I just watched this last night. It's about the fifth time I have seen this film, and I am really beginning to come to the same conclusions about Isabel dying.GringoTex wrote:I was finally able to watch the film the whole way through. The first two times I tried to watch it, I was so taken with grief at Isabel's death that I couldn't finish it.
Now that I finished it, I'm amazed that no critic (please correct me if I'm wrong) has come to the conclusion that Isabel really did die. While Ana sees her after the "death," it's in my mind obviously a dream state. Every appearance of Anna after her tumble from the chair is a subjective one. The one long shot of her and Ana's room reveals a bedspring with a missing mattress.
Aside from the scenes gringo mentioned above, there are a few that stuck out. I am just gonna refer to the one scene as her "death" in teh next paragraphs, for easier typing.
There is the scene with the family eating dinner together. The first and only time in the film this happens happens after Isabel's death. It seems as solemn affair for the parents, even for them, and you never see a shot of teh four of them at once. Just the kids on one side and the parents on the other. And then the father opens the watch while looking at Ana. I think those were very deliberate shots.
There is the very brief freeze frame of Isabel jumping through the flames almost immediately after her death.
When the search party is out for Ana the mother throws a letter into the flames. Is it from her lover? Has she started feeling guilty that she lost one child already and now Ana is missing while she was in her own isolated world. After the father brings Ana back we see for the first time the wife show affection as she drapes a blanket over him as he is sleeping, as if she is ready to be more loyal to the family after the recent trauma.
They are all very subtle moments, just like the rest of the film. And for me the film works magnificently whether or not Isabel did actually die. But, to me, it just makes more sense that she may have died.