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questing-wulfstan · 2 years

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So, I watched Remainder (2015), because I'm a simple gal who enjoys watching Tom Sturridge play various shades of unhinged gremlin on my screen and, I have my own theory :

I don't think the black out at the end is the fuse to a new loop and that it starts all over again. I think the black out is Tom's death. That Tom's been dying the whole time.

At the beginning, he's declared clinically dead, and I don't think he recovers actually. Rather, the movie is a 1 hour and 43 minutes-long stretch of the few seconds between the accident and Tom's actual death, throughout which his 'life flashes before his eyes', as the established expression go. Except part of his brain is already destroyed from the squashing, and the memories stored in it are erased, and Tom has to do with what is left for his 'life review'.

Except he does not, he's terrified of death (as human beings usually are), and he takes refuge in this ultimate surge of brain activity, lets it delude him that it is, in fact, reality. Thus, it makes no sense to him that parts of his memories are missing, and he fixates on these and endeavours to recover them, like he ought to be able to do since his brain is intact and he believes himself to have already gone through the process of, and succeeded in recovering his motive functions.

And stubborn, sort of patient, repeat has been the method to recover his motive functions, it ought to be for his memories as well.

He 'fixes' his life ー or, his memories of it ー as he goes too. I don't think he was running away from the bank robbery when he's squashed at the very beginning. The first and last scene of the movie are nearly identical, except for one detail : in the first scene, when he looks back to Catherine, she smiles and goes down the stairs towards him. She does not in the last scene.

I'm not sure what exactly was happening before the accident, but it's reasonable to infer from the informations provided throughout the movie that he found out Catherine was 'a real cunt', to quote Greg, packed his things and stormed out. That is why she's so hopeful when he turns and look at her in the first scene.

Except that is a failure, and not something Tom's unconscious want to replay last before his death, nor something he wants to go through ー again ー at all. So he reaches for something else, and grasps the memory of the news of Christopher's death. I don't think he was actually close to Christopher, but his death is 'glorious' to Tom, much more so than his own. And this might not be his own life, but if he can piece motive functions, and memories back from oblivion, surely with enough practice he can make someone else's memory his. So when he reaches the end of his life's tape, Catherine doesn't go down the stairs hopefully towards him because now he's the one who hurt her, he's dangerous, and she fears him, fears what he's capable of. The other way around than what actually happened. And much better.

Plus now, he's turned the flashing of his life before his eyes as death creeps on him into a whole other thing. Respite. Reprieve. A second chance. And surely more chances will be granted to him. Now he's in a time loop that will resume 'until the universe runs down'. Now he's endless.

Except he's not.

#remainder #remainder 2015 #tom sturridge #to be honest I think of this entirely in terms of death of the author / director in this case #it's an interpretation that works and that I personally find compelling #but I don't pretend it's the one the movie was written with in mind #the movie is very much up to interpretation #and oh boy am I interpretating #but mostly it was a nice thought exercise to come up with an alternative theory to the time loop one #which is entirely valid btw !!#so an alternative theory as I was saying which is entirely rational unlike the time loop theory #as the movie is otherwise entirely rational #(I mean the narrative not the character)#but again this one isn't in any way superior to the time loop theory !!#anyways #if you are wondering yes it was entirely deliberate of me to call Tom 'endless'#it's the Sandman and Tom (Sturridge)'s phenomenal acting that lead me to watch Remainder and I'm not going to pretend the contrary #allez fini de disgresser dans les tags #la bise #mes tags on s'en fiche

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mysticaldreamwitch · 2 years

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Its in the Blood

This was suppose to be a fanfic, but as I am currently in no headspace to write it, any of you creative people out there can feel very welcome to make this idea your own!

Please me sure to tag me tho, I'd love to read where you take this concept!

Also TRIGGERWARNING for child murder, cannibalism, incest and murder

The Line of Atreus is really fecked up guys x.x

This is about the movie Remainder from 2015, starring our beloved Tom Sturridge in the main role as a nameless man, who looses his memory after a crash and desperately tries to reclaim it, using everything, anything and anyone at his disposal to do his bidding.

He starts off somewhat sympathetic, but in his ongoing mania, he rids himself of any moral or human notion, turning into a merciless killer in the end to get what he wants, and only realizing in a final moment of clarity, that he has been running in cirlces, and that he had just repeated everything up to the moment to which the crash occurred, making him loose him memory all again, indicating that this is an endless cycle, which the character has gone through before many times.

When I first saw it, I admit, I was quite baffled and perplexed by it all and I couldn't really make sense of it. I appreciated the movie for the craft, the camera, the lighting, the acting, everything was great, but the story left me feeling hollow in a way, filled with dread.

Perhaps other people like movies like this, the kind that depict a downwards spiral, and usually I watch it once, and thats it, but this one lingered in my mind, as it did something similar, but just different enough: The downwards spiral NEVER ends. He will always loose his memory, try to reclaim it, turn into a horrible void doing it, just to be struck down and start from zero again. It has no beginning, no end, no meaning, besides the mental and physical suffering of this person and everyone around him. And that, for a lack of a better word, fucked me up. I do NOT like that, cause it just made me feel so helpless. Nothing is explain, nothing is clear, you just watch this human suffer, knowning the end of it will never come.

So it kind of got me thinking if there could be a reason for this, some kind of explanation. And I think there is perhaps an interesting viewpoint one could turn this into.

Maybe its not that interesting, idk, it is to me

Consider, the main character as a descent of House Atreus.

For explaination, the bloodline of Atreus, as well as his brothers, were cursed, first by the actions of the grandfather Tantalus, who served his son Pelops to the olympian gods for food, to test their omniscience. This action got him sent to Tartarus, a part of the underworld, where he is damed to stay in water he can never drink, under a tree with rich fruit he can never reach.

