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marionetteangie · 2 months ago

Text

Thomas: None of this makes any sense.

Ann: It should.

This is my entire analysis summed up. I want to make as much sense as I can of a movie that insists on not making full sense of itself. It's interpretive, experimental, and beautiful.

Imaginaerum, the 2012 film by Nightwish, is a film I only recently watched, alongside my best friend. Since then, it has relentlessly picked at my brain, almost like my head’s been sawed open (get it?) and now I’m here trying to understand what this insane film means. So, these are my thoughts as an avid listener of the Imaginaerum album. Whilst I’m aware I can never truly get into the head of someone like Thomas, since I don’t have his condition, I want to at least try and understand some of what I saw, since I’ve had to watch the film twice and read countless articles just to grasp some of the beautiful but elusive imagery. I’ve tried to make it cohesive and chronological with the film, but honestly it’s really hard since the film forces you to cross-reference all the time. Anyway…

I won't shut up about Imaginaerum movie and you can't make me

Watch it here, spoilers for the entire movie ahead! Please remember these are just my thoughts and opinions, you don’t have to agree, and I’m not a scholar haha.

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To start. The movie opens with the instrumental of Taikatalvi. Translation is by fuckyeahnightwish.

Magic Winter

Of my children the dearest one is this stage

Where the moonlight on its alleys advances

Bent sprig, summer in the care of

The White Ocean so wide

Which with the wings of a ghost moon

Arrives to retrieve me home

Upon the wintry earth, a moment like eternity

Which with the paws of a kitten to me creeps

Here at the tale's roots I may live, where

A violin of vast longing

Its eternal melody paints

With its song awakens the earth

Thomas, sitting at his piano, the arabesque nearby. We see the soldiers, planes, the last page. The chord is even present, ‘e minor’. So…what does this mean? Well, we see that the arabesque won’t spin. And Thomas asks, “what’s wrong with you princess, why won’t you spin?”. We also see Mr White. To me, all of these are symbols.

The arabesque symbolises love. Parental love, specifically. We know from the end of the film that it was given to Tom by his father, in one of the only acts of kindness we’ve ever seen Theodore do for anyone, really. And then, he showed it to Gem, and enchanted her with it. It’s a symbol of how Thomas takes love, and then passes it on, in his own unique way.

The soldiers represent childhood. They represent the bond between Gem and Thomas, just as the arabesque does, but on a more personal level. “Bonjour, mon general”, a phrase Gem uses, sounds like play. It represents Thomas passing on his sentiments of childhood to his daughter, engaging her in his fantasy world he’s created, which at the time she loved, she found happiness and solace in their imaginations coming together.

The planes represent Theodore, and the fictionalised reality Tom has built about his father. He believes, despite knowing deep down that Theodore is poison to him, that he should idolise his father. He hangs his memory everywhere. The arabesque, the planes…and Mr White.

Mr White himself is a symbol. Obviously he’s literally Tom’s father, but it goes deeper. He represents Thomas hating himself for being the shadow of his father. He can never be Theodore Whitman. He can only be Tom. And to him, that’s not enough. His music will never be enough. He carries a deep, deep pain inside that represents his self worth, and that is illustrated so many times throughout the film.

The last page is a symbol of reconciliation. He just wants to reconcile with Gem, deep down. For her to understand him, she has to understand all of him, not just what he’s chosen to show her.

So, we have our bare bones. Symbols of fatherhood and childhood. How they interact and contrast. So why won’t the arabesque spin? It’s because he hasn’t reconnected with his child yet. He hasn’t found the change from G to E minor, only half of it. Someone else needs to find the other half.

Thomas's subsequent episode is fiction bleeding into reality, and reality bleeding into fiction. Nothing is real, but nothing is fake. It's an elegant dance of distortion. It’s confusingly beautiful, and tumultuous. We are thrust into a world of memories and dreams, and it’s confusing where they blend and end. But that’s the beauty of it all.

