At the end of this film I understood what Luke meant when he said it was such a beautiful film. I thought this movie was so different in so many ways and though it got a bit confusing it was so eventful, I loved it!
I thought the directors artistic issues was the relationship between kids and adults, and the way they are as individuals. There were many interesting relationships between the children and adults. Many of them where the adult was more of a tyrant...but I thought it was interesting how it seems like the kids are more responsible than the adults. For example, when we were first introduced to the girl and the other orphans that work for the "octopus" their independence, and tough personalities hit me right away. They were more responsible than many of the adults such as the man with the fleas who always seems to be sleeping...
For the dream symbols, water is what first came to my mind. Constantly throughout the movie, whether it was relevant or not I saw random showings of water. In the beginning when there was water dripping on the man who got stabbed, the constant scenes near the water, and the most strong showing, when the girls tear drop flies off her face and eventually is the cause of her survival. I thought that was so interesting....
Other dream symbols I found was the darkness or nighttime. For some reason I remember most of the movie being In The nighttime. The last symbol I found/could think of was the circus, or circus like things. The twins, strongest man, fleas and their music......
I think tragic isn't just sad, it's sadness involving pity, there's usually some injustice-ness (word?) like being "so close" and not getting the happy ending. An injustice-ness that brings out pity because of an unfairness or stupid misunderstanding. When I think of tragedy I think of Shakespeare because so many of his stories like Romeo and Juliet are so complicated and have stupid misunderstandings that lead to death and unhappiness. Romeo and juliet were so close to being together, and the fact that Juliet wakes up right after Romeo kills himself, therefore causing her to kill herself is a tragedy because it's SO misfortunate and they were "so close" to having their happy ending. That was a long example but basically I think tragedy is sadness with pity..
That's why I think that the identical brothers are tragic. I feel pity for them because they don't have a real life, they're so childish and have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. The original is sort of tragic too I guess but I did t really find him tragic.
The Siamese sisters ending is tragic but for THEM, it was a good thing they died and was stopped but they almost got away with it, the ship didn't hit them but it was their own gasoline that ended them.
