The key, at least in part, to understanding Ottway's perseverance in The Grey , despite seemingly not having a reason to push forward, can be found in his father's poem. Into the last good fight I'll ever know Live and die on this day The monarch uses the phrase "Once more unto the breach The soldiers must prevail or the whole of England will be under siege.
Throughout The Grey , Ottway urges the men to push forward or risk losing what they hold dear. There's an incongruity between the Ottway viewers see later in the film and him at the start of the film. A suicidal Ottway recalls the poem as he puts the gun in his mouth. The cries of wolves in the nearby mountains give him a reason to pause, but it feels as if the full impact of his father's words hit him.
This day is hard, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. To die without purpose is a wasted death. Ottway appears resigned to his fate in the moments before he realizes he's stumbled into the wolves' den in The Grey 's ending. The irony that the one place he spends the film trying to avoid is where he ends up isn't lost on Ottway.
The den represents death, and now he must face it head-on. Once again he sees his wife who tells him "Don't be afraid. Earlier in The Grey , these words are spoken in an entirely different context since the audience doesn't know she's dead. When Ottway speaks of her leaving him, the assumption is she does so of her own volition. The dreamlike sequences are interpreted as a conversation he's created in his mind: a work of fiction where they are two characters engaged in a dialogue that helps him cope with his circumstances.
His mood shifts and his survival instinct kicks in. He straps liquor bottles from the plain to his hand and breaks them on a rock. In his other hand, he holds a knife. The two Alphas of The Grey face each other for the first time, sizing each other up. Ottway now has no reason to make it back home, no men to give him confidence and now even God himself has seemed to abandon him.
Ottway is completely alone. Color is a character in it of itself because it demonstrates emotions and themes in the film without just telling the audience straight out. The three important colors to focus on is gray, white and black. The color gray is probably the most important color in the film, hence the title. Why is the film called The Grey because there is no character with Grey in their name, neither is the color ever mentioned in the whole film?
The title seems to be referring to the color gray itself. In movies and in other art forms, the color gray is used to evoke sorrow, dread, bitterness and hopelessness for example: storm clouds moving over a town. At the same time, gray can be interpreted as wise and knowledgeable which is usually used for older characters to establish they have a backstory, even if we just met the character.
Ottway fits both these meanings of the color gray because his sorrow can be felt throughout the film, but at the same time he is the most qualified man the lead the other men to safety later in the story.
To further establish this, Ottway is seen wearing a gray winter hat thought the movie. The color grays is also described as the color between black and white.
This could be interpreted as black meaning hell and white meaning heaven, which means grey would be purgatory. This representation of purgatory will be disused further on. The color white is used to establish heaven like afterlife ,or is used to stand out from the rest of the mercy colors. In the bar, Ottway is wearing a white coat while everyone else is wearing grimier colors.
This symbolizes that he does not associate with the men and has distanced himself from them entirely. While in the bar, he thinks about his deceased wife. And of corse the snow coverer wilderness is symbolize how the men are lost and frightened in the unfamiliar territory they are trapped in. The color black is use in the film to establish death and what waits beyond death.
The figurative examples of death in the film are the wolves because they are supposed to be a metaphor for the grim reaper. The men are constantly trying to avoid wolves, but soon seems clear that it is inevitable they will be snatched up eventually, just like the grim reaper himself. To further establish this point. As addressed in the start of this article, the film could be interpreted that the men are in purgatory.
Ottway and the other men could actually have died during the plane crash, but now are in purgatory which is interpreted as the cold Alaskan wilderness. Before Ottway woke up from the plane crash, he visualized him sitting in bed with his deceased wife in heavenly white sheets. As each of the men gets picked off one by one, it could be interpreted as them being judged by their sins, to see if the are worthy enough to be accepted into heaven, or to be cast into the pits of hell.
While the film taking place in purgatory is just a theory, the fact the film discusses death and the association with the color gray makes it more than just a coincidence. In the end Ottway tries to fight the alpha wolf while at the same time knowing he will not make it out alive and accepts it. Ottway was going to commit suicide in the beginning of the film which can be considered a sin, possibly condemning to hell for his actions.