We then see an orphanage. We learn about Matthew’s story, the story of a snowman coming alive and the winter’s last snowflake, the idea of stories coming to life. Whether it’s just that Thomas has always had mental issues or a vivid imagination, or perhaps both considering how much trauma he must have, he truly believes in the story of Mr White coming alive. And yet, his version of Mr White is entwined with memories of Theodore, Mr Whitman. He’s got a pilot’s compass, goggles, and helmet. He’s got a sinister expression. The snowman represents all of Theodore, good and bad. The idealised pilot, and the sinister but sorrowful man reaching out his arms. But on a more heartbreaking note, it’s Thomas wishing he could bring his father back to life, and keep him alive forever. So…that’s what he does. Through story after story of his father he creates in his head, he builds him year after year. And soon, his idealised version of his father begins to smother the abusive alcoholic underneath. The concept of winter never ending is also interesting, as the film introduces us to the idea of cycles and things never changing, such as that change from G to Em that defines the movie. I also wondered about a potential connection between the puddle of water crackling and turning to ice and the track ‘a crackling sphere’, but I’m not sure.

Thomas and Ann meet for the first time, indicating our introduction to this instrumental character in Tom’s life. Ann represents his wisdom and his guidance.

I also noticed some parallels, those being the picture frame of Thomas and his parents, and the one that was later taken of him, his wife, and his daughter, Gem.

We learn that Thomas has likely deluded himself into a belief that his father’s still alive, as a way of coping. This could even be how Mr White first formed, due to dissociative amnesia preventing a young, traumatized little boy from remembering the night he was stained with his father’s blood. As he says in the movie, “My dad's a pilot. He's not dead. He's Theodore Whitman and he's a hero. He saved his passengers from a tornado and crashed. When he gets rescued, he'll come and get me.” But…the validity of this statement is to be debated. Thomas could be making up stories, as Ann later says, but we also know there’s some truth in some of them, like the spinning arabesque. Maybe it’s possible that Theodore once did survive a tornado. But now he’s gone, and all Tom has is smoke and mirrors, and memories. He can clutch that little toy plane all he wants, but it won’t bring his father back. We also learn that his mother was sick and died, a parallel between how himself and Gem both grew up motherless.

A few other random details:

Gem’s outfit. It’s layered, it has black overtop grey, overtop white. Black represents death, despair, sorrow. Grey represents a median, nuance, wisdom. White, it’s innocence and purity. The key to Gem’s character development is represented by what she wears. She begins the movie in essentially a funeral outfit, mourning a father she never really knew. But by the end, she’s in pink, just like her childhood self. She’s gone back to her roots, and found what her father was trying to tell her, in his own unique way.

Childhood Gem has a few key traits. She wears pink, red, and white. Linking her to the arabesque, the waitress with her bow (since Gem has a red ribbon), and her future self. She represents innocence, but her dress also reminds me of a stereotypical clown, with those three red buttons all in a row.

For the entire film, Thomas wears white. He’s a pure man, but stained like ink on a page. These stains are brought forth by the black aura of Mr White, which threaten to cover everything that makes him who he is. After all, in both music and writing, the space between is just as important as the ink, light brings darkness, and darkness brings light. Can’t have one without the other.

I wondered if the spinning top that Thomas has could represent his game of a tornado, maybe he did make it all up. Who knows?

Mr White quotes that prove Theodore’s greater abuse of Thomas, even though it’s buried:

"Maybe you're not a chip off the ol' block"

Gaslighting Thomas, essentially being like “man up if you want to be like me”

"It's okay, I'm not mad", whilst pounding on the door

"No you're hurting me"

"You know I would never do that, I only want what's best for you" - Tom and Mr White

And then some of Theodore’s quotes:

"What, are you scared? How can you be scared of it if you've never even seen it?"

