-time system at all.”
The wise man of the book is asked, “Who writes these movies?” We do, of course. “Who acts?” Us. “Who’s the cameraman, the projectionist, the theater manager, the ticket-taker, the distributer, and who watches them all happen? Who is free to walk out in the middle, any time, change the plot whenever, who is free to see the same film over and over again?”
Like the last words of Sucker Punch, the answer to all these questions is “You.” And me and anyone.
The key to being happy is to understand the power of the imagination over reality. The Wiseman of the book suggests to the narrator that he can attract things to his life by using his imagnation. The narrator says he can imagine the ideal woman but “that’s all it is, just my imagination.”
The response given is I think the key to Sucker Punch as well: “Just your imagination? OF COURSE it’s just your imagination! This world is your imagination, have you forgotten? … We are talking about Warner Brothers worlds, MGM lifetimes, and every second of those are illusions and imaginations. All dreams with the symbols we waking dreamers conjure for ourselves.”
That’s a long-winded way of saying that a person who went to the trouble to get the movie rights to this odd little book would not make a movie about the power of imagination if its only value was entertainment. That’s also why I think it is important that Sweet Pea actually makes it out of the asylum and back to the “real world.” The power of imagination made that possible.
I think our interpretations go along very well. The ending monologue in my opinion tells us that the 5th “real” world of the film is in our imagination which is pretty much exactly what your quotes of this book tells us: The film’s reality is made by us. While this sentence alone can be interprated alot, I think it can stand as the final message of the film. Also when I was writing about having dreams and fantasies I was in no way talking about pure entertainment – in my eyes when you take fantasy and dreams out of the world then it would be a horrible place to live in.
So far for the bottom line, but I’m really torn on how to get the relationship between Babydoll and SweetPea strait. In an interview Snyder clearly stated he was planning on having SweetPea lobotomized, too: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/interview-zack-snyder-on-the-sexuality-and-world-of-sucker-punch.php
Obviuously shown and stated in many interviews by film crew members SweetPea and Babydoll are both parts of one psyche – but yet I have a hard time to figure out who’s the original character. It seems plausible that BabyDoll is the part fighting for herself (she was trying to break out of the brothel) while SweetPea is the part fighting for others (she wasn’t really interested in joining the brothel escape plan at first hand but joined to protect her sister Rocket). In the end both get redemption by getting the exact opposite of what they where fighting for the whole film: BabyDoll got peace by stopping her own fight to save somebody else and SweetPea got free not by herself but by the fight of somebody else. This seems a good indication that, allthough butting heads earlier in the movie, both parts of Babydoll/SweetPea are calm with each other at the end. This might be what Snyder tried to express by giving them both a lobotomy: the lobotomy is not the punishment but the redemption. Still there are no real hard clues which of the girls is the real one (besides SweetPea narrating, but that isn’t fully satisfying me yet) – but here we come back to the first point: the reality is in our imagination…
Just as an addition, here is one Interview where Emily Browning and Abby Cornish are telling us they intended to show their characters are “sort of two sides of the one coin”:
http://screencrave.com/2011-03-24/interview-abbie-cornish-and-emily-browning-for-sucker-punch/
To take this idea one step further, it is a possibility that all 5 girls are actually sides of BabyDoll’s psyche, their match with real asylum inmates being created by the ‘dreamer’ BabyDoll’s mind as one superimposes familiar people’s identities to dream characters (while the dream characters are, all of them, the dreamer him/herself).
Actually, by taking into account the fact that the brothel story starts when lobotomy starts, and ends when lobotomy ends, I believe maybe the most suitable theory is that BabyDoll actually REMEMBERS her past few days (five, I believe) all in an instant, and devises defense mechanisms to soothe her troubled psyche and hide/disguise the memories:
(1) one lighter mechanism, for the overall setting, in which she hides the asylum one layer down, behind the brothel, dancing-for-big-shots and questing-for-items world, and
(2) one stronger mechanism, for the sex abuse episodes only, hiding both the asylum reality and the brothel reality two layers down, behind the overpowered, vengeful action figure BabyDoll acts.
In the end, all parts of the psyche die, except for one that is redeemed into oblivion and one that is redeemed into freedom.
The line of the doctor (high roller) that she looked like she wanted me to do it makes perfect sense: after five days of horrifying, drugged asylum time, seasoned with sexual abuse, oblivion is one desired way out.
One extra argument down this line is the fact that we never ‘see’ baby doll’s world in two plans at the same time (except for the intro father/priest episode): her mind simply does not know how the “dance” looked in the brothel world (as she was in fantasy action figure world), nor how the escape/map/fire episodes looked in the real asylum world. They are simply replaced by the defense mechanism.
Cheers.
It is very likely that all 5 girls have some place in Babydolls/SweetPeas psyche. While Rockets seems not directly linked to the girl herself but to her (dead) sister I cannot really figure the meaning of the other two.
The most appealing theory of how the different aspects are fitting together for me is that in the beginning the girl just has left her will to fight on and imagines herself to be lobotomized. But another part of herself refuses this fate (when SweetPea gets out of the lobotomy chair, pulling off the wig and telling she thinks of a lobotomy as a stupid idea). Then the story unfolds with Babydoll finding her will to fight (the first scene in the dancing hall) and the two dominant parts of her psche struggling with each other. It is implied that one part is blaming the other for harming the little sister (Sweetpea is blaming Babydoll to bring Rocket in danger with her escape plan).
After all parts fighting together on getting free the both dominant ones finally settle their dispute and even change roles: Babydoll is not fighting for her own freedom anymore but for SweetPea’s and SweetPea is caring for her own freedom from now on. This symbolizes that the actual girl has found her inner peace.
I agree to the Sweet Pea/Baby Doll two sides of the coin theory, and quite clearly Rocket is the sister figure.
I haven’t given much thought to Amber and Blondie, but it is quite clear that they are weak parts of the psyche, and thus killed in the imagination world by baby doll’s mind. I am quite certain that the killing is ONLY metaphorical and serves as removing the weak (Blondie) and shy/reluctant (Amber) sides of Baby Doll, in order for her to become a stronger person in real life. No mention is made about the death of inmates (very important issue, much more than fires or escapes) by M. Gorski, so definitely the ‘real’ Amber and Blondie are not dead.
