1. How does your view of the main character change throughout the course of this film? What does this movie say about its the themes of motherhood and justice? And what do you think the mother’s small tin of acupuncture needles symbolizes?
At the start of this film, I thought that the Mother was just an average, protective mom. Maybe a little more so protective than most, but I wouldn’t blame her given her sons condition. She feels as if her son would never do anything any harm, not even a water-bug. Throughout the film though, I glimpsed a blindness to the mom. Knowing that she tried to kill them both years ago, (selfish) I think she is ignoring the fact that her son has problems, I think that he is a mirror image of her. While she is in her search for the “real” killer, and finds the old man and hears the truth, she wants to think that it is impossible. I think her natural instinct on motherhood and justice acted before she could think about what she was about to do, and therefor killed the old man.
I think that the Mother knows her son did it, and that is why she uses the acupuncture needles on herself in the end on the bus. She wants to forget all her bad memories (trying to kill her and her son years ago, her killing the old man, and the truth of her son). I think it is ironic because she was always trying to get her son to remember things, and here she is at the end of the movie… forgetting. I think the needles represent a connection between the mother and son.
I agree with you in that is ironic when she is trying to make her son to remember what she wants to forget. I think overall she was a selfish and incompetent mother.
I agree with my other classmate. That is so weird but the benefits of acupuncture is stress relief, helping to engage memory and overall pain relief. Yet, here she is trying to forget all the bad that she caused. She’s binded by her son’s “imperfections” just like her son is now binded by hers.
Wow! I missed that completely, good catch! That she would try so hard to get her son to remember, but is trying herself to forget! Such contrast. Also, she works so hard at getting him to remember the “other” person (being the Junkman) that she completely unhinges herself as he remembers the suicide attempt. One wonders what despair drove her there. As a fireman, I have seen a great deal of suicide and I do think it is a selfish act. However, there is a despair that is overwhelming and without help, I think it goes beyond selfish, it becomes something we cannot understand without having been there.
I liked your view on the third part to that question. I had something a little different but I thought your view was fairly insightful (not sure if that’s the right for of insight).