Echoing Mr White

"Alright, buddy?" - associating the use of buddy with abuse

Mr White also notably uses the phrase "This is as real as it gets for you, buddy.", which to me indicates that for Thomas’s entire life, he’s been just chasing dreams and shadows. He’s trying to follow his father’s footsteps, but at the same time is terrified of becoming him, knowing deep down how poisonous and dangerous that would be. Not only for him, but also for his little girl. On top of this, I think this line leads into the greater theme that Thomas is his own person, he’s got a song of himself all laid out, and it ends with the phrase of his daughter, he’s built something new and beautiful with his life, breaking the cycle of abuse that he almost perpetuated.

I also find it interesting that the lyrics of Storytime are present during the flying scene (which is definitely a homage to the Snowman, aka peak Christmas movie <3)

I am the voice of Never-Never-Land

The innocence, the dreams of every man

I am the empty crib of Peter Pan

A silent kite against the blue, blue sky

Every chimney, every moonlit sight

I am the story that will read you real

Every memory that you hold dear

The lyrics almost guide Thomas as to what he needs to do. He’s the boy who never grew up, his white clothes are innocent. He’s the one traversing the night, trying to find the dawn and wake up, needing to see his daughter. His pages are the story of himself, his song that will read him back to reality. And he is formed of every memory he holds dear, this dream version of himself, all that the Snowman wants to destroy. It’s also notable that over the DNR order, the notes of storytime play, indicating the fantasy world in which Tom is living. Another musical cue associated with Gem, actually, is from Ghost River. To me, the melody of the line “what is it to dream o child of mine.” was adapted into her leitmotif, it’s a slow, sad version, indicating she’s lost her dreams and grown up, because she didn’t understand her father’s.

"Nothing's changed, has it? I'm not even a memory, am I? I'm just a blur, like always." Gem

I honestly empathise with Gem. She’s a lonely little girl trapped in an adult body who doesn’t understand why her father won’t love her as he used to.

What does Thomas falling indicate?

- He lets go of Mr White

- He stirs a bit from his sleep in real life

- He dodges the plane, dodging his father

- He lets go, and falls into the "pile of wood and rusted metal"

- He's ready to discover himself again.

When Thomas first wakes up from his fall, there are stars in his eyes. He’s in this wasteland, but maybe he doesn’t see it as much, perhaps he sees the potential in it, his idealism seeping through. We then meet Ann again, but far older.

"You’re crazy"

"I was, for a while"

This represents Ann’s suicide attempt, and how she hit Thomas incredibly personally with it, even if he didn’t want to admit it. She notes later that he didn’t even look at her.

Musically, Ann is cued by “slow, love, slow”. This song has the lyric “I wonder… Do I love you, or the thought of you?” To me, this lyric reminds me of Mr White and that tumultuous relationship with Tom’s father. Does he love the flawed, broken man, or the idealized pilot who survived a tornado?

Interestingly, Mr White was right when he warned that keeping the compass would only remind Thomas of his father. It points at the end of the movie between SW and SE, maybe indicating the sunrise and the sunset? Like one set of memories (Thomas’s) are setting, but now the others (Gem’s) are rising? It’s also cool that throughout the movie, the compass never points any particular direction. Thomas is directionless and confused, but he more just keeps the compass as a memento of his dad. The same can be said for the hand patch from Ann, but later he takes that off to write his last page, and then takes the compass off at the end, both of which allow him to remember Gem, his princess, one last time.

The Builder obviously represents the Doctor. But keeping that this is all playing out in Thomas’s mind, he represents Thomas’s reluctance to fix things, and his discontent. He insinuates that he won’t be fixed, so why should he even bother? The music, that slow, love, slow anthem, it’s all they hear, and it drives them mad. It could be that Thomas doesn’t want Ann’s wisdom, or that he doesn’t want to think about her because he’ll then remember what she did, and how that relates to the past with his father that he’s trying to forget. On top of this, we can see that Gem is the one given the autonomy of the situation, albeit a little girl version. Clearly, Thomas still sees Gem as a child, and honestly her and the Doctor come off quite catty and bratty, going off hand in hand. To Thomas, right now, they’re antagonistic, since they threaten to destroy his consciousness before he can piece it back together, especially the Doctor.

