We all want love after all. We want family bounds and people to rely on, friends who support us and stick with us when we are in trouble.
This was all about love. The separation was a disease and Eleana (Clair Danes) who worked hard to gain a successful career as a ballerina, got weaker and weaker as the result of not having the love she desired in her life, the love of being a white bride, purity, youth and togetherness with someone she loved.... May be she realised it when it was too late, when she was no longer wanted by the media, corporations who made money out of her talent; when she felt she was missing that long wanted link, to be attached to someone she loved.
When John (Joaquin Phoenix)came back to get his divorce paper signed, it was too late, her heart already was weak, the disease was in an advanced stage. She tried to cure it, she tried to quit her job, but the people who used her including her brother betrayed her behind her back.
So from Eleana's point of view, all she wanted was her life and happiness back. From David and Arthur's point of views, it was all about making money, no matter how many lives would be ruined; they were using people as their business tools. But from John's point of view, it was all about love. You could see in his eyes when he was watching Eleana that how he cared and how he longed for her, and that was the reason he left, because he loved her and he wanted her happiness and success. And finally that was the reason he got involved in the end.
The Ugandans were symbolic to my view, something in John's imagination... He saw them on television screens and when he was dying. He saw them attaching themselves near each other to the place they were born so that they stay as a family and not to separate, to keep love! The fact that John's brother lived in aeroplanes and always in the sky showed the result of this family dis-attachment and confirmed that even when people leave each other, they still think about each other all the time, in their isolation and they still try to make sense by keeping contact...
At the end... we hear John's brother (Sean Penn) trying to communicate with John .... "You are probably somewhere in snow... you are probably somewhere sleeping." So deep inside family members have this connection and that is why by separating families and disconnecting people from love, the world is going to be a very cold place to be and people finish their lives in isolation and from a cold heart somewhere and this would become so natural that no one will care after all.
This also proved that even when these four family members tried to get together at one point, they did not really make it and that killed John and Eleana. In distance Michael, Eleana's brother died in storm and John's brother was in a plane that could not land anywhere at all as everywhere was snowing... so he was going to die as well...
Love is something that has to bound all of us humans together and if we are not connected, sooner or later, the life stops metaphorically and in this film symbolically.
This was all about love. The separation was a disease and Eleana (Clair Danes) who worked hard to gain a successful career as a ballerina, got weaker and weaker as the result of not having the love she desired in her life, the love of being a white bride, purity, youth and togetherness with someone she loved.... May be she realised it when it was too late, when she was no longer wanted by the media, corporations who made money out of her talent; when she felt she was missing that long wanted link, to be attached to someone she loved.
When John (Joaquin Phoenix)came back to get his divorce paper signed, it was too late, her heart already was weak, the disease was in an advanced stage. She tried to cure it, she tried to quit her job, but the people who used her including her brother betrayed her behind her back.
So from Eleana's point of view, all she wanted was her life and happiness back. From David and Arthur's point of views, it was all about making money, no matter how many lives would be ruined; they were using people as their business tools. But from John's point of view, it was all about love. You could see in his eyes when he was watching Eleana that how he cared and how he longed for her, and that was the reason he left, because he loved her and he wanted her happiness and success. And finally that was the reason he got involved in the end.
The Ugandans were symbolic to my view, something in John's imagination... He saw them on television screens and when he was dying. He saw them attaching themselves near each other to the place they were born so that they stay as a family and not to separate, to keep love! The fact that John's brother lived in aeroplanes and always in the sky showed the result of this family dis-attachment and confirmed that even when people leave each other, they still think about each other all the time, in their isolation and they still try to make sense by keeping contact...
At the end... we hear John's brother (Sean Penn) trying to communicate with John .... "You are probably somewhere in snow... you are probably somewhere sleeping." So deep inside family members have this connection and that is why by separating families and disconnecting people from love, the world is going to be a very cold place to be and people finish their lives in isolation and from a cold heart somewhere and this would become so natural that no one will care after all.
This also proved that even when these four family members tried to get together at one point, they did not really make it and that killed John and Eleana. In distance Michael, Eleana's brother died in storm and John's brother was in a plane that could not land anywhere at all as everywhere was snowing... so he was going to die as well...
Love is something that has to bound all of us humans together and if we are not connected, sooner or later, the life stops metaphorically and in this film symbolically.