I believe that the moment the hammer strikes the needle and the lobotomy begins, the struggle for redemption of a troubled and crushed psyche also begins, and in those seconds of (real, psychical) brain damage, baby doll remembers her five day nightmare and remodels her perception of it (narcotic as it was due to drugs). And, first thing first, she activates her stronger side (sweet pea) to revolt against the whole thing and refuse lobotomy. That is why sweet pea jumps off the chair (i am the main attraction here, it is my show).
And of course, down this line of interpretation, the dances are not strong enough to block the rage of sexual abuse in real life, so they are further replaced by a third reality where the powerful, warrior rebel baby doll blows her aggressors away and let’s go of her frustration and sexual damage.
ONE QUESTION for you: in what level (reality OR imagination) is the ending scene placed?
I AM POSITIVE it is the dream vision of how the ‘other girl’s’ (depicted as Sweet Pea) escape must have been, as imagined by Baby Doll (strong clues: the kid and wise man and Paradise sign, weaker clue: the dreamy setting) – and NOT the real escape of ‘a girl’ in the asylum (not important who she is according to M. Gorski).
All my friends I discussed with so far insist it is the real world, and it really makes no sense at all, but hey! it’s art, right? everyone sees his ‘own’ movie
Unfortunately I cannot give any clear answer about on which level or reality the ending scene is placed because I think thats what Snyder intended it to be: unclear and open for our own interpretation. In some way I think thats the big flaw of this film, it’s so much dream shaped that you don’t really get the original thoughts of the author in many parts. I’m fully aware that this is exactly what the director wanted it to be, and in some ways also the message of the film – but still it’s a little bit unsatisfying.
The only way it all makes a logical sense to me (allthough I’m not sure if things are intended to be logical) is that it’s SweetPea who thought out the story -take her as the author- but in the story’s reality it’s Babydoll’s story.
So for Babydoll the asylum and the lobotomy where reality, but the whole film was just a story in SweetPea’s head. This is further encouraged by one interview of Snyder where he pointed out that in his original ending Babydoll was intended to get up out of her chair and having a dream scene of all girls singing together after Blue was incriminated and thus AFTER her lobotomy. The very ending was intended to be a falling curtain like the film starts with an opening curtain. This makes me think that what we saw in the film was a story told and thought out by Sweetpea.
Finally coming back to your question I think in the story’s world the ending scene (Sweetpea in the bus) should be a dream by Babydoll. This is to imply that allthough having been lobotomized she still is happy in her mind and is not caring about her real fate at all. This way Babydoll is doing whats the book mentioned by Snyder as his main inspiration is all about: You have to bend your perspective of things (and thus your perception of reality) in a way that you are comfortable with it and to a degree where the actual reality has no influence anymore. Here are a few quotes from this book to give you a better idea on this:
“Perspective – Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.”
“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”
“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
“A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion….this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.”
“You’re going to die a horrible death, remember. It’s all good training, and you’ll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they’ll call you crazy.”
After thinking about the question if Babydoll is actually capable of having dreams after her lobotomy I remember one scene which maybe could clarify this.
Directly after the lobotomy the doctor and Mrs Gorski are talking and both are looking at Babydoll’s face several times (allthough the viewer is not seeing the face). The doctor is talking about the girls strange behaviour before the procedure but I cannot remember to see some remarkable expressions in Mrs Gorski’s face when looking at Babydoll.
Now I remember after the scene where Blue was incriminated the policemen put his lamp on Babydoll and Mrs Gorski was also looking at her. Then Mrs Gorski was clearly surprised and shocked on what she saw. This only makes sense if we asume the girl’s face expression changed between both scenes (the lobotomy and the end). This implicates that Babydoll was capable of smiling and thus having some feelings (and dreams) even after her lobotomy.
I think you misread the interview. I read it through and found no mention of an intent to lobotomize Sweet Pea.
He (Snyder) says, “The very first ending I wrote the order was: Babydoll was being lobotomized, she got chained in the basement, Sweet Pea escapes – well, let me back up.” He then goes on to describe a sceen with Baby Doll and Jonn Hamm that symbolizes her self-sacrifice (the lobotomy) as her giving herself willingly to the High Roller in exchange for his promise Blue will never have control over Baby Doll again.
He then says, “The very end of the movie was: you see Sweet Pea steal a dress from a clothesline, then after she’s lobotomized and Blue says, “Do you remember me? Take her downstairs,” and then you see Sweet Pea getting on the bus, then after her getting on the bus, it cuts back to Babydoll in the basement and that whole scene happens of the cops taking him away. When he shines the flashlight on her, she gets up, and the camera dollies in on her and then goes around her head – and you see that she’s on a stage in the theater and she signs ‘O-o-h Child’ at the very end. After that, all the dead girls come out and they sing together, then the curtain closes. That’s the end.”
When he says “after that she’s lobotomized,” he’s talking about Baby Doll, not Sweet Pea.
Sweet Pea escapes. He also says nothing in the interview that makes me think he has an intricate psychological metaphor in which all the characters are aspects of Sweet Pea’s psyche.
After getting a little bit more information about the reluctant messiah book I think I have to revise my theories and agree with you. I might have gotten the interview of Snyder speaking about the lobotomy wrong. Furthermore since the film does not have a story more then a few sides if you would write it down I was thinking about a Metaplot and searched for the message in there – this was also a failure of me. Now I think like in many parts of the film the message has to be taken wordly out of what you see and here: this film is nothing more (or less) then Snyder’s worst case scenario of the lesson given by the Messiah book. He was figuring out one of the worst imaginable fates one could get into and then he was figuring out how even in such a scenario the imagination could turn into something one can get comfortable with (besides the girl obviously getting relief from her guilty concience also remember the cutted scene where the lobotomy was imagined by Babydoll as a sex scene she even was enjoying). I don’t really know if the book is also saying if you have to fight for your imaginations, but this could as well be an addition of the director.
