You probably know of the mothers Promethus and Proteus that the protagonists have been compared to. If so, great! It doesnt matter -- mostly.
(Spoilers)
The movie is in an inception loop. Everything we see within the film takes place within the mind of the currently-being-eaten-alive Ephraim at the end. When the film ends, we go down another layer. Or, alternatively, it's a shot to the surface and reality. Like inception.
Ephraim is an unreliable character and the camera shows everything in his unreliable perspective. Thomas, or Wake, is Ephraims subconscious. The subconscious remembers what has occured vaguely by the past inception loops. Wake cherishes the light because he is attempting to protect his conscious self from falling under its influence, while also attempting to suppress it to his deepest desires.
Wake has told Ephraim that he was a pretender and a faker, much like our subconscious' tell ourselves, because it fails to be superficial.
The 'you've been saying that for weeks' didnt actually occur. Wake is just remembering the previous loops and is getting them confused as every thing this loop occurs, we go deeper and deeper into his psyche inception.
He claims that Ephraim chased him with an axe when in actuality he was confusing his own identity with Ephraims.
He knows Ephraim doesnt trust him in their drunken talk. Ephraim keeps trying, earnestly, to say "I trust you." while Wake denies it. Almost as if he were his own intuition and knew even before he knew.
Wake curses Ephraim to damnation because the insult on his cooking, which symbolizes that Ephraim had been pretending and fake during their sincere dinner talks(?). Honestlyx I am personally unsure why, but you'll notice how reluctant he is to retaliate. "You're drunk, you dont mean it!". He tries to rationalize the critique on his cooking and play it off. I think its because if he doesnt then he has to curse him to damnation, which something the psyche doesnt want to do.
They share the same name.
His subconscious also refrains from things that are regarded as bad luck. This is his subconscious having intuition as to what causes events to occur due to previous inception loops. He knows the birds are bad luck because having been killed before, they set the storm into motion. Thus he says to not kill them.
Wake also notices when Ephraim is unstable or hiding something. Even when Ephraim first grows disturbed, Wake insists he was hiding a secret.
The entire time as Ephraim battles himself and his past, he eventually bullies his guiding subconscious (and thus his regrets, his past, etc) into submission. From here, he is completely mad without his subconscious to guide him to the morally just decisions. The reason why is because the subconscious has associated control with abuse and it causes him to mentally break. When he mentally breaks, his subconscious can no longer bar him from the light
When he finally sees the light, he has reached the most inner part of his subconscious. Because what does both a lighthouse light and the root of our psyche do? They guide us. Seeing into this gives him total euphoria to the point of destroying him. In other words, he has transcended -- but it breaks him. It drives him mad. He ends up outside being eaten by the birds, in which we start all over again inside his mind.
Edit: also you'll notice how at the start of the movie Ephraim wants to do everything by the rules, logically. But that's denied by his partner, who judges things based on experience and intuition.
Submitted April 30, 2020 at 04:37AM by Vamosity-Cosmic https://ift.tt/2KJUvDr
