Coherence
(2013), is this a sci-fi mumblecore masterpiece? Probably.
It definitely was
for the first 40 minutes of its run time, it had me g l u e d to the screen grinding
my brain trying to keep up with the mechanics of it all.
Then, a couple of d e t o u r s (mainly one), mixed in with a bit of perplexity surrounding the statistical plausibility of what I was seeing, killed my immersion and the
beautiful momentum of story a little bit...
But either way, it was a great watch, one that I didn’t comprehend 100% tho, which is why I decided to write a way too long and rumbly run-through of the events.
In order to
avoid being very verbose and/or very confusing while differentiating between various versions of each character, I decided to use ✨ colours ✨.
I selected blue to mark the OG characters
(cause blue glowsticks), and then every other provenience has its own tint.
I’d say, let’s start off by listing the characters:
Emily: although the movie is quite coral, i'd say she’s
probably the protagonist.
She used to be on a trajectory to become a very successful dancer but, oh my god, get this:
stardom-shaped Emily created a whole dance show and was
supposed to be the prima-ballerina in it BUT, right before the premiere they
switched her with ‘’Svetlana’’, and offered her an understudy job instead. She
didn’t take it out of pride and was hence booted from the company (career lost).
BUT THEN, Svetlana pulled out, and
the company gave the main role to the dancer who DID accept the understudy job,
and that woman became the most famous dancer in the country………
so
basically………… it’s like Emily lost her career twice….
… Girl.. I
have to take my hat off to your steely will to live, cause I literally have no
idea how you’re still with us after something like that, if it’d had happened
to me I would’ve jumped off a balcony.
Kevin: her boyfriend who wants to move to Vietnam
for a few months. He used to date
→ Laurie: she brings the mess and the drama
to the evening, she is now dating Kevin’s friend
→ → Amir: he’s there, and apparently he has a thing for dating kevin's exes
Lee: the host of the party, she is nerdy and
successful and married to
→ Mike: he used to be an actor but
alcool related issues caused him to abandon the scenes.
He’s pretty charismatic
and a l s o quite messy, as demonstrated by him nonchalantly throwing digs at Laurie and Amir during
the quaint dinner.
Beth: new-age-spiritualist type person who, after hearing that Laurie was also joining the dinner party, thought Emily could use her vial of herbs with a whisper of ketamine to get to through the evening. She’s married to Hugh but cheated on him with Mike.
Hugh: Beth's husband
So, what is
happening?
Basically,
due to a comet passing very close to Earth, a series of reality bending
phenomena unfold.
1) the
portal takes the form of a “black fog”, and it’s a one-way gate: every time
someone walks into it, they are taken to another, random, reality.
That
means that if a OG character crosses it they are a goner, as there are so many
accessible dimensions, that the chances of them ever managing to get back to
their original one, are virtually zero.
Where
exactly is the fog situated? I’m not 100% sure. You necessarily cross it if you
go so far out that you reach a twin house, but do you traverse it by going to one
of the cars? I’d say no.
2) the characters cannot contact the outside in anyway: the
internet is down, their cell phones don’t have signal and the house has no
landline (and even if it did, i doubt that it would work).
1) When the
characters go outside they use glowsticks to see in the dark, and in the house there
are 3 colours they could potentially choose from (red, blue and green).
The type of glowstick they carry
can be used to tell whether a character comes from the house or not, as in this reality one they only open the blue box.
2) During the evening some small, strange events occurr: for example, phone screens spontaneously cracking.
In the OG reality it happens to Emily, right before she gets to the house, and later on to Hugh while they are having dinner. But in other realities, these characters have completely unscathed phones.
There are also all sorts of other minor differences that can be spotted, like the type of band-aid Hugh wears on his brow (or if he wears one at all) after he gets injured.
3) Does the
memory of the inhabitants match the contents of the box?
This requires some explanation: in
order to distinguish their house, both the OGs and some of the Others
put together a box that contains a random object (of example, a coaster), and
photographs of each individual with a number written on the back. If a
character correctly recalls them both, it’s safe to say they are in the right place.
4) It’s
also worth noting that a character and their others can be slightly different
in personality, attitude and/or life choices, which could be a telling sign of
their provenance.