I still think the film shall display a story thought out by SweetPea and the original singing end also implies that one should think of Babydoll still beeing happy in her imagination all those things don’t really make an impact on the absolute difference.
I think people who have responded positively to the movie (over 50% according places like Rotten Tomatoes), most are responding to this message. The movie works like a good myth, conveying wisdom in the form of a story. The details are not important. What sticks with you is a positive sense that we can always fight back. Even when we lose, we gain something for fighting for ourselves.
People who hated the movie probably are not open to this kind of concept, people who think the world is not affected by our thoughts, people who don’t really have a positive use for their imagination except entertainment. But that is okay. The beauty of the New Age perspective is that we cannot mess up beyond redemption. We always learn something.
While i was reading through the comments i started asking myself that if she had really killed her sister then she must feel realy guilty so maybe by helping saving sweet peas life she found freedom for herself or maybe sweet pea and rocket are something like a projection of babydoll and her sister (both loose their younger sister) maybe im compltely wrong?!
Please see my above lines to mawhonic, I don’t believe you are wrong.
Actually, all 5 girls are parts of the real baby doll’s psyche. The real girls in the asylum serve only as faces to give to baby doll’s personas in the imagination (such as we always do in dreams, and such as baby doll does with all characters, superimposing the doctor’s face on the highroller, warden’s over blue, etc etc).
An interesting thought I have not yet seen in the comments regards the wise man. Who is he, since he is not one of the asylum characters. I believe he may very well be baby doll’s lost father in real life, the GOOD father, as opposed to the BAD stepfather, the guide and guru of all her action fantasy missions (that are, in fact, roads to salvation from her sex abuse traumas).
The wise man is a safe haven (he could be a return to the safe childhood moments, before her mother remarried the bad father).
I find this theory to fit very well with the rest of the story, since the wise man has no real life appearance (unless you count the final as real, which will leave you with serious dead ends).
Sounds plausible to me thanks
I can’t see SP as part of BD – it would make BD the initial narrator speaking about herself in the 3rd person in a SP voice!
It also kills the self-sacrifice theme and the dual themes of the nature of freedom – via physical escape and mental oblivion.
Also I think the Wiseman simply represents in a fantasy world the spirit to fight, the voice of defiance. There is no evidence he is more.
Hi all,
Just saw the movie for a second time today after much discussion and reading of this forum.
My personal conclusions:
Asylum is the real world – there isn’t a fifth plane required for the themes to play out.
Definitely BD’s dream and definitely occurring on the chair waiting for the procedure. Check out the top and tailing.
Definitely SP escaped in real world thanks to BD – and is narrating “her story” verbally at start and finish.
Definitely SP didn’t get lobotomised as well – there is a clear distinction made between her fate and that of BD.
The bus sequence is almost certainly a BD imagining of SP’s post escape activities – kind of a D world (if the real world asylum is A, Bordello is B and the empowerment fantasies are C). Note BD’s smile on the chair as it starts, inclusion of fantasy figures, guardian angel (who now becomes SPs angel) and overall surreal feel..
I’m almost sure the actual post stabbing escape sequence occurred in the real world in a similar fashion to that of the B world. The *feel* seems right, the colours mute and it brings fulfilment to the 4 object plot devices.
I’m almost certain BD realised during the escape that “BD was the only one strong enough to survive out there”. That she was too mentally broken for a conventional rescue. That she “sacrificed” herself with the knowledge that only the lobotomy could provide her freedom. Both BD and SW secured their own brands of escape.
There are things that there simply isn’t enough evidence for:
Were Rocket and SP really sisters – or was this a self-referencing BD invention? I don’t see the cook in A world killing Rocket, but then can’t see SP escaping without her either. Tentative conclusion: they weren’t really related.
Exactly how did the real escape play out – did BD work in conjunction with the other 4, was it just BD/SP, was it BD planning and only at the 11th hour involving SP? On the one hand the B world plot implies conspiracy but the BD “too mentally wiped to exist outside” implies less of a collegiate effort. Tentative conclusion: there was a conspiracy but the 3 other characters had minor thieving roles and got written out of the plot in the B world. The nurse’s demeanour does not suggest 3 murders in the past week and their inclusion in the B world requires some participation by them.
How great a role did sex play in securing the items in the real world? Assuming a link with the dancing it would seem quite strongly. This implies a conspiracy between BD and one or more others.
Re the sex question, I note there is a strong implication post procedure that “Blue” is taking BD for the first time and is angry she is not “there” to be had.
This kind of throws a spanner into the otherwise logical dancing=abuse/sex as distraction theory. (unless I have miss-read the implication?)
I guess others could have been been the perpetrators but I got the feeling Blue was pretty much in charge of the criminal element in the Hospital.
I agree, actually the idea fits quite well in the whole story. I somehow forgot about the playing with my toys line which is a clear indication down this line.
About the sex, one more thing I noticed might fit well in the story, the first episode, the one that is not actually a sucker punch, as it is not meant to get an item.
Unlike the rest of the dancing scenes, this one is not generated by Baby Doll, but imposed on her, just like in reality sex was imposed on her. Initially, she fights and refuses it, then she finally breaks free and escapes into the fantastic world, with a double mission – to get away from the trauma and to find guidance from the protecting image of the wise man.
During this first escape from reality, the wise man presents her with the weapons and, in the end, tells her: defend yourself – i.e. in the future, run away to the fantastic reality when you need to escape.
This makes good sense. I just need to reconcile the whole sex thing to the other plot issues I go on about in a post further down..
If I can reco all this then your point makes “the darkside” interpretation even more creepy.
Nice review, I agree to almost all of it – actually, to all of it, except I have a couple of things to add to it – they are also in some of my previous posts.
None of the girls die in the real world, perhaps some thievery occurs, perhaps some plotting, but no big deal, the ordinary start a fire help another girl escape sort of mental institution routine.
The deaths in plan B are meant to purge BD’s psyche of her weaker sides (like amber and blondie), and the haunting little sister image (rocket).
Rocket and SP were or were not sisters in the real world – it is irrelevant. The sister role in the dream is related to the death of BD’s little sister. I can assume the 4 girls are nothing more than 4 girls in the real world – it is only in the B world they assume roles, all appointed to them by superimposition by BD.
