I can't get over the feeling that, when she comes back towards the end of the movie,Shasta's dead, and Doc is hallucinating her.
>>62670930
So you think the entire experience was a literal kek fantasy?
I need to give this film a rewatch since I didnt really care about the plot but focused more on the style, setting and characters. Still remember it really fondly though.
>>62670930
This was such a confusing film.
She's definitely not.
>>62670998
It's much less so on repeated viewings. I really like the way the plot is told actually. There are a lot of dead ends and weird coincidences. Doc more or less solves the cases by luck
>>62671076
It's a really straightforward story when you relax and just go with it. You don't watch it like you would watch the Wire, and if you do, you'll get too transfixed by extraneous moments.
>>62670930
That's silly OP. She went somewhere On the Golden Fang as insurance. She tells Doc he won't be able to contact her for a while at the beginning. He only worries that she's dead because he's a paranoid hippie and all the events around Mickey Wolfmann
Shasta's return is two different scenes from the book collapsed into one in the movie. Think that's why it comes off kind of wonky.
First time she comes back in the book Doc sees her out in public and she downplays everything saying she was with her family and shit's obviously weird. This is how she returns in the movie at first.
Then later she comes to Doc's and tells him about being taken by the Golden Fang and gives some admission to her actually enjoying the time as pretty much Mickey's slave. This is where the mask kind of comes off and it's like damn this girl's fucked up. And in the movie they just plunk that in with the first part. So it's like she's acting like everything's fine but tells Doc this unrelated dark story anyway?
And then in the book too, Doc just never really sees her again and she's just kind of this damaged drifter who's been fucked up by the Fang and the ending is Doc driving off into the fog alone uncertain of the future
To have him with Shasta in the movie was another huge misstep. At least it feels incredibly wonky that Shasta sticks around him the whole time but never really lets the audience know what's going on or whether Shasta knows where she was etc.
makes the movie Shasta seem more like the braindead Mickey Wolfmann than the character she is supposed to be
>>62671113
Doc even says at the beginning "thinking comes later" in regards to his work
>>62671221
The movie does collapse some stuff, but I feel it still works. Like the initial shasta scene is already weird as fuck, compounded by how she acted in the flashblack, then her return being exactly what doc remembers her as (right down to the country joe and the fish shirt) just makes every scene with her weird and off. They also show he recognizes how weird the entire situation when he sniffs the beer she opens for him.
The entire point of the character is she's not exactly doing things because she wants to. Shes initially setting up doc out as a fallguy for wolfman's disapearance, shes removed from the equation as a weak link, and shes put back in (and exactly as doc remembers her) once doc starts abeing unpredictable.
Also the golden fang was a front.
>>62670930
;_;
https://youtu.be/TzINqSXyrLs
>>62671578
All these book spoilers are totally not groovy.