Originally posted by
EddyTeddyFreddy
the ending didn't evoke anywhere near as much emotion as I suspect the film makers were going for.
Actually, I don't think that's what they were going for at all.
This is one of the most Kubrickian movies not directed by Kubrick I have seen in quite a while. It stands back, seeing its characters clearly, giving us insight into their emotions and motives, but not asking us, at all, to identify with them in any way. It is a clinical dissection, not a sympathetic experience. It's a very different way of handling narrative, and it asks the audience to watch it likewise. Some people don't enjoy doing that; they want to "get into" the story, to imagine themselves perceiving events through one or another character's eyes, to experience the film as if they're a participant. Kubrick, and in this film Anderson, doesn't make movies like that, and doesn't want the audience to watch them that way. We are supposed to stand back, observe, ponder, consider, and mull. We are supposed to leave the theater (or eject the DVD)
thinking, not buzzing with subrational emotional stimulation. We can have an emotional reaction to those thoughts, and to whatever realizations and conclusions we might find, but we are generating that emotion inside ourselves, rather than taking it straight from the film.
Does that help?