63336 explains 5 of the Most Confusing Films Ever Made

16 May 2011

In May, the world famous Cannes Film Festival will take place. The first event took place in 1939 and since then the Festival has become a hugely popular and more artistic European affair, in stark contrast with the glitzy and more predictable Hollywood award season. The top prize is the Palme d'Or or Golden Palm; a coveted item desired by many a director who would rather be classed as an auteur. Many British directors have won the award, including David Lean, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.

The Festival has been known to attract strange and confusing film entrants: Barton Fink was a Palme d'Or winner as was Lindsay Anderson's If…, both of which could be classed as surreal and confusing.

63336 decided to have a look at 5 other confusing films and tries to explain them in a nutshell.

Plot spoilers included.

12 Monkeys

Bruce Willis is a convict in the future who goes back in time to the present to try and prevent an outbreak of a deadly virus which will destroy the world. He gets killed trying to stop a man who is carrying the weapons of destruction at an airport, witnessed by himself as a young boy. This causes him to have recurring dreams of seeing a man's death at an airport, not realising it is his own. This film, directed by Terry Gilliam, is only confusing if you try to work out the time travel part too much. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity permits time travel using black holes but only into the future.

In a nutshell: Man from the future travels back in time and gets entrapped in his own dream paradox. Simple.

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is about time travel and the universe. The film ends with Donnie being manipulated back to his bed by Frank the rabbit to save the universe. That's right, there is a rather creepy rabbit called Frank in this film. Confusing films nearly always have 1 (or both) of 2 key ingredients: time travel and dreams. This way the director and writer can get away with what is essentially complete nonsense and somehow make it look deep and disturbing.

In a nutshell: High school student gets told the secrets of time travel and the universe by scary human rabbit hybrid in order to save the world.

Inception

A film about dreams, so it's going to be confusing. Director Christopher Nolan is no stranger to baffling films; he was the man behind the excellent Memento (about a man who uses Polaroids to cover his amnesia and is partially shown in reverse). Inception becomes confusing when the dream team get involved in a multi-level dream in order to indulge in some corporate sabotage. Exceptionally well shot but absolutely mind-boggling, the film also ends with a huge question mark of whether Leonardo DiCaprio is awake or still dreaming.

In a nutshell: Team of sleep saboteurs manipulate dreams to seem like reality thus being able to change and influence important decisions in the real world.

Vanilla Sky

This film often appears on the top of most confusing film lists, although it is not actually that confusing with repeat viewing. Tom Cruise plays a rich man who is involved in a horrific car crash but then wins the love of a beautiful woman in the form of Penelope Cruz. However, he ends up murdering an old flame, Cameron Diaz, and gets placed in a mental institution. Fortunately for Cruise, it is actually a dream gone wrong (no surprise there). In reality he was gravely disfigured in the crash and decided to pay for a 150-year-long "lucid dream" as his reality had become unbearable. He then has to jump off a skyscraper to wake up.

In a nutshell: Rich boy ruins life, pays for a dream, ends up having a nightmare. Wakes up.

Eraserhead

Not only possibly the most confusing film ever, but also one of the most disturbing and difficult to watch. Directed by David Lynch in 1977, this dark film contains a grim city populated by bizarre organisms, such as a disfigured miniature woman living in a radiator, a hideous baby with slit nostrils and no ears, and a man with a brain that could be used to make pencil erasers. After a number of weird plot twists the film ends with the baby turning into a planet which then explodes, whilst the film's protagonist, Henry, hugs the Lady in the Radiator (as she is listed in the credits). Naturally, dreams are a core plot device in this film.

In a nutshell: Only that David Lynch has weird dreams. He won the Palm d'Or in 1990 for the much less confusing Wild at Heart.

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