For example, Emily is
pretty indecisive and isn’t
too stoked on moving to Vietnam with her boyfriend, while we see other Emilies
that absolutely are.
Kevin
and Laurie
aren’t completely over each other in this reality, while some Kevins appear to
be all about Emily, period.
Hugh is very gentle and
polite, while other Hughs have strange anger outbursts.
So, the
first thing I did to make sense of the events, was tracking the OGs’ movements and actions during the
evening:
14 minutes in
there is (what looks like) a power outage in the neighbourhood, so everyone
goes outside to check on the situation. They only walk for a few meters and
come back, so I don’t think they “crossed over”.
When
they re-enter, a glass on the table is broken. During the blackout there was no
sound of glass breaking, so it must’ve happened while they were outside… I
wonder how.
Did they actually cross over into another reality? One
with a similarly empty house, but a broken glass? But, surely, they would’ve
said something about the weird fog before walking into it...
Yeah, I think I’ll stick
with my original idea, maybe the glass breaking is just an
effect of the comet: it has been shown to crack phone screens, so it’s definitely possible.
Hugh is very adamant about contacting his brother,
who is an astrophysicist (?) and, in order to do that, he wants to reach the
one house two blocks away that appears to still have power.
Apparently, his brother asked him to call him if anything weird happened
while the comet passed by. He also told him that they should stay inside, but
Hugh reckons making that phone call is more important.
He is trying
to project a very calm aura, but you can tell he’s concerned about the
situation…
I wonder if his brother insinuated that something v e r y
bad could happen.
So: Hugh takes Amir and leaves… and this is the last we’ll see of them.
20 minutes in someone knocks on the door. This is most likely a Hugh wondering around trying to make his phone call.
Considering how incredibly loudly he banged that door, the “sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you” note he goes around sticking on doors later is absolutely warranted.
A few
minutes later Hugh and Amir come back, and they have
a box with them. Hugh also appears to have
been hit in the head by something.
His demeanor is a tad bit
different, he seems more pissy than usual and a bit distant with Beth… it could just be the situation, but I reckon this is an indication that it’s not the same
person.
I think
it’s worth noting that it’s a Hugh&Amir pair that returns to the house, like,
technically it could’ve been just a Hugh, a Hugh&Kevin pair or, well, any other
combination of guests.
But
I guess it makes sense since no one but Hugh has a compelling reason to leave
the house at this time and, apparently, in most realities Amir is indeed the expendable one who is made to tag along (I mean Mike
doesn’t have a single picture of him in his house, does he… that’s a telling
sign).
All of this considered, i think this first exchange illustrates a characteristic of these realities: they don't seem to be very different from eachother.
The character's personalities can vary a bit, and their relationships can be more
or less successful (for example, Emily and Kevin appear to be different levels
of “in love” based on the dimension they are in), but every character has a
similar baseline. They’re all doing mostly the same things.
That
concept is quite exemplified by Mike’s crazily tone-death line “if there are a
million different realities, I have slept with your wife in every one of them”
and now, I’m not sure that that is necessarily true (more on that later)…. but
still, the idea is there.
Another prime example is the fact
that multiple Hughs wrote the same exact message and went around hanging them
on doors, like… clearly there is a shared common ground.
I guess we
live in a pretty deterministic universe.
So, what’s up with the box the pair brought in?
According to Amir,
when they arrived at the house, Hugh walked around the side to take a peek, while he
decided to hung out front.
Moments later he heard a sound and, when investigating it, he saw his mate putting the box down. Amir, hence, picked it up and
walked away with it. But now, Hugh denies ever touching it.
Based on
the informations future “Hughs” give us: Hugh like passed out/fell on the ground due
to the shock of seeing the others (hence the injury), and it was actually the local Hugh who Amir
saw dropping the box outside…
Hugh: 1 - Amir: 5 - Lee: 1 - Laurie: 2 - Emily: 4 - Beth: 4 - Mike: 1
- Kevin: 6
Can I
just say....
The people in that reality had already put together a box? Like, they
had already figured out what was happening and what they needed to do to
identify themselves?