We then see Mr White again. Interestingly, the leitmotifs of “La La La” from Ghost River play when we see him again. We’re warned by the music itself that he is dangerous, interesting considering Thomas has a song for “every single thing in his life” Perhaps Ghost River is Mr White’s song, a song about drowning in the river of death?

The page with Song of myself and Taikatalvi is interesting to me. Matthew’s fairytale has been integrated into Thomas’s psyche, it’s a part of him, it’s now HIS story. But it’s also Gem’s story, too. We know Matthew struggled to believe in the magic, which to me is a clear parallel to Gem’s struggle to believe in her father’s stories. Song of myself, on the album, ends just as the movie does- “and there, forever remains, that change from G to Em”. In both versions of the song, the last page and the actual song, a father leaves his daughter behind, but suspends a story in time as he does, and reminding her to believe in the power of her imagination.

What is the significance of Mr White ummm...leaking onto the pages? Obviously its funny, but it's a metaphor within a puzzle. We see he’s in front of a building called “Career Achievement”. There’s a grand music hall called Whitman’s. Other signs include "Top of their game", "Whitman Tragedy", "Breaking up". This alley is full of essentially newspaper headings. Despite the fact that Thomas has done all these amazing things, to him it’s meaningless, foggy, dim. The alley is scary and unfamiliar, as his condition takes everything he’s done piece by piece, making the ink bleed and reduce to nothing. Because Thomas isn’t his father.

I also wondered if this scene could indicate that during one of Theodore’s alcoholic moments, perhaps Thomas saw him doing a similar thing to Mr White. Obviously this is incredibly creepy, but also suggests a further layer of Theodore’s emotional abuse, that being the two tickets to the circus. He tries to turn it around with fake promises and “fun”, but Thomas is understandably not having it, and instead runs into the music hall.

The music hall to me is incredibly interesting, I love the Jessica Rabbit vibes of Annette and how it communicates its story in a really unique and distinct way. The setting is definitely inspired by the 20s and 30s, it honestly gives me those old cartoon vibes, which is a fun play on the trope. We can likely assume the film takes place in the 2000s, so perhaps Thomas lived through a war, or has some recollection of this time, performing in dance clubs? I’m not sure honestly, but it’s got a really old and fun aesthetic.

“Slow, love, slow” is a song I have many feelings about. In the album, it feels a bit out of place. To me, the natural progression would be to (perhaps) put it next to Rest Calm, where it serves as the transition between the ending of that song and Last Ride of the Day, but in the movie I really like it alone, its uniqueness shines in this context. Thomas gets to confront his older self, asking why the arabesque is broken and what he’s done, recognizing clearly he made a mistake and yet can’t remember, he’s repressing it in order to avoid remembering his father. Ann is also dressed similar to the arabesque, luring him into that seductive sense of security, hiding the inner machinations that come later with her character, how they go from this warm, stoic jazz style to a nightmarish darkness.

Thomas also sees Ann again, and then is presented with a waitress trying to give Gem, his little girl, back what he broke after he painstakingly put it back together. Gem doesn’t want it, though, claiming what’s broken can’t be fixed, and that she doesn’t want it. This obviously indicates his actions have hurt her deeply, and that she doesn’t want to reconcile simply due to her own wounds. It’s also notable that the waitress is a stranger, she may resemble the arabesque but she’s also not a character we’ve yet seen, almost as if a middleman was used to try and communicate his apology to Gem, like Thomas couldn’t. Maybe it’s a symbol of how far he pushed her away, that he was so afraid of hurting her that couldn’t even give her back the arabesque himself, but still tried to present it on a silver platter. This obviously wouldn’t have the same effect as a sincere apology and a conversation between father and daughter, which is what Gem never had, and why she never understood him.