His temper was passed down to his son, who, after being reassembled by the gods as good as they were able to (this will be relevant later), went on to live a normal life. However when the time came to marry, he was not the only suitor for the hand of a princess, so he convinced a servant by the name of Myrtilus to saboage his rivals chariot, which drove the man into death. However, instead of rewarding him, Pelops pushed the servant down a cliff, so his secret may die with him. In his dying fall, the servant uttered a curse on Pelops and his entire lineage, that the gods shall punish them all.

Pelops went on to have three sons: Chrysippus, Thyestes and Atreus. The ladder killed they half-brother Chrysippus in order to get the throne, but soon grew unsatisfied, resulting in another fight, which lead to Thyestes taking the throne, an act which was later resolved through devine help, as the gods helped Atreus claim the thone.

However, Atreus soon learned that his wife and brother had an affair, an affront that enraged him so much, that he invited his brother for a feast, only later to reveal the meal servend was made of his brothers own children. His brother was exiled for the crime of cannibalism and sought revenge, looking for the help of an oracle, which told him to have a child with his own daughter, which would later kill Atreus.

He did as the oracle told him, but the mother abandoned the child, ashamed of its origin, and it was discovered by shepherds and brought to Atreus palace, where the boy was raised, only later to kill his grandfather/father, after Thyestes revealed the plot to his own brother.

However, at this point, Atreus already had children of his own, the most important being Menelaus and Argamemnon. You know...the guys that went to war with Troy over Helen of Sparta, Menelauses wife. They went out to kill Thyestes to get back their kingdom and succeeded in their goal.

Coming back to the beginning of the Trojan however Argamemnon had angered Artemis goddess of the hunt by killing one of the sacred deer and boasting about being a better hunter then her, something she didn't take to too kindly, as he made the wind still and the ships unable to sail. A sacrifice had to be made: Iphigenia, his first born daughter.

But of course Iphigenia also had a mother, Clytemnestra, twin sister to Helen. Enraged by the sacrafice of her daughter, she started an affair with Aegisthus (the incest baby of Thyestes and his daughter) and started to plot her husbands murder, which she executed in the night her husband returned from the war. She let him into a bath, where she stabbed him to his death.

However, of course, Clytemnestra and Argamemnon had more then one child, however only one son Orestes, who had taken away by his sister Electra (or was exciled, depending on the version), and raised by/with her, swearing revenge on the murder of his father.

Him and his sister planned the murder, and Orestes executed it, being cursed by his mother in turn to be haunted by the Erinyes, the Three Furies. After wandering the land with guilt in his heart for many years, the gods decided, that enough penance had been done and freed the man from the curse.

How as he have established, technically the curse should be cured, right? Well yes...and no. You see apart from the fact that most of the people mentioned before had siblings, male and female where barely their names are known, one significant person in this whole plot was not punished at all: Elektra.

Althought their is speculation, for the most part her whereabouts after the murder and during the brothers penance is unknown, and what happened to her finally is quite unclear. So let you propose this idea to you: The main character in Remainder as a descent of Electras bloodline.

This may seem like a strech, but considering how many children went barely or completely unnamed, especially if they were female (yey to that old greece, good job), there is a high chance, many descents were never cleared of the House of Atreus curse like Orestes was. Therefore, the curse is still active or simply lies dormant.

Perhaps one could entertain the idea, that it is spread throughout their children like Haemophilia, which is found primarily in men, due to the genetic defect laying in the X-Chromosome. It happens in women as well, but only rarely, when the other X has a malfunction in some capacity.

This is also the reason why I chose "In the Blood" as the title of this idea. Apart from it being an absolute banger song from the Hades videogame, I think it could be an interesting piece here as well considering its context of family and kin.

I linked it, give it a listen if you can, its amazing!

So the characters spiral and violent tendencies could be attributed to that curse, okay, but how did he end up in this repeating nightmare you ask?

Simple: He's in hell. Well Tatarus. Actually both. Lemme explain.

As mythology got convoluted over time, so could the underworld be one giant realm which consists of many parts, including the Greek Underworld, as well the the concept known as hell in Christianity. And as seen in the show Lucifer, it is not uncommon to imagine hell to be a place where people relive their worst parts of life.

But the people in Lucifer are aware they are in hell, thats the whole point of it , you'd say, and yes, that is correct. However, what if this is not for his own mind to realize, apart from that small moment right before it all starts again, but for someone else to watch, to be amused by it. Someone that habours a resentment towards him, or maybe his entire line?

Far strech I know, but bare with me. A never-ending punishment made of agony, dispair and the very short realisation that it is indeed a punshiment, that sounds quite like Tantalus himself I think. Totured in Tartarus for all eternity for what he did.

Oh, also, to come back to the Pelops thing, ha, don't think I forgot! I mentioned before that the gods tried to put Pelops together as much as possible, because, while all the other gods immediately knew they were tricked, the goddess Demeter, still grieving the loss of the daughter Persephone, ate part of Pelops shoulder, which was deplaced by an ovory shoulder crafted by Hephaistos. So all of Pelops decendence have a white spot on the back of their shoulder. A nice little detail, you might wanna include if you like.

So yeah thats it, that was my rant about this idea, aka me trying to comprehend this movie, cause my little brain can't accept that there is suffering like this for no apparent reason.

I'd like to know y'alls views on it and feel free to use the idea in your own writing if I feel like it, see you around!

witch x.

#remainder #remainder 2015 #tom sturridge #tom sturridge character #movie idea #fanfic idea #greek myth inspo #house of atreus #honestly what is this movie it hurt me physically

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