Seems to me that the times are
not perfectly aligned, cause, otherwise that is genuinely impressive…
or,
maybe, in that reality Hugh’s brother gave him a substantial briefing before
the evening happened.
32 minutes
in Laurie,
Kevin,
Emily
and Mike leave to check out the twin house.
When they come back
they mention seeing the black fog, but while Hugh and Amir instantly comment
“oh yeah, we crossed that earlier” the group doesn’t confirm or deny doing it.
I
initially took that as implying that they hadn’t, especially cause they’ll soon
get into a conversation regarding the glowsticks, and during that we're clearly able to see that the blue box is the only one opened, so… “it’s the house” I figured.
I also thought
“well, what is the chance of them crashing into a random house that was missing
exactly the four of them?”.
BUT 45 minutes in Emily overhears Beth and Lee having a conversation that is pretty much identical to something she had heard them saying at the
very beginning of the evening.
AND Lee is washing the green glass that broke during the blackout, and it’s
now perfectly intact…
so ✨shocker✨ this is n o t the house, it’s another house that just so
happens to share the same colour of opened glowsticks, plus Laurie, Kevin, Emily
and Mike all going out as a group… What is the likelihood of that?
And that's not the end of it cause there is another h u g e similarity: through their conversations we gather that this Hugh and Amir a l s o left the house together to make the phonecall... AND THEY CAME BACK WITH A BOX IN THIS REALITY TOO.
This
originally sent me, I could accept for there to be some consistencies, like,
maybe Lee and Beth are just categorically not interested in leaving the house,
and a number of Hughs and Amirs have been turned off by their first escapade so,
more often than not, it’s the remaining group who goes out exploring the second
time…
but the fact that there are a number of different realities where a box
was put outside that early? And, also, where an Amir was there to witness it
and steal it?
That seemed very unlikely to me…. So I tried c a l c u l a t i n g the odds to the best of my abilities
-> results later
About 30
minutes in is a l s o when the characters begin to understand the
logistics of what’s happening, as Hugh recalls having one of his astophysicist brother’s
books in the car and, when he goes to get it, it turns out to be exactly what
they needed to read.
I’ll copy and paste the important part:
There's a cat in a box... that has, like, a
50/50 chance of living... because there's a vial of poison that's also in the
box.
So, regular physics would say that it's one or
the other. That the cat is either alive or dead.
But Brian would argue that quantum physics says
that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that
they collapse into a single event.
Right?
So, listen to this. This is what he's written.
"There is another theory: that two states continue
to exist separate and decoherent from each other, each creating a new branch of
reality based on the two outcomes.
Quantum decoherence
ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other."
So,
there are two separate realities, presumably until the comet passes.
If
decoherence is maintained, those two separate realities will remain separate once
the comet passes. Everybody will be fine. Decoherence keeps us separate.
What if we've already interacted with ourselves? We're collapsing on ourselves right now.
As far as I
can tell the movie seems to suggest that this split-realities situation is
fully caused by the comet. Up until this evening, only a single reality
existed: but now with every choice the characters are presented with, a new
branch appears.
Now, I am
not completely sold on this idea.. I think to me it makes more sense that
branching is a thing that reality has been doing since its inception, and the
comet simply caused all of the paths to connect temporarily, by upholding the
quantum decoherence…
Otherwise..
what on earth will happen when the comet is gone?
I feel like the only option
would be for the paths to collapse onto each other, and reconstitute a single
reality, cause space-time can’t suddenly manage to handle branches, when they
were never an integral part of its structure…
but at the end of the movie i don't think there is any collapsing, it seems to me that decoherence is simply reinstated.
ALSO, if
the branching started during the evening, then how come there are some houses with electricity from the get go?
The fact
that as soon as they walk out, they can see a house in the distance with the
lights on, indicates to me that those Marks and Beths had the generator up and
running going into the evening… like I don’t think they would’ve managed to
rush to it that fast, they probably made the choice to turn it on during the
day….
Although I
GUESS it’s possible the choice was made before the guests arrived, but while
the comet was already in action.
Or maybe,
it’s not just space that’s acting weird, but time too… maybe the realities are
not all synched.