To me, the band also looks rigid, they look like the porcelain dolls or mannequins that they’re playing for. Even Gem only sways slightly, it reminds me a bit of the metronome used at the end of slow, love, slow. The apple also switches between a microphone and an apple at intervals. It suggests temptation and power, pleasure and luxury, but also death and sin. Ann drags her hand against the piano, drawing the gaze and tempting you to keep watching her. She’s powerful, all eyes on her, and everything looks rigid RIGHT until Mr White gets closer and starts banging on the door. Then, movement comes in, which will come into play in one of my favorite scenes later.

"You had a song for every little thing in your life. It's a shame it had to end."

I like this quote, it sums up a lot of Thomas’s existence.

We then see Theodore properly. Not the idealized version, but the sad, broken alcoholic who didn’t have time for his son and left him alone. Now I understand that depression and grief are absolute beasts, I’ve been there, but I feel awful for poor Thomas, he probably thought it was his fault, like Mr White says, that his dad got sick of him. Theo, notably, is dressed in his official uniform. It can represent two things- the last outfit Thomas saw him in, and how he idolizes his father’s memory.

Theodore also never gave Thomas any last words. After Thomas called him “sir”, Theo didn’t say anything, but he looked like he might.

My favourite fuckin line

Gem: How did you get in here?

Ann: It's a magic trick. I can't reveal the secret, but it involved a brick UvU

Interestingly, the song “I want my tears back” plays overtop the line “you were always the most important part of my life”. Symbolically, it could represent how Gem feels cheated, like she doesn’t think her father deserves her tears or attention, even though deep down she’s really hurting and just wants to know that she’s loved.

Okay, this next scene is one of my two favorite scenes. There’s so much to unpack, so let’s dive into Scaretale.

We start with the snowman dragging Thomas to the circus, practically, he’s trying to escape his hold as I put in the quote earlier. Furthermore, Thomas runs into the circus in hopes of escaping, but is greeted with a nightmare, his own childhood nightmare of clowns, terror, the one he told his father about. This nightmare in turn is bleeding into memories of his father, because both of them represent parts of childhood he longs to forget. We can infer that Thomas never even went to the circus, considering what his father did the night before, at least not until he took Gem, so he’d associate it with blood and death and broken promises instead of light and laughter.

There are quite a few beautifully done juxtapositions in this scene, like how the older Gem first calls out “daddy!” and then is presented at the same age, but now she’s joined the troupe. The actress did a great job with this scene, she really looks creepy and contorted, especially since we see Gem as often quite stiff-lipped and sullen. I also wonder what the significance is of Ann biting into the apple and it spilling ink. It could represent a few things: Thomas’s memories of her attempted suicide, Thomas’s written memories either as being “chewed on” (as in he’s thinking about them and they’re coming to mind), or how toxic Gem and Ann first see them as, since they’re a song of himself and not of Gem, as well as seeming like nonsense at first. The clown imagery on Gem’s dress really comes into play here too, as she takes a saw and takes her place picking her father’s mind apart. Memories of his wife are all but gone, more and more memories fading away as the magician makes them, literally, disappear, all whilst a terrifying troupe of clowns scream at little Thomas and stop him reaching his older self. But one memory stops Gem from proceeding, the very same memory that in reality helps her make sense of everything. That memory of the first thing Thomas did differently to his father- taking his child to the circus.

On a little side note, the first time we watched this movie I actually looked away at the saw scene because I wasn’t sure how much they’d show. It really hit hard and gave me the shivers!

