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In Reply to: The Jack Nicholson film THE PLEDGE...... posted by Chris Garrett on August 19, 2002 at 12:25:26:
I think it was Sean Penn (the director)'s intent to get you to wonder a bit, although my conclusions differ a bit from yours.I don't think the preacher was the killer, as it was already established that Nicholson's character clearly made a mistake barging it at the tall preacher's church service. Cinematically, it wouldn't make sense to start up the audience's suspicions that he was the killer again. And also like you said, the one that got in the accident in the end ("the Wizard") drove a different black station wagon.
That unnamed/unseen man just really popped in towards the end of the movie, which really seemed contrived, like the director was trying to grope for a conclusion to the story. He settled for the "poetic justice" ending, having the car and the mysterious person be burned in a fiery car wreck (close-up shot: man burning/killer burning in hell).
Like you, I didn't understand the part where the woman was yelling about Oliver either.
It could have been a good movie. Liked Nicholson in it. Penn has some good stylistic techniques, but he seemed undecided whether to treat it as a whodunit or a story of a committed man driven bonkers by unfulfillment of a promise.
Follow Ups:
consensus was that it wasn't the 'preacher' and was the Christmas World Lady's son 'oliver' who I guess is the wizard? I have the DVD in the car to return, but I may just go back and revisit the scene where Jack meets her on the way to visiting the girl's grandmother upstairs. I don't recall a reference to 'oliver' in that scene, but 'oliver' would have had a connection to that child, as she visited the g.m. for piano lesssons every week.The key for me is this. In the scene where Jack is driving away from the preacher's house, after visiting the mother, we see the preacher in the purple ford taurus and his hair is rather closely cropped. When we see the wizard driving up the mountain at the end, his hair, while not long, is in fact longer than the preacher's hair even thought both are grey, so we really do know that they're not the same person. We know the Volvo crashes and we know that the wizard isn't driving a ford, which is what Gary Jackson was driving.
I'm all for brain teasers in film, but this one had too big of a gap to leap, IMO.
Thanks, Chris
PS: What really got me was that while I was watching this, I was checking on the replies to a post I made referencing Romy on the General board. I was getting slammed for doing so and I'm trying to watch this freakin' film at the same time I'm reading replies calling me an asshole. Just not a good time to be watching a mind bender film....LOL.
Maybe Romy was the guy in the Volvo?
...song "Wishful Thinking" playing in the background. ;-)
This film is too much work.
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