BUT ALSO,
the character of Emily really makes me wonder… how is it possible that the
Emilies that got to the dinner were all identical, but made such different choices when it comes to Vietnam: we have Emily who really isn’t keen on going, while another Em is all happy sitting
on Kevin’s lap, talking about the journey ahead…
Moving on
with the plot, during the conversation regarding the glowsticks, Hugh and Amir realise that this is not their original reality (as they are carrying red ones), so they sneak out and take the box they stole with them.
In the
meantime, Mike leaves the house to blackmail himself (terrible idea).
A few
minutes later he returns wearing a blue glowstick around his neck BUT he claims
to have been gone for a whole 45 minutes, when in reality it was 10 tops, and
also he acts very strangely (probably drunk)….
Sooo this is another blue Mike, but no longer the OG Mike…
we’ll call him Mike.
As all of
this is going down, Lee and Beth are in the kitchen, and the former is
expressing how tired she is of Mike’s drinking problem: he is no longer the man
she married...
That's another thing that made me wonder, cause Mike and
Lee
seemed to be doing alright, Lee looked genuinely enamoured with him, and he claimed
to “love his fucking life”… to me, that sounded like his drinking problem was a
thing of the past, or at least under control.
But for Mike and Lee it
appears to be still an ongoing or unresolved thing.
I think
this supports the idea that the branching didn’t start with the comet, it has
been going on for, well, ever. Some versions of Mike had sorted out their
issues with alcool by the time they got to this evening, some hadn’t.
BUT ALSO,
maybe Lee is using particularly harsh words
cause she’s triggered by seeing Mike drinking again… she thought it was dead in
the past, and seeing him falling back into it put her on edge… w h o
k n o w s
55 minutes
in they hear a car window being smashed, and the victim turns out to be Hugh’s
car.
The group is baffled, as they cannot comprehend the reason for this
action: the book was visibly not in the backseat anymore and nothing else was
taken so, what was the point of that?
Later on, Emily can be seen smashing a car window to isolate another Emily and kill her... I
wonder if that’s what was happening here too?
But this time around, when Emily goes out to her car, it’s a Kevin who
menacingly appears…
Are there, indeed, a number
of Ems going around trying kill each other, but in this instance the murderous lady failed, cause she was interrupted by a stray Kevin? Or did Kevin smash the car window himself?
What
was he trying to achieve in that case?
1 hour in and a Hugh and Amir
pair, dualwielding red and blue glowsticks, comes shuffling in with a copy of the book.
They claim to have spent some time at another house, where the locals medicated Hugh's injury and gifted them some red
glowsticks, on top of the blue ones they had left with.
Emily, Mike, Kevin, Laurie, Lee and Beth decide that they originated from this house, and welcome them back…. I mean, what else can you do.
Also, wait……. Remember how Hughs are going around hanging "sorry for spooking you" notes? And the house had 2? Well this house (I’ll call it the rainbow house) has 2 notes also...
 |
| yes, i made a table |
They select a coaster as the "special" object to put inside, and they start rolling the dice to assign everyone a number.
And this…. Is when Emily cracks the motherfucking code..
remember how the rainbow house brought in a stolen box, earlier? Well, on a piece of paper she sees the numbers that were contained in that box, and they are completely different from the ones she remembers... aka, the ones from the house.
(the rainbow house uses a green marker)
Hugh: 1 - Amir: 5 - Lee: 1 - Laurie: 2 - Emily: 4 - Beth: 4 - Mike: 1 - Kevin: 6
(the house used a red marker) )
She sneakily starts asking everyone "hey bestie, so do you remember what number was behind your picture in the box we stole?" and the only people who can recall the "correct" ones, aka the only people who come from the rainbow house originally, are Lee and Beth.
By the way, it's worth noting that Hugh, Amir and Mike a l s o come from houses where they brought in a random box, as none of them goes "idk what you're talking about, the items in what stolen box?".
 |
| A little summary of all the movements up until the end of the evening |
Like, the only way
she’d manage to identify the house is if they’ve still got the stolen box there (because,
for example, the rainbow house has lost theirs), and if they let her access it..
not to mention, what if there is another Emily there now? You’d have to kindly convince her to leave.
