As this movie was all lead-up and no end, I'll aim to restore the cosmic balance by making this review essentially all end with no real lead-up. NOTE: this review is, in it's entirety, nothing but one big spoiler.
The ending: I have no problem with the ambiguity of never truly knowing whether or not everything was in the main character's mind. Almost any story well-told involving an ambiguous ending is essentially a story that's relating a tale about a situation in which "no one was certain about which was true, thus, it remained somewhat of a mystery." It's interesting to present situations about individuals or perhaps societies involved being conflicted over the nature of truth or of their reality. (I give a pass to "The Sopranos" which was a story about "the nature of these people" thus an event-oriented conclusion being arguably less of the point. And I stress "arguably.")
HOWEVER... being unclear about whether or not the final scene was actually portraying Tim Daly's character as dead versus in an unconscious haze is just plain sloppy film-making. It's not like part of the mystery was that no one in the story's scenario would ever know if the stair fall killed him or not. Either he was still alive and thus interacted with people at some point after the fall, or his body was found and a funeral was held. Just leaving that part unclear merely leaves the audience in the dark over the actual context of what the final scene was even referring to, something that would've been mundanely clear to everyone within the context of the story itself. Again, either they had a funeral for him after his body was found or they simply talked to him the next day at work. In lieu of this clarification, the film is essentially saying, "And after he fell down the stairs, it would forever remain a mystery from that day forward to all those he knew as to whether he died in the fall, or in fact, survived and saw many of them at work the next day." Clearly, this makes no sense within any context of telling a story. Thus, the presentation of this film isn't a case of telling a story with an ambiguous, mysterious finale. This is simply a case of starting to tell a story without bothering to fully go through the process of telling it. Why bother then? Either finish the assignment or spare wasting our time and don't turn it in. An even bigger shame since the premise was engaging and the acting very good.
The ending: I have no problem with the ambiguity of never truly knowing whether or not everything was in the main character's mind. Almost any story well-told involving an ambiguous ending is essentially a story that's relating a tale about a situation in which "no one was certain about which was true, thus, it remained somewhat of a mystery." It's interesting to present situations about individuals or perhaps societies involved being conflicted over the nature of truth or of their reality. (I give a pass to "The Sopranos" which was a story about "the nature of these people" thus an event-oriented conclusion being arguably less of the point. And I stress "arguably.")
HOWEVER... being unclear about whether or not the final scene was actually portraying Tim Daly's character as dead versus in an unconscious haze is just plain sloppy film-making. It's not like part of the mystery was that no one in the story's scenario would ever know if the stair fall killed him or not. Either he was still alive and thus interacted with people at some point after the fall, or his body was found and a funeral was held. Just leaving that part unclear merely leaves the audience in the dark over the actual context of what the final scene was even referring to, something that would've been mundanely clear to everyone within the context of the story itself. Again, either they had a funeral for him after his body was found or they simply talked to him the next day at work. In lieu of this clarification, the film is essentially saying, "And after he fell down the stairs, it would forever remain a mystery from that day forward to all those he knew as to whether he died in the fall, or in fact, survived and saw many of them at work the next day." Clearly, this makes no sense within any context of telling a story. Thus, the presentation of this film isn't a case of telling a story with an ambiguous, mysterious finale. This is simply a case of starting to tell a story without bothering to fully go through the process of telling it. Why bother then? Either finish the assignment or spare wasting our time and don't turn it in. An even bigger shame since the premise was engaging and the acting very good.
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