Sex accompanied all item thefts. I will also answer your post on the sex issue, but I need to see the Blue post-op scene you referred to.
Thanks, I can accept the “weaker sides” explanation for Amber, Blondie – hence their rather perfunctory demise Which also steeles BD for her final act in B world. Im still not sure how the repeat of a big sister / young sister disaster helped her though – and the twist of having younger sister self sacrifice doesnt really help me.
I think BDs role in SPs real world escape must have been fairly out of the ordinary for her to be considered a guardian angel and to have SP turn into a born again “self helper”.
Re Blue when watching the movie there was a real flow between his refusal to touch/discipline BD until the lobotomy/high roller event, the “playing with my toys” break down and stabbing, the obvious corresponding wound in A world, the indecent haste with which her hustles post op BD to an “abuse room” and his anger that she is not there any longer to acknowledge his rape. It just doesn’t seem consistent with him having raped her at will over the past 4days.
Hi again, you are right with Rocket, it was the best I could come up with so far. I am not satisfied myself either with the parallel, and I do not understand why BD killed Rocket – perhaps to ease SP’s escape?
Still, there has to be some sort of big sister little sister implication, I am just not yet convinced of how it was put together in the first place.
If I come up with any better thoughts, I will revert.
I thought I’d break from the discussion of the deeper meaning and comment on a few interesting details I noticed.
Some people have commented they are skeptical that the bullet Baby Doll fires at her stepfather could have killed her sister. I’m not sure it matters except to shed light on her mental state. If she may have thought she killed her sister but the movie maker is giving us a hint she did not. I have a degree in physics and it seems Snyder has gone out of his way to make us wonder about this. He shows the sister sitting on the floor in the closet, with the light well above her head. When Baby Doll fires the gun, we see a close-up slo-mo of the bullet shattering the light bulb. There is not enough mass for this to cause a bullet to ricochet down. At most it would cause the path to alter slightly.
Then it shows the steam pipe with a hole in it and steam coming out. This is shot from a low angle, looking up, suggesting that the bullet hit the pipe well up toward the ceiling. This could cause a bullet to ricochet, but mostly likely in an upward direction and perhaps to the side. Furthermore, if the pipe was punctured, it suggests the bullet penetrated the pipe, which would mean it could not have hit the sister.
Maybe something was cut that will be put back in on the DVD and we’ll get a better idea.
Another detail: When the father is opening the envelope with the will, we see a wooden box with the automatic pistol in it. The letter opener looks like a replica of a katana or similar curved blade. When Baby Doll is given her weapons by the Wiseman, he has a gun in a box like the stepfather used and he gives her a katana. She’s using her step-father’s weapons against the trap he put her in.
You can see some balls dangling from the base of the gun in her fantasy fights. I think I saw a small rabbit face on one, like the rabbit face on the mecha in the WWI scene. I think there was a stuffed rabbit in her sister’s room at the very beginning. I’m curious what is on the other dangling baubles. This probably means she’s fighting on behalf of her sister.
I wonder if there is anything in the cut footage that would shed light on why Amber is the pilot in all the fight fantasies. Maybe her craziness involves thinking she can fly. I would like to know why they were in the asylum, if they were really insane or disturbed, or like Baby Doll, put there to get them out of the way.
In an early shot of the night club back rooms, there is an image of a dragon on a wall in another room in the background. I’m wondering what else we will discover when we can watch the DVD closely.
Hi Lanny, Alas I’m no rocket scientist
but I am guessing she shot her sister because 1. She was bleeding and unless stepdad stabbed her or used another gun then ?… 2. It is the best way to have stepdad “kill” her but still have BD simply framed-up for it and 3. It kind of fits the whole Greek tragedy feel of BD fall into hell.
I also believe BD and the inmates in general are to varying degrees insane and it’s not simply stepdad getting rid of her. (thats the lobotomy) BD never speaks in A world, is acknowledged by the nurse to be sick and self recognizes she cannot live on the outside. I think though SP is not insane – this enables her to escape and then narrate the story and is hinted at in B world with Rocket mentioning SP only ran away from home to look after her.
Re Amber I seem to recall her somewhere being the “shy one” – maybe that’s why she takes the back seat?
The steam pipe of course references the later steampunk Germans. (amazing the number of times they are called Nazis!) There is also a brace of flintlock pistols on stepdads wall – later used by ?Rocket?
Since reading so many things about cutted scenes I can very well imagine one scenario: Just consider that the scence of th bullet hitting bulb and pipe is repeated in the moment of BD’s lobotomy. This seemed very strange to me because at the moment the film should show the relief of the girl it repeated the worst moment in her life?
But now consider that it’s stated that the original film had to be changed to become less dark. Just consider the posibility that originally the scene where BD was not hitting her sister was not at all shown in the beginning. This way the impression was made that she actually did shoot her sister – but during the moment of her relief in her mind she had the vision of her beeing innocent and just have hit some light bulbs and pipes. This way the story would indeed have been way darker and I can very well imagine that this was one point that hat to be changed to get the PG13 rating.
Just me, but I think her killing the sister is about as bad as it can get, I think this is what drives her insane and sets the dark tone of the movie. Having the stepdad do it would (for me) deflate the pathos slightly.
From what I’ve read the cut scenes relate to BD embracing the lobotomy symbolically by initiating sex with the high roller and some dance sequences. Has anybody else heard of any other definite cuts?
Personally I find the sex scene difficult to place logically (but not thematically). BD only realized her self sacrifice fate / inability to survive on the outside while in the carpark during the escape – but I don’t see when she could play out the sex scene in the Bordello world after this?
BTW I believe the sex scene is supposed to dovetail into the doctors comment “it’s almost as if she wanted me to do it to her”
I really don’t see the evidence that Baby Doll is insane or even seriously disturbed. She is upset at her mother’s death, but just prior to the attack by her stepfather, she is comforting her little sister and looking pretty composed, all things considered.