We see how agitated Mr White is by the memory, he doesn’t like how Thomas is chasing the best memory, and keeps trying to distract and degrade him, but nothing works. At first, he tries to distract him from the arabesque by taking him on an adventure, then tries to distract him from the broken track (representing his mind). He tries to distract him from the music hall with a trip to the circus, and then further distracts him from memories of his father (and in turn, rediscovering his daughter) with memories of his nightmares. He insists that Gem, playing this role as the daughter taking revenge, shouldn’t change anything- "Don't change it, you're wrecking it"- but Mr White can’t stop how Gem is fighting back, and how Thomas is acutely aware of it. As I said, fiction bleeds into reality in this film, so perhaps somehow he can feel himself getting closer to her, reaching out to her as she reads his memories. Perhaps as he discovers more of her, she discovers more of him. Perhaps, even on an insanely meta level (and I personally don’t think this works but I like the idea), maybe the entirety of Thomas’s dreams are what Gem imagines his journey looking like. Perhaps in reality, she’s traversing the Imaginaerum through the lens of her dad, discovering his life before her, and how she changed it for the better. It’s probably not exact and the Imaginaerum definitely invites the audience to take it literally, but I like the idea.

The Scaretale sequence is one that invites the viewer to experience a nauseous curiosity. Peek inside the head of a terrified, broken man and watch him lose himself, only to marvel as he remembers a memory that differentiates him from the man he so sought to emulate but also so feared to become. And then…the rotating room sequence.

This sequence almost speaks for itself, the screams of the arabesque, the body language, the way little Thomas and Gem are positioned, it’s a wonderful use of a theater technique of a split scene, done in a very creative way by having them in essentially, a square tumble dryer. This is the scene where Theodore gives into his depression, and ends his life with his son in favour of dying. I understand the complexities of this decision, trust me, but I feel that since we see this film from Thomas’s perspective, Theodore was a little selfish to leave his boy to fend for himself like that. It’s also notable to see Thomas’s own action in this scene. No, he doesn’t die, but he instead destroys his relationship with his daughter all the same, and breaks the arabesque, the symbol of parental love. As it screams and twirls through the air, Theodore does the same as he falls back in his chair, symbolising how Thomas lost his father’s love, and takes the same love away from his daughter, by breaking something they adore. For Thomas, that was the father he idolised, and for Gem, that was her father’s precious arabesque. The breaking of both symbolises a loss of innocence. One retreats into stories and lies, and the other moves on and becomes cold and harsh. But both want to love, and be loved, they just don’t know how.

Thomas and Theodore in this scene are obviously parallels. They are two sides of the same coin, two men grieving their wives, two men who abandon their children. In many ways, Tom sees his father AS the arabesque in this moment, someone who once enchanted his life and now has stopped spinning. He had to prevent his bandmate, Ann, from doing the same thing as his father, and the same night lost the love of his life. In his rage, he loses the chance of a happy relationship with Gem.

And yet, one detail I love about this scene is the body language. Yes, the arabesque and Theo are one example, but Gem and Little Thomas are another, and they tell so much with just a few different actions. Some argue that Thomas abused Gem, but I don’t see this illustrated. Instead, I see a man who was lost in his own delusions, he never goes to strike her, but instead strikes the arabesque, striking his father instead. It is clearly shown that Gem isn’t afraid to approach her father, and her memories with him when she was little are happy, there is no indication that (until he began losing his mind) he’d ever harm her. He puts distance between himself and her, yes, but we can see from her body language that she runs in front of him and holds out the arabesque, indicating she’d (most likely) like to play or practice piano with him, we see she took comfort in him after her mother died, and likely didn’t understand due to her age. She was happy to share in his stories and never seemed to feel fear around him, but reality has hit Thomas now, so he breaks the representation of his delusions of his father and his imagination, but also his parental love for Gem. Subsequently putting it back together is indicative that he wants to repair that relationship, but it has a deeper effect by continuing to build up the idealised Mr Whitman, and force Thomas to try and block out the bad stuff, becoming lost in fantasy. On that same note of body language, though, Little Thomas is positioned behind Theodore. He’s scared, he never stands in front of Theo but always to the side or behind, since we see how easy it is for Theo to grab him and go to hit or threaten him. (the dream Thomas is in front of Theo, yes, but that’s not what happened in reality, he’s between the scenes of Gem and Theo in that moment). Little Thomas is behind the door, too afraid to come out and stop his father, too terrified of him and his temper to speak up or seek comfort in him despite his nightmare. He’s an afterthought in this situation, and I wonder if Theo (in his drunk, sorrowful state) even spared a thought for his son after not giving him any last words. By being behind Theodore, Little Thomas is shown to be unimportant, and the only time Theo even faces him head on is when he shoots himself and tips backward, toward his son who he has now left behind.

