I don't recall a key being shown specifically at that point - he sees the dead flowers from outside, and enters in, but I can't remember the door being explicitly locked before he entered. Maybe it was there and it didn't register, but I think the impression I had at the time of watching was that Su-in had given him access.
Mine is a domestic (Korean) release DVD - it clocks in at 112 mins (no pun intended).
1:59:27. Not sure of the frame rate but the DVD is R1 NTSC (not PAL). I just checked the box to see if it was presented as an "extended director's cut," and it is not so described.
There's no key play here. I went back. They show Su-in looking out from the photo store; cut to Min coming up the highway in a cab (makes no sense continuity-wise, but let's call it a metaphorical looking out from the photo store); cut to showing Min walking up to the store--this shot is from the roof of the single story photo shop; cut to a Min head shot with sound of him sliding open a door or window; cut to a shot of the flowers from inside (not through any window) where Min walks into the frame. It did come off like Su-in let, or allowed, or unlocked the door, and he got in. But honestly it didn't occur to me that the store might have been locked. It was open before during the day and Min wouldn't have reason to believe otherwise AND neither would we. So there is no reason to think he should or would need a key (until we retroactively start trying to put things together
my addition in bold.
This is true at first, but once you see that a good amount of time has passed (dead flowers, missing photos, dust everywhere), the fact that he was able to let himself in seems to be an important factor.
It didn't come up for me. I didn't see the old man give him the key, though. Min getting in or being in the shop seemed natural and at Min-in's doing. No key needed.
I think the significance of the 4:00 time is that its the same time that Eu-in's plane crashed.
That's my take.
True, I think. But it seems like a suggestion that one and the same spider spirit is inhabiting both of them. It seemed significant to me that Hero-Min didn't recognize his wife--but none of you guys did either
It's one of those things that like all the 4:00 stuff that screams significance but remains a mystery.
I'm open to the idea that it was Kang Min tipping himself over the affair..but the clubbing scene, that couldn't just be a dream or a shadow of no one. He had big wounds necessary for a surgery, how can we explain that if he wasn't clubbed and merely tripped?
I was really into Jung Suh at the time. Her face was etched in my mind from The Isle. But honestly, I don't remember if I knew it ahead of time or just noticed it while watching. It is documented at Asian Wiki. I may have seen that before watching it. But the weird thing is that I think I remember thinking the first time I watched it that Soo-young and Eu-ah were the same person. I (sort of) distinctly remember during the kitchen scene Eu-ah's face morphing into Soo-young's. Like they did at the end with Su-in's and Soo-young's.
I took it that the big wounds for surgery were from being hit by the car. So I can deal with the clubbing scene--even though I agree with you that actually putting hands on himself is asking too much--but I can't reconcile him mailing the roll of film to himself.
that seems correct, and obvious now that you point it out, but I was sort of wrapped up in the idea that Su-in, who is dead, was only able to interact with Min after he died, although it remains unclear when Min actually died. In the tunnel at 4:00 when he got hit by a car, or some few weeks later after two weeks in a coma followed by limping around here and there for a while and finally witnessing his own death.
I don't have any confident answers. No matter how you slice it, there are continuity problems, both in the time loops and in the mysterious figures. I personally believe that all the guys in the forest watching each other are "Min." The guy calling and sending film is Min. Since, apparently, most if not all of this is his mind playing out guilt scenarios during 14 days of coma (after, apparently, hacking his boss and girlfriend up) the fact that "observer/follower" Min somehow lost his bandages seems like a forgivable mental discontinuity.
Didn’t the schoolteacher also recall how Min’s father opened a photo store, after he (the father) left the teaching profession but before they packed up and finally left town? Yet Su-in said that the photos on the wall were taken by her father, and that she had inherited the store from him.
Completely agree – this much is clear.
Not so sure of this. When Min returns home from the hospital for the first time, there are two photos on the wall – one in silhouette, and the other turned to face the wall. He turns the hidden photo over to reveal a black-and-white portrait of the wife, and places the colour photo next to it. At the time, it struck me as a little odd that the one photo was turned to face the wall, as if he was trying to block out whoever it was (I don’t think it had yet been revealed to be the wife).
Didn't they play the ER scene twice, with slightly different events unfolding, in that the second time around, the doctors gave up on their resuscitation efforts but Min came back from the brink of his own accord?
Good call - I thought of The Machinist. But both those films moved to a conclusion that tied everything up in a bow.