Then, when the stepfather attacks her, she fights back, scratches his face. When she realizes he’s going after her sister, she does a tremendously brave thing and climbs down a drain pipe in the pouring rain two stories. She gets the gun and tries to defend her sister but believes she has killed her (I’m still not convinced she really did but she definitely reacts as if she did). Her running and throwing the gun is not evidence she is crazy, just upset, understandably so.
Then she is given a sedative and wakes up being dragged into an insane asylum. She stands in the auditorium and listens as the orderly and stepfather converse as if she is not there about her impending lobotomy. Her eyes are sharp and clear and she is listening intently. She has not withdrawn into fantasy. She is already thinking she needs to escape.
We see her taking note of things that will be part of her escape plan, a very rationaly thing to be doing. The first thing that might suggest a mental problem is the shift to the night club view of reality. Most people seem to think that means she is crazy, but from the perspective of a book like “Illusions,” which Snyder has acknowledged was a major inspiration, this is not escape fantasy, but a taking control of her thoughts about the situation, seeing it perhaps as it truly is: women being exploited by men. In the New Age understanding of the role of imagination in affecting reality, this is more sane than people who won’t face up to a situation for what it really is.
It might all be just a fantasy except we see at the end that she really did the various things we saw in the night club, so it stands to reason that she was as sharp in the “real” world (asylum reality) as in the imagined night club. And in the nightclub, she is clearly sane, taking resolute steps toward escaping. She shows great compassion for Rocket and risks her life (again) to save another. She acts as a leader, encouraging Amber and the others when they doubt themselves, getting buy in from the skeptical Sweet Pea.
At the end, when she sacrifices herself, it is not the act of a crazy person but of one who is choosing this path for solid humanitarian reasons. She is enlightened. The enlightened are often seen as crazy because they no longer buy into the illusions about being separate from everyone else and the world.
That’s just my take. Maybe I’m projecting something I personally would like to believe, but when I’ve watched the film, (3 times), I have never thought of her as the slightest bit crazy. Of course, I am very comfortable with creative uses of imagination.
I also think this girl is not insane at all. From how I see the bullet ricocheting scene I think she did not kill her sister but assuming this her whole guilty concience does not make a lot of sense in the beginning.
Also the scene repeating at her relief does not make alot of sense. It only fits together for me when I play out the cutting scenario where at first hand the ricochet was not shown and thus one should have the impression she killed her sister but this had to be changed for the rating.
Of course this is nothing more then my speculation but it makes way more sense to me this way because putting all loose ends on the theory of the girl have become insane is a little bit shallow.
Hi all, maybe the term insane is wrong -I’ve had a similar argument with others. However before dismissing this as shallow
please consider the following in movie canon evidence:
BD does not say a word in world A – this strongly suggests disassociation at least
The stepfather says (and I unfortunately paraphrase) “I convinced the police she lost her mind because of her mothers death but the truth is a little bit more complicated” – this is pretty unambiguous
BD specifically says to SP “you are the only one strong enough to live out there” This also is pretty in your face.
The whole theme of BD embracing the lobotomy only makes sense if she is “broken” – and this recognition is surely the underlying tragedy offsetting the heroic role in assisting BD find her own in world escape.
The nurse also makes a comment to the effect BD is pretty stuffed up – though in her opinion not to the point where she would recommend the procedure.
Also consider the songs that represent World A – Sweet Dreams (are made of this) clears suggests a mental decline (into a ” sweet dream”) on the back of the depicted events. “Where is my mind” needs no elaboration.
I personally believe t the tipping point was on her mothers grave in the rain and dark after having killed sister … Note the newly introduced black circles around her eyes.
I’m no doctor so I may get the terminology wrong, however the in-movie evidence almost demands we acknowledge that BD, while functional at some level, is really a sandwich short of a picnic in A world and her fully coherent self has retreated into World B.
In short
hi Lanny,
You are very observant of small details.
I watched the ‘sister being shot’ scene a few times in the online preview clip, and was also wondering why the director showed a very quick shot of the burst steam pipe. Only thing different from what you said, is that I thought the camera shot was from ceiling looking down at the hissing pipe (ie. high position) rather than floor looking up. I do agree with you though that it seems implausible that the bullet would hit the lamp and also be able to hit the sister who is not that tall. However, could it be a glass shard from the flying glass debris that cut the sister and which explains the blood when BD pulled her up from the floor?
Here are some other thoughts :
1. If the sister was not dead from the bullet, but was merely unconscious and bleeding from a glass shard, could it be possible the sister actually did not die? I do not recall any ‘evidence’ that the sister is actually dead. BD was in front of a grave but I think its the mother’s grave. After she found the sister bleeding and unconscious on the floor, she ran off. Maybe the father called the cops and said ‘Help! My stepdaughter has gone insane after my wife passed away. She just fired my gun and injured her sister, and then ran off.” When the cops find her, she is arrested. Father convinces authorities to let him commit her to a mental institution. But maybe sister is recuperating in hospital all this time?
2. BD does not talk in world A (asylum). I found myself asking why she did not say anything when she heard the stepfather conspire with the orderly in the asylum. Is it possible she is a mute? In the fantasy worlds (B and C), she is able to speak because she does not have any disability in her imagination.
Does anybody have an opinion on the whole child porn thing? So many critics have had gut reactions where they simply can’t get over this issue, that and a pre-existing bias against 300 and maybe Watchmen makes this a mauled movie. It’s seems over the top negativity is worn like a badge by many and the movie is used as a totem for a general rant.
Personally I see the outfits and Sailor Moonisms a consistent and required nod to the genre at hand (Heavy Metal Magazine circa 1986) rather than something gratuitously introduced. There were also a lot of inexplicit images – BD’s skirt a flying was pretty tame stuff and placed totally within a non sexual context – yet I have read two reviews equating this with “up skirt” porn. This is a movie entirely devoid of on screen sex, but with dark subtext.
