SciFi fans - Can you interpret this short SciFi Film?

[American Horse]

Award-Winning Short Film is Set on an Exoplanet

(This is the entire film; about 8 minutes in length)

A new short film called “Grounded” portrays an astronaut stranded on another planet. The film combines great storytelling with stunning effects, and the visuals are nothing short of convincingly and stunningly real. But the ethereal, dream-like nature of the film is reminiscent of the ending of the movie “2001,” so, actually understanding the plot is not what the film is about.

Instead it invites “unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer,” according to the description of the film. In under 8 minutes, the film explores themes of “aging, inheritance, paternal approval, cyclic trajectories, and behaviors passed on through generations,” which is ambitious for a sci-fi genre short. [...]


Read More and watch VIDEO
(better if you click to expand to full screen - at the end there is a clickable link to a "trailer" and video VFX "breakdowns"

 

[Sallow]

Neat.

Sort of reminds me of a Heavy Metal story by Moebius.

 

[American Horse]

The link compares it with 2001 A Space Odyssey, but a closer comparison to me would be Mullholland Drive as a model for the filmmaker.

Anyway, anybody looking at this? I think I have it figured out but I'll wait for someone else before spoiling it.

The comment at the site that there's no getting IT ... Is not the case; IMO.

 

[Mr. H.]

Hmmm...

I got nothin'.

But that was cool.

 

[American Horse]

At the link it says (in part) " - ... But the ethereal, dream-like nature of the film is reminiscent of the ending of the movie “2001,” so, actually understanding the plot is not what the film is about. Instead it invites “unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer ... - " But I think it is about something making the viewer think bout it and work out what happened. Sort of like a very short version of the cult movie Mullholland Drive, which is replete with chronological anomalies to be worked out to get some kind of satisfaction beyond the tragedy of a wasted life.


I think I have it figured out.
The old guy who slaps the wrist of the young guy who swooped in on a parachute is a figment of a dream who never existed in real time. He's the future incarnation of the guy who wakes up on the ground at the end. He wasn't killed by the man who fell from the unsnapped parachute, but lived to come to consciousness later, and in his dream-time he inserted the man falling who hit him into his dream of having spent a lifetime on the planet, turning it green (terraforming it in a crude dreamlike way) with vegetation. Like the ideal of time spent greening a planet, he gave the falling man the ability to levitate at will. All of that was a way of denial of or contradiction to the real situation of dying without completing any real accomplishment.

 

[Hardcandy]

I know this is an old movie but I just recently saw it for the first time.

I pretty much got the gist of the plot until it came down to the ending.

Can anyone explain the last 15 minutes of this movie to me please???

It just sort of left me scratching my head in a state of mass confusion.

 

[edthecynic]

I know this is an old movie but I just recently saw it for the first time.

I pretty much got the gist of the plot until it came down to the ending.

Can anyone explain the last 15 minutes of this movie to me please???

It just sort of left me scratching my head in a state of mass confusion.

You might try reading the book for an insight into the ending. Unlike most movies which are adapted from a book, the book 2001 was made from the movie.

 

[Hardcandy]

I know this is an old movie but I just recently saw it for the first time.

I pretty much got the gist of the plot until it came down to the ending.

Can anyone explain the last 15 minutes of this movie to me please???

It just sort of left me scratching my head in a state of mass confusion.

You might try reading the book for an insight into the ending. Unlike most movies which are adapted from a book, the book 2001 was made from the movie.

So you didn't get it either, huh!

At least I don't feel like a dummy now.

Thanx Edward...

 

[American Horse]

In a purely literal interpretation, here's what happened (Spoilers obviously): "Bowman is transported into another dimension, where his alien hosts (the ones responsible for the monoliths, and subsequently our evolution) pluck a familiar setting from his mind (a hotel) in order to ease his transition. The space baby is a representation of Bowman -- he has been "ascended" to the same incorporeal plane of existence as the aliens themselves. Or similar to them, in any event.

2010 explores this literal interpretation of the ending more fully. Bowman explores the solar system at the speed of light -- diving into Jupiter, exploring the oceans underneath Europa, etc. He becomes the intercessory for the aliens, and will be the messenger who reveals that "something wonderful" will happen to Jupiter."

[Between the book and the movie] "the only significant (maybe) difference is the ending. The book ends with the Bowman Starchild detonating all the nuclear weapons orbiting Earth. In the novel, Clarke is clear this isn't the end of the world, but Kubrick is reported to have said that he didn't end 2001 like that because that's how he ended Dr Strangelove, thought it had end-of-the-world connotations, and didn't want to repeat himself."

2001:A Space Odyssey

 

[Sherry]

I think there are Biblical themes, especially with scattering the seeds.

 

[American Horse]

I've wondered about that too Sherry. The only justification I saw for the old guy (who I think is the one who wakes up with his helmet glass breaking) to slap his wrist was that the younger man was planting them wrong, not the methodical, careful method he had been using, with obvious great success.

 

[g5000]

At the link it says (in part) " - ... But the ethereal, dream-like nature of the film is reminiscent of the ending of the movie “2001,” so, actually understanding the plot is not what the film is about. Instead it invites “unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer ... - " But I think it is about something making the viewer think bout it and work out what happened. Sort of like a very short version of the cult movie Mullholland Drive, which is replete with chronological anomalies to be worked out to get some kind of satisfaction beyond the tragedy of a wasted life.


I think I have it figured out.
The old guy who slaps the wrist of the young guy who swooped in on a parachute is a figment of a dream who never existed in real time. He's the future incarnation of the guy who wakes up on the ground at the end. He wasn't killed by the man who fell from the unsnapped parachute, but lived to come to consciousness later, and in his dream-time he inserted the man falling who hit him into his dream of having spent a lifetime on the planet, turning it green (terraforming it in a crude dreamlike way) with vegetation. Like the ideal of time spent greening a planet, he gave the falling man the ability to levitate at will. All of that was a way of denial of or contradiction to the real situation of dying without completing any real accomplishment.

They are all the same guy. The falling man, the man the falling man falls on, the old man, the man who wakes up at the end.

The same guy.

.