We then cut back to Gem. She’s hurting in so many ways, because she doesn’t truly realise how much she’s loved by her father, since he’s been so cold and distant to her. Yes, her being cold in return about his treatment might feel harsh, but perhaps it could be viewed as reciprocal in a sense? Since after her mother died he seemed to stop caring for her, now that he’s on the edge of death she wonders why she should care for him, why he deserves her love. And yet, as Ann notes, she’s doing it out of love, their family has no friend who would pressure her to do so, and her excuses won’t work on the wise older lady. It’s also notable that Gem herself doesn’t seem to have a support system, we don’t see too many calls, no mention of a partner, she’s essentially alone.

On that note, I want to talk about a line that little Gem says in the Slow Love Slow sequence. Specifically- “I’ll have what she’s having.” The double meaning in this line is brilliant. On the one hand, in the subsequent Scaretale scene, she literally has what Ann’s having, picking apart Tom’s mind in a haunting sequence, both of them essentially complicit in their malice. However, on a meta level, Gem IS having what Ann’s having. They’re both opening that safe, they’re both getting to see how Tom loved them and cared for them through his scribbles and writings… they’re having the same experience. And in this scene, we see the beginning of that. Gem having what Ann’s having, the experience of knowing who Tom is for the very first time.

"Bonjour mon general." Gem pauses, sarcastically says this. But to me, it sounds like play. A phrase they’d use for playtime, perhaps? In the sequence of Rest Calm/Wonderfields, which is my other favourite sequence, we see a scene that looks straight out of something like Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland. Yes, Gem may have said that sarcastically, but when Thomas wakes up in the field of grass, the soldier says it too. The soldier, to me, is a stand-in for the connection made between Gem and Thomas, he’s a representation of their shared childhood, fostered into this twisted tin soldier. Interestingly enough, he calls Thomas “general”, which is actually higher than a pilot in terms of ranking, if we assume Theodore was just a pilot (I can’t tell from his badges and uniform, I’m not that well versed in army stuff haha). This suggests that Tom has ascended above the rank of his father, and is now treading his own path, the path of a soldier who walks amongst his fellow men, as opposed to alone. It’s also interesting that they bear his bed like a coffin, but he has the strength to get up and clamber alone, hinting toward the idea that we need others to help us, but we are the only ones who can really make changes (something Tom was avoiding with the arabesque globe previously, for example) We see that Mr White and Theodore are always presented as loners, aside from when they’re with Tom. Interestingly enough, by saying “Bonjour mon general”, it suggests that Gem holds her father in high regard, and this would likely do a lot for his self esteem. The soldier, one of my favourite characters, then continues to explain his role and what he symbolises. He’s made to help Thomas chase the very best memories, those that mean everything to him. As he notes, he best remembers Gem through childhood- "You remember best through the things you both shared as children. Like myself, or the pretty mademoiselle in the glass bubble."

It could be suggested that Tom thus redefined these childhood objects by sharing them with his daughter. Just as he shared the chords to his memories with her, he shared the circus that he never saw himself, the toys he played with, the arabesque his father gave him…he shared his own childhood with her, in hopes of raising her to be the best version of himself he could be. He reshaped his own trauma by refusing to hit her, though he still struck out due to his own mental anguish. Thomas created a magnum opus in Gem, because she was made from the best parts of him, and the love he fostered.

I love the rest calm sequence because of how it represents this connection between Gem’s childhood and his own. It also has personal ties to me because I somewhat could see myself in it, it led me to have a really good discussion with my best friend that I’d never been able to admit to before, and it helped me open up in a healthy way, unlocking a bravery in me that I didn’t even know I needed. I may be a weathered soldier, but I’m a soldier nonetheless.