I guess I’m just surprised people extracted and cherry picked themes in order to get outraged when say Rocky Horror is seen as a conceptual whole and fairly shallow modern day gratuitous sexploitation (anyone seen Katty Perry et al’s videos) are accepted as kids being kids pop-culture. I wonder if these reviews aren’t closer to web2 trolling a la Vanessa Black rather than considered critiques.
just to be clear I am actually a Rocky Horror fan from way back …
In my oppinion this porn thing is a little bit overrated. None of the scenes shows more porn stuff then any other action movie film out there. It’s nothing more then girls fighting in tight clothes. If you have a film about a man fighting in a tight suit it’s most likely about batman or superman anyways – did somebody ever came up with the sexual hammer when talking about those films?
My problem is a different one: This film is nowhere near an entertainment action movie – it’s a very sad drama about a girl beeing constantly raped and abused during basically the whole film. By stuffing it out with some crazy CGI scenes and having crazy fight scene trailers you can get the marketing towards the entertainment side – but in the end the story is about a girl beeing abused.
To take this even one step further: When thinking about Sucker Punch as an action film where the hero dies but made his inner peace before his death by saving someone else might be considered as a dark but still satisfying enlightment story. But when you think of it as a story about a girl beeing raped by everyone around her and her best option is to flee in a fantasy world because there she can get relief while in the real world she is still getting raped until somebody else has the heart to save her – would you still show this film to your 13 year old daughter?
A very interesting read assicoiated with this matter is a review of the film by an activist of the BARCC – the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center:
http://www.barcc.org/blog/details/movie-review-sucker-punch/
i think the asylum and the brothel scenes were real, blue was using his girls to make money because he knows theyll be lobotomized ultimately. babydoll never has sex or is raped, she dances. and the scenes where she dances are portrayed by battle scenes, because sex is being used as a weapon against the men. they fall under a spell by the dancing and are taken advantage of by the girls. (you have all the weapons you need. now fight) men are sucker punched by sex, they all fall for it. and the girls are full aware.
the concept of escape is different for each girl, for baby doll it was escape from the guilt of killing her younger sister which at first she mistakes that with escape from the asylum. but as the movie progresses on she finds out about rocket an sweet pea’s relationship and that sweet pea was only in there for the love of her sister and to protect her. at the end, baby doll realizes that escaping from the asylum would do nothing for the fact that she had killed her sister and she has nobody to go back to except for her abusive step father. she realizes escaping from the asylum really wouldnt mean the same freedom it would be for sweet pea who had a family and a message from her younger sister that told her parents how much she loved them. baby dolls guilt results in her being the sacrifice and she believes that this will be atonement for killing her sister.
Erm, hi Tina, I know that art is art, and there is never only one way in which you can understand and interpret one movie, but by reading the above, I do have to suggest you watch the movie one more time, and perhaps with greater attention.
The brothel versus asylum plans are not suggested, they are explicitly pointed out by the movie’s many hints and clues. After all, if both brothel and asylum are real, how do you explain blue/chief warden, high roller/doctor and mayor/warden-with-lighter pairs of characters?
As far as the ‘dancing’ is concerned, I am afraid I must also disagree, the dancing is invented by the troubled subconscious in order to disguise the ugly and traumatic sex abuses, but since it is not enough, baby doll comes up with an even more fantastic vision.
I totally agree.
so ultimately baby doll makes it sweet peas story.
Let’s test the whole BD / Dancing / sexual assault assumption for BD. It is this assumption that kind of darkens the whole thing beyond a Greek tragedy / One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest scenario.
In favour:
There appears to be assaults going on in the A World per the guards comments to “Blue” at the end.
B World is a bordello not a circus so sex seems to be involved.
BD looks kind of *how to put it* disheveled at the end of her dances and SP criticizes BDs gyrations.
The dances are clearly designed to *occupy* the guards/wardens while thievery goes on.
Against:
Baby Doll is clearly a special case in B world and therefore presumably in A world as well. She is protected as an economic asset in both (awaiting the high roller). In B world this precludes any sex or violence – until Blue snaps and gets stabbed. There is no reason why this circumstance wouldn’t be directly mapped into A and seems to be the movie’s antidote to the darker interpretation.
In the A world Blue proceeds with indecent haste to attempt sex with BD once the high roller / doctor has done his deed. Flowing from the “playing with my toys” scene this suggests the release of pent up frustration and is consistent with the above paragraph. This is re-enforced by Blue’s anger that BD is no longer mentally there to be consciously “taken”.
Blues possessiveness and interest in BD is entirely inconsistent with BD being taken by other random guards or allowing herself up.
Sex in the Bordello is clearly separated from the dancing – note Rocket’s tour distinguishing the dancing/theater from the backrooms. There is no direct metaphor in use. It would have made more sense for the club to be purely “dancing” and not a dance hall / brothel combo.
In short the movie presents relatively hard evidence against the Blue/random guard BD rape scenario while viewers have to make assumptions with no direct corroboration to support the rape contention – even if this conclusion “feels right”, or provides a dark but seductive edge.
To be honest I would “prefer” the assault scenario purely because the movie would then be unbearably, uniquely and overwhelmingly dark. However I can only do this by dismissing explicit elements in the film
Of course the question arises what was BD doing in the A world that was interpreted as dancing in B? There is not enough evidence provided so I think you can make up whatever you want **as long as it is consistent with the other data provided**. Personally I think it has to be some variation of feminine guile (short of rape). I don’t think this was a major theme though, there is more than enough with self-determination, sacrifice, different forms of escape etc.
I’ve been thinking along similar lines to what has been written here.
I went to the film after seeing the trailer. I strongly believe in the power of visualization/imagination and I was hoping to be uplifted by a story that would somehow cleverly demonstrate the law of attraction and imagination.
I thought the technical aspects of the movie were good, there were some pleasing images and it was somewhat interesting. But they played it too loud, and I was repulsed by the darker aspects. And I like an end that is clearly a happy one. It is not on my ‘recommended’ list.
Best wishes from Nelson, New Zealand.
Mdm gorski, was as we were told in the first world, trying a new therapy – through dancing. I figured that this meant in the brothel world she was dancing, as there didn’t seem a lot of evidence supporting the rape/ molestation theory. Plus the first dance scene, in the studio, I know its a fantasy world but it seems to follow the real one closely, all the people around and mdm gorski, sorta proves to me that she wasn’t being raped.
