CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Jordan Fried I thought the movie was very well done and made some very interesting interpretations meant to be thought about the real world, cities, etc... all things people have said, but what I didn't see was that this place is a form of purgatory for people who committed suicide. I believe that this is why there were so many middle aged middle class white people. Also the lack of children and not too many elderly. I agree with most posters that the first scene was not real because of the kissing being the same lifeless, emotionless stuff. But I do think that Andreas killed himself anyway before he got there. He seems rather depressed at all times and never so much as asks questions until he finds the violin music. I also realize that the others took some time possibly to get used to this place and started to understand what it took to at least get the "good" things that were there so they fell in line to at least be able to receive these things. Andreas took it too far and tried to reach the Heaven where people who didn't kill themselves went and then he did not fall back in line when given the opportunity before they took him back to the bus stop. I think that others may have experienced this and when they were told "aren't you happy here" by the older woman at the end they may have decided that this was probably a good idea as opposed to going with the men in the jump suits. Just my interpretation. Curious to hear what others think.

cricket crockett . . . Dean stopped at the video store and rented this. Said he felt like a change of pace from the usual slasher flicks and thrillers, so he thought we'd try some foreign fare. I think it's a pain in the neck to have everybody jibber jabbering away in Norwayican or whatever, cuz if you're distracted for the least little second and miss a couple of those American sentences at the bottom of the screen, you either have to rewind the DVD or lose the thread of what's happening. That may actually give us USers a double dose of what the guy who made THE BOTHERSOME MAN intended, cuz obviously he dident want this movie to make any sense to his fellow Norwayicans, either. What with Mercedes vaporizing in the desert, vahjayjay-shaped cellar cracks leading to other realities, the blue eyed guy getting destroyed and bouncing back more times than Wiley E. Coyote, all the chicks and bosses kowtowing to his every whim, but him preferring to ride the bus to Antarctica, it's kinda like Dean said: this guy thought he was making GROUNDHOG DAY, METAMORPHOSIS, NO EXIT & WAITING FOR GODOT all rolled into one. But Dean says give it 8 out of 10--that's what happens to your brain when you cut up hogs all day for a living!

pipsonite I've watched this movie with people who like simple concepts and they all thought this movie was crap. I didn't really know what exactly to think until the end.Spoiler here! The movie ends in a very cold place. And if you combine it with the city it kinda reminded me of Dante's hell.The people in the city were all dead. It was a place in hell for those who committed suicide. That's why there were no children. And because he couldn't stand it there, he was put into the final circle of hell (which according to Dante isn't hot, but very cold).If that concept makes sense I think this flick is quite a success.

bolaman I came out from this movie with a lot of different ideas about the symbolism presented in the movie, but I had no idea there were so many different ways to interpret it until I read the IMDb comments. I will not go into all the other interpretations presented here, but they are certainly worth reading. It's a story about society, the mind, reality, death, pain, anxiety, love, art, hopelessness, fear and almost everything that can be put in a movie coherently. Not only is it a masterpiece, it was, to me, such a deeply profound movie that it opened up a whole new way of seeing the world, and reality.I believe most of the events and situations in the film represent abstract symbolic feelings and emotions that can be applied to our normal lives. The train scene can represent the anxiety about death, injury and the vivid imagination we can have about how we die or how scary violent and gruesome events can be. His life there can represent depression and alienation from the unknown world that we are surrounded with, and the train scene can be our fear of death that stops us from committing suicide and thus go back to our less than optimal lives.It also tells us reality is cruel in its neutrality, it does not know nor care about any living organisms in its path, and its destructive force can be brutal and unrelenting in its ignorance. We as humans must deal with this random reality, and we have to live with the pain and violence that may meet us at some point, and which does indeed strike many people everyday. The way the train stops when Andreas is lying on the tracks tells me even more about how cruel and random the world can be, it doesn't just let you die, it rubs it in in the worst possible way.Andreas' return home as a bloody mess only to be met by a neutral girlfriend who asks if they want to go go-karting can represent the feeling of despair we can feel inside, but are unable to communicate to others nor get a response from them. The hole in the wall can similarly be an abstract hope of all the good things one can experience, the positive euphoric possibilities granted by reality, which is not all bad, but all extreme poles of evil and bad, to good and blissful euphoria. Finally the finger cutting scene is a perfect example of how we have to experience every sensation - brutal pain included, and the desperate feeling of seeing your finger cut off (and the shocking surprise of actually realizing what is happening) but reality remains static and uneventful even so. You are alone, completely alone, in your experience. The movie tries to be neutral, the way I see it, but there is underneath the obvious dystopia, an even more fundamental despair. The fact that he is left in an icy snow world as an immortal is beyond cruel, because he will feel frost and solitude, but never die presumably. This can also symbolize how some people are completely rejected from society. The movie was to me extremely scary. It was among many things a psychological and existential horror movie. I am glad I saw it, but I also regret it, because ignorance can sometimes be a GOOD thing.