After Gem and Ann and Thomas all simultaneously start piecing the memories together, the poor soldiers are ambushed, lil guys… but then we get the scene that cemented for me that Mr White wasn’t merely just an apparition of Thomas’s father as some people said, he was an apparition of how Thomas feels BECAUSE of his father.

"Your daddy had his fill of you, took his own life. The songbird tried the same trick. Then there's your little girl, she hates you. Nothing left if you ask me."

He represents the self-loathing that drives Thomas to forget, to believe he’s unfixable. He represents how depression can greet you as a friend, influence you to believe that harm is okay, convince you that you deserve misery and suffering. But deep down, Thomas knows it’s not true. Two questions- what does his hand wound represent? And what does the music mean?

Thomas’s hand wound represents how love can hurt, how fixing things can hurt, but it’s worth the pain. We see in a later sequence that he wrote his first pages with the blood that spilled from fixing the arabesque for Gem. Even if it wasn’t enough at the time to fix the globe, those same pages are now what’s healing their relationship, as both of them are healing from the past and moving forward, Gem having an opportunity to understand her dad and Thomas having a chance to find his daughter.

As for the music, I’m a little stumped but I have some ideas. The song chosen is the crow, the owl and the dove (I have a cover on my YouTube lol)

The crow: Theodore Whitman. A dark brooding influence full of pride and casting a shadow.

The owl: Ann. Old and wise, his voice of reason. At the start of the film, she literally pierces through his youth.

The dove: Gem. She seems calm and stoic, but he envies her love. Doves are associated with innocence.

The swan: Stumped me a bit, it could be Thomas himself, or Mr White, or even the arabesque. “I kissed her neck, adored her grace.”

I know the original song refers to potential previous band members, but in the context of the film, I wondered what it could mean.

In another reference to music, the spirals are songs and lyrics, such as the eulogy from Poet and the Pendulum. I would know that song anywhere since it’s a massive comfort song for me, and I also noticed the lyrics of Scaretale, Rest Calm and Slow, Love, Slow. Notably, all these songs include Annette as the singer, and I couldn’t make out any others amid the blur. It seems to suggest that this is an era with Thomas and Annette as the central focus.

From this point, the film is very literal. We see the doctor seeing Tom as a liability, whilst Tom fights for control over his memories, reconstructing the roller coaster track (aka his train of thought/memories) I don’t think I need to explain much else, other than the end of the movie brings all this beautiful symbolism together in a montage of moments of past and present, dreams and reality, bleeding as it does.

Thomas's memories

- Receiving the arabesque from his father

- watching his father die

- Composing music

- Taking the family picture

- Bonding over music and the arabesque with Gem, fostering her imagination

- The death of Tom's wife (sounds a little like song of myself mixed in with last ride of the day to me)

- breaking the arabesque

- cutting his hand whilst doing so

- Gem believing their relationship couldn't be mended so easily

"I'm all the future you'll ever have, buddy!"

"No, you won't take my life from me again!'

This last scene is where Tom finally chooses his own self over living in his father’s shadow. He chooses his self-esteem and self love over his hatred that he could never be his father, and in that final moment, he addresses Gem as himself, calling her his princess. He chooses love over abuse. Gem over Theodore. It’s also interesting that Mr White, once given back the compass, looks as if he wants to hug Tom. Almost as if he’s now reconciling the past with the future he hopes Gem will have.

The final ten-15 minutes of the film, to me.

They're as if music was given an image. Not to be analysed, but to be felt. They are crystallised in a realm of their own, and frozen like a single snowflake wafting through the trees. They are pure in their own interpretation, and they are moments of human emotion that cannot be explained by my words. They are simple. and that's what makes them so beautiful.

it doesn't matter why the arabesque spins, or what she means, or the deep symbolism. It just needs to be felt. That change from G...to E minor.

Thanks for reading 💛

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