Instead he decides to go on this journey that shows his bravery and self-sacrifice, insuring that he will ascend into heaven and be reunited with his wife. In conclusion, on the outside The Grey may be a very dour film to watch and it may have a defeatist outlook at life in some parts. I have to say I enjoyed Taken but his acting is quite wooden to be honest.
He lacks depth and his voice comes over monosyllabic. Just saying. Some of these are no great shakes, but seem like Citizen Kane compared to this movie.
Love this film! When I went to see this film, I did not know exactly what I was going to get. I ended up getting a chilling tale! This is one of the my favorite films that concerns itself with such depth in a character and how his hardest obstacles in the film are internal, even when faced with traversing the impossible Alaskan wasteland. This Is one of my favorite movies for the reasons you mentioned.
Once upon a time Liam Neeson only played priests and sombre leaders. Today he has transformed himself into a somewhat credible action star! Thank you very much. We needed more of a payoff for the final scene, which could have been added and still ended in similar fashion. A great analysis of depression and how film uses imagery to tell an emotional story as well as enhance conflict.
I also got that Ottway identifies with the wolves as being survivalists from societal rejection. He feels socially rejected and an outcast, which is part of depression, too. Thanks, the article was well organized and presented. Even if Ottway kills the Alpha, will the rest of the pack let him survive? If you watched past the credits, you saw that there was a very short maybe two seconds scene where we see Ottway and the Alpha wolf after they fight.
They're both alive, but badly injured. Ottway's head is resting on top of the wolf's body. Since both are so badly injured, I think it's unlikely that either one of them will survive. It's symbolic: honor your life and confront your fears. The whole movie was about his ambivalence about living after his wife died. He fought the enemy honoring "life" and symbolically, he won. That's my take. Its almost certain that after someone or something kills the alpha of a pack, then the other wolves back off, praise, or even make them the new leader of their group.
Because the alpha was lying weakly on the bed of snow at the brief scene after the credits, it should be obvious that he was killed or in the middle of dying. Otherwise, he'd undoubtedly be eating John and so would the others. Meanwhile, John is lying and resting his head on the side of the black alpha wolf. We're not certain if he's dead or if he survived, but the one thing we know is that the wolf is dead. One thing I can say about the way the wolf died was by the dagger John held and the broken glasses he wrapped around his hand which looked to be some sort of medicine tube.
John must have known something about the glasses because he was a huntsman after all, maybe containing poison to kill off the wolves. Either way the wolf was dead and as for John, its really up to you to figure that out. Odds are, he was sitting there thinking and praying judging the way the director casted him always in deep thought.
What other films fall into this category? Braveheart , for one: though things admittedly look bad for Mel Gibson in the protracted torture scene that concludes the protracted film, there is no reason to believe that the torments inflicted upon him constitute anything more than a very deep flesh wound.
Disembowelment is rough, true, but people have been known to survive it. People just like William Wallace, who know how to put on their game face and suck it up when the going gets tough: when you're going through hell, keep going.
Same thing for disembowelment. Besides, you don't actually see his head come rolling off during the execution scene, so his demise is by no means certain. The whole hung, drawn and quartered scenario could be trompe l'oeil. The same holds true for Kirk Douglas at the end of Spartacus. In the final scene of the film, Spartacus looks down from the cross and gazes upon his infant son. Though battered and bruised, he still looks kind of pleased, as though he knows something that his captors do not know.
And what he knows is this: his cunning, well-connected wife is loaded with sesterces, implacable enemies of the Roman Empire are still thriving all over Italy, and because of this it is by no means inconceivable that his adherents will sally forth under cover of darkness and rescue him from his apparent death by crucifixion. Just because someone gets crucified on film doesn't automatically mean they end up dead.
You only need to look at Gibson's The Passion of the Christ to understand that. I am certainly not suggesting that every motion picture with an ambiguous ending deliberately seeks to create the impression that the seemingly dead have somehow managed to survive.
Sometimes, what you see is what you get.
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