I agree with everything you say in the last paragraph. I very much liked the difficulty involved in Alma's reaching her transcendent moment (and that she wasn't aiming for that). It was not the case of her being a Chosen One; it was a case of her *not* having the deficits that Zach and Olivia** and presumably others in the past had. And who knows? Others in the past may also have had successful experiences. But they wouldn't go down in lore because a person who has a successful experience wouldn't create this kind of lore.
I feel the same way about being comfortable not knowing. I thought the movie was successful in conveying that this communication and any meaning that's able to survive in a person after it is not something that can then be conveyed to others. You're not going to get an interpreter, except in the sense that Alma is interpreting when she says, "let me guide you out of the woods."
--yeah, my dissatisfaction, if it even rises to that level, has to do purely with the flatness of what we were shown when we were seeing what Alma was seeing/experiencing. The kaleidoscope patterns of the dandelion seeds and the mycelium designs threw me out of the story, a little, in spite of their beauty, because I felt too conscious of their being manipulated visual images. But I did still feel the overwhelming wash of it, the richness of it--so in that sense it was successful.
**What do you make of Olivia on the ground at the very end, beatific, saying "thank you"? I took that as her having experienced something of what Alma experienced--though I'm pretty pessimistically sure she's going to shove it into her old worldview.
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I feel the same way about being comfortable not knowing. I thought the movie was successful in conveying that this communication and any meaning that's able to survive in a person after it is not something that can then be conveyed to others. You're not going to get an interpreter, except in the sense that Alma is interpreting when she says, "let me guide you out of the woods."
--yeah, my dissatisfaction, if it even rises to that level, has to do purely with the flatness of what we were shown when we were seeing what Alma was seeing/experiencing. The kaleidoscope patterns of the dandelion seeds and the mycelium designs threw me out of the story, a little, in spite of their beauty, because I felt too conscious of their being manipulated visual images. But I did still feel the overwhelming wash of it, the richness of it--so in that sense it was successful.
**What do you make of Olivia on the ground at the very end, beatific, saying "thank you"? I took that as her having experienced something of what Alma experienced--though I'm pretty pessimistically sure she's going to shove it into her old worldview.