Anyone agree or disagree?
I also just wanna say how awesome this film was, I was speechless when I left the cinema
Good commentary here:
http://thescorecardreview.com/articles/he-said-she-said/2011/04/12/he-said-he-said-sucker-punch/19312
It is obvious that the reality was sweet peas reality and that her angel in fact was the Guardian angel aka bus driver in the end. This was sweet peas reality not the other way around.
I completely agree with this review but have one thing to add in regards to the ending.
In the burlesque scene we see Sweet Pea escape. Then in the real world we see the ‘guardian angel’/bus driver. The fantasies however are all Baby Doll’s and it’s she who imagines this man.
So I believe it’s one of two things:
Either the ending is the reality and Sweet Pea actually escapes and is just saved by the bus guy.. as in her garden angel she mentions at the start of the film takes the form of Baby Doll and the bus guy.
Or as the lady doctor says (can’t remember her name) in the reality, Sweet Pea definitely escapes and the ending is just one last fantasy of Baby Doll imagining Sweet Pea’s escape.
Either way it’s safe to conclude Baby Doll sacrifices herself and Sweet Pea definitely escapes.
Oh and quick inception ending fix for you – The spinning top was Mom’s totem not Cobb’s. His was his wedding ring! In dreams he still has it on but in reality he doesn’t. At the end the top is irrelevant, he doesn’t have a ring. BAM! It’s reality!
you just blew my mind on the whole ring thing. now i have closure to that dang movie. now i just gotta figure out mullholland drive…
Maybe the Guardian Angel appeared to Baby Doll and helped her figure the way out, only to then save Sweet Pea. He appeared to Baby Doll most of the movie, and the illusions were all hers, but his plan ultimately was to save Sweet Pea. So she really does meet him for the first time on the bus.
Maybe..
Just saw it so still pondering
ALRIGHT, SO THIS IS ONLY OPINION, BUT THESE ARE MY TWO CENTS. BEWARE, IT’S GONNA GET WORDY.
First things first. the dialog at the beginning/end of the film more than suggests multiple times that in its entirety, the film is actually BabyDoll’s story being “told” to the audience by Sweetpea (hence Sweetpea being in the BabyDoll costume strapped to the chair mid-lobotomy in the beginning), and the visualizations are a product of BabyDoll’s imagination seeking refuge from the sexual, physical and emotional abuses she’s endured at the hands of her stepfather, and asylum staff.
Sweetpea tells the viewer that guardian angels can take any form needed in order to inspire action, mentioning BabyDoll (“a little girl”), and “an old man,” presumably referring to the bus driver who was instrumental in Sweetpea’s – and thus, BabyDoll’s – freedom. Remember, Sweetpea is questioned by Police during her escape and is almost taken into custody until the driver’s impromptu kindness absolves her. For this reason, I tend to think that the wise man is a plot device that Sweetpea uses to rationalize how BabyDoll developed the plan that saved her, and found the strength to sacrifice herself. The wise man didnt actually tell her what objects she needed, she sees each object herself on her way through the entrance in the beginning in a sequence of close-ups which then repeats at the end. Also, the cliches the wise man uses over and over illustrate that he was essentially only telling BabyDoll things she already knew but had yet to see within herself. Cliches are cliches because at their core, they are common sense or universal truth.
In my opinion, the alternate realities establish context and irony. the Bordello reality serves to tell the audience that sex is a commodity within the asylum, that Blue is in fact pimping the patients to his “clients” (eg. Amber lamenting that she can never get the custodian’s cigar smoke stench out of her hair), and that BabyDoll’s “dancing” is in reality a defense mechanism created as the result of Dr. Gorski’s therapy. Later on in the film, the doctor is quoted as saying “I teach them to survive!” alluding to how truly harrowing the girls’ real-world experiences, and especially those in the asylum, are. The stepfather being portrayed as a priest in the beginning was a clever way of denoting what an evil guy he actually was in real life, and set the tone for the contrast between what we the audience saw, and what was actually going on.
I won’t delve into the fantasy-combat reality too much, because it’s kind of self-explanatory. The cook’s knife was reimagined as a bomb because it was only a truly powerful weapon depending on who wielded it and for what purpose, as well as the damage it caused to the entire group when Rocket was stabbed.
Furthermore, the dragon was a dragon because there was one on the custodian’s lighter in the beginning, the key, well, WAS a key, and so on and so forth.
I’m tired. You get the jist.
All in all, the movie was bloody brilliant, and offered so much more substance underneath all of the TnA pageantry than it let on. Can’t WAIT for the director’s cut because it’s clear to me that the film was hacked all to hell to accomodate the PG-13 rating, and that there is most likely a lot that we missed for that reason.
I’d reccommend it to anyone with half a brain in their skull, and I’d invite those who’ve already seen it to revisit it from a different angle, because, why not?
Px
Px – I totally agree and feel so much better after reading your post. I went to see the film with three people and they all thought it was just “ok” and thought the “action scenes were awesome”. I came out thinking the cinematography was amazing and that they story and the telling of the story was brilliant (or would be once I full understood it). I thought perhaps I was reading too much into the film. So i’m relieved that the others just weren’t paying enough attention
Thank you for answering some of the questions I had. I really don’t think I will ever fully understand the film; even if I watched it one hundred times and that suits me as I like to leave some of it to my imagination!
It was just brilliant.
Shona
I think that this is a solid analysis which clears a lot of things up! However, I have my own theory about the ending which makes MUCH more sense, and I feel is the intended interpretation!!!
The film repeatedly asks “whose story is this?”…. Well, here is my answer: it is YOUR story!!! And I repeat… STORY! You are the one that is free to make up your own ending, your own reasoning, even your own reality.
I believe that the film is sufficiently convoluted to be open to much interpretation… debate could go on endlessly on what “really” happened. However, I think that what is actually intended is for you to make up your own conclusions as to what happens in the movie – and this is the REAL message of empowerment. The entire movie is a metaphor for your own reality, which you may choose to interpret any way you see fit.
I completely agree. Sort of
The “goal” of the movie seems to be to spawn discussions like this one, and yes, it is OUR collective story, but it is told through juxtaposition of BabyDoll’s and the others’ experiences.
Spot on, in any case.
Px
Brilliant
ok so..”im kinda brain farted an still processing the movie.just saw it like 3 min ago,ready to share my feelings..plus a little critism but not in a attackin way :3 an will be a little scatterd around so bare with me”
ok..remember some where in the initial conflict where Babydolls sister,was attacked by step dad? babydoll goes over to caress an hold..and sees her sisters blood on her hands..ever wonder how the sister was wounded? well..babydoll had the gun from her step dads stash..looks like a knife..or he had really sharp teeth. now..fast foward to the scene at the asylum where the knife mission was taking place..and the new little sister”rocket”..now the big baby sister..or Glenda davis was stabbed by the butcher..”pause” i saw it this way..it was a sacrifice of a certain characteristic of weakness/letting go of the past to move forward/the girls in the asylum were representations of characteristics that needed to be sacrificed by babydoll in order to free herself. she goes back into the dance “from it momentarily being interupted by a radio cord shortage” to finish the mission only to see rocket sticking her sister sweetpea with a launch bomb? and staying on the exploding train..meaning..i did in real life..now i will have to die in your memory.an as you can see..sweet pea..is babydoll..an babydoll is sweet pea..as u can see by when sweet pea is hanging on to baby doll as they fly away..in a way kind of..resembling..both..A..she let go of the little girl in her,at the same time becoming sweet pea.but if u see it from the view that..sweet pea is the new spiritual baby doll..the sister came as an angel in her imagination,to release herself from her memory,so she could become sweet pea..or so fate could play out.now..maybe sweet pea and rocket were an example of baby doll an her little sister from the begining of the film..remember..their mom died..nothing can bring a fuedy sister sister relationship back together like losing mom..now ok..Amber the shy one..was kind of scared..but of what..scared of not achieving..or accomplishing..boom, thats a sacrifice..u can be strong an be shy an have no faith..ironically the naieve blondie,had good ideas..but didnt know how to keep her secretes to herself..an joined something she wasnt really sure she wanted to do..she was just talking.thus.the general in the dance illusions goes ” dont ever write a check with your mouth,that you cant cash with your ass” that was directed towards the characteristic of Blondie..kinda like sayin..”dont walk the walk if you cant talk the talk” it got heavy for blondie,Thus” thanks but,we dont like snitches..boom..now..we knew from the get go, the ultimate sacrifice was her self..she had to transcend..she free’d her new self..she realized..i have to get rid of who i think i am..or who i was..to become who i want to be..thank you hope it makes sense..just for some advice..just think about really what the movie means to you..dig deep..dont let people think for you..i am a victim of that from time to time..this is my first blog ever in life..i hope it goes threw. thanks for reading,i openly know its a little rusty an full of typos.
I think, this movie is like a poetry or music… Somtimes you dont understant what a poem or a song is about, but you still like it, because it is, beautiful, because it makes you dream and think. Maybe it doesnt make sense, that doesent matter.
I watched it twice, first time in a cinema, now got the extended version. It isnt released yet, but i will buy BluRay ASAP.
I love all the charakters, especially BabyDoll. I wont say that it is the best movie i have ever seen just because i watched several movies that are “best-ive-ever-seen” and they are equaly good. But it sure is in TOP5.
ok guys bare with me. I think think there are 4 realities in this film. The asylum, the whore house, the awesome one, and the last would be our reality. Let me explain… at the beginning it starts with curtains opening as if we are watching a play, and I heard in the extended version it ends with the curtains closing. So even in the movie we are the audience going to see the film. I think there are 2 guardian angels, the old man and baby doll. The old is the guardian angel in the film and baby doll is supp ose to be our guardian angel by showing us her story and showing us that with our minds, anything is possible. If anybody could correct me that would be great.
I don’t think it;s possible for BabyDoll to be a guardian Angel. A guardian Angel is meant to be unexplained. The wise man has no background, he just is. BabyDoll is presented with background and a story. So it is different for her. I think SweetPea viewed BabyDoll as a type of guardian angel. But not in the same sense that the wise man was one.
Ok guys bare with me. I think there are 4 realities in this film. The asylum, the whore house, the awesome one, and our reality. Let me explain… at the beginning it starts with the curtains opening as if we are watching a play and i heard in the extended version it ends with the curtains closing.So even in the film we are the audience going to watch the film. I think there are 2 guardian angels, the old guy and baby doll. the old guys is the angel in the film, and baby doll would be our angel by showing us her story and showing us with our minds, anything is possible.
I don’t believe this movie is about female empowerment. Actually this looks like a criticism to what most women believe is empowerment nowadays. This is a young woman who was involved in a tragic rape situation that didn’t end in her actual rape. After this she created a fantasy where every man around her was just interested on her sexually (which is the brothel). The brothel isn’t either a 100% fantasy world or the real world. Her mind twists everything that happens around her and gives it a sexual element. Here she believes that everyone just wants to use her sexually and she fights back by taking control of the sexual situation (the dance gives her control and she sees it as if she was fighting and beating them). While all this happens on her imagination her problems in the real life actually get to her. She believes she is there because she killed her sister while fighting instead of giving in an sparing her from a possible rape. She sacrifice herself to save the other girl which gives her closure and removes her need to be on her fantasy world and when she realizes it she comes back for a last second and look directly to the surgeon’s eyes and he notices that she is not what they told him. This direct interaction with the real world ends up with her “enemies” being caught.
Many women nowadays believe that by taking control of their sexuality and using it as a weapon they are actually doing something in favor of their gender. They think that men only cares about them being sexy and provocative. Most of the times this idea comes from an experience with an immature boy or a sick man(the real world). Because of this they see the world as completely sexually charged place where women are only taken into consideration for their sexual selves(the brothel). They choose to become sexual vixens and wield they sexuality as a weapon against men were they conquer them with it(the battle world). They don’t understand that although there are men that think of the like that (the stepfather, blue) other see them as sex objects only because they choose that (the surgeon, the orderlies). They need to take control of their lives before the path they choose destroy them (the lobotomy).