1 hour and ~14 minutes in, after Mike gets attacked by
another Mike who barges in through the door, Emily decides to take her chances and traverses the fog.
After visiting a number of realities, she finally settles on a
house where everyone is merrily having a conversation on the sofa, seemingly
completely unaware of what’s going on outside.
Are they actually unaware? Maybe
they never lost power, as they had the generator up and running going into the
evening, so…. they just, never even looked outside.
Emily decides that she needs to get rid of the local Emily, so she lures her away from the others by breaking the car window (as mentioned before) and, after seemingly killing her, she takes are place.
We have finally reached the ending of the movie, and it's quite interesting.
It's now morning time, the comet has passed, and Emily is having a
conversation with the local Kevin, when his phone rings: it’s the local Emily
who, unbeknownst to Em, in still around after surviving the
b r u t a l attack.
That’s awkward.
So... when it comes to the c o s m i c scale, there are a couple of options to explain what has happened:
1- The decoherence was
re-instated: all the different realities survived and reverted back to their natural state of isolation (btw can you imagine going back to "normal" after an evening like that, knowing that the man next to you is not your actual husband, but an alternate version of him? Like, what do you even do?).
Or
2- the comet leaving caused all the realities that
interacted to collapse onto eachother, and this one survived because… no one
local was aware of the interaction? Only Emily?
That doesn't really make much sense to me tho, i think the interraction is more of a binary concept, like there either is or there isn't.
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“If I
recall correctly, you said you had made some calculations” you might be thinking.
Well, to be specific I t r i e d to make some calculations, but quickly
realised they were beyond my mathematical capabilities, so I outsourced to an
online s i t e.
I’m not sure the results are any good, cause being mathematically
challenged also makes it impossible for me to judge the work of others, but still...
I’m gonna put them out there, and you can decide for yourself.
So: my
objective was trying to calculate how many realities would share the same
amount of similarities as the house and the rainbow house do, to see if the
unfolding of events is completely insane or not.
I
started off by embracing the idea that the branching of realities actually started
during the evening, which is what appears to be canon in the movie.
Once I
reconciled with that fact, the first thing I did was trying to count how many
“diverging” moments occurred during the movie, and how many branchings each
could’ve created. Every single time someone had to make a choice during the
evening, or any time something peculiar happened, I tried to quantify the
possible outcome options (for example: glass breaks/glass doesn’t break, they
open the blue box/red box/green box/none
etc).
I
tallied up, more or less, 121 possible events, of which (since many outcomes
are mutually exclusive) a total of 59 that can happen in each reality. Again
“more or less”, as I only counted as “diverging moments” the most blant ones,
like “do we leave the house to call the brother or not?” or “do you want this or
that bandaid?” but technically there could be a shit tone of micro-moments that
impacted the unfolding of events as well.
At this
point I asked, yes, ChatGPT to calculate the number of all possible combinations of
these 121 events in groups of 59, considering they are organised in exclusivity
groups (aka if this happens, than this other event doesn’t), which are mostly pairs.
The result
was: 1.729 · 10¹⁸ .
That’s a
lot of realities.
I then asked
it to calculate how many realities share, for example, the first 5 events, and
the answer was “about ~1.56%”.
Hence the chance of the characters happening into two realities with those commonalities is pretty low.
But then it
occurred to me: there are some events that heavily impact what happens later
on.
For example, whether Emily agrees to go to Vietnam or not in the beginning,
has an influence on Kevin’s demeanor with Laurie.
Does that impact the probabilities in any way?
Let’s say that 3 early events directly determine the outcomes of 3 interactions later on:
what are the chances looking like then?
Apparently 12,5% .
And the more influential events there are, the more the percentage climbs: with 4, it’s at
25% .
So, not that low at all. Quite believable, actually (I f c o r r e c t).
B u t t h e n I t h o u g h t , who's to say that every reality is different... cause I've been assuming that... yeah, every plane of existence is at least slightly different from the others, cause it was originated by a diverging "branch"...
but what if there are literally infinite realities, with m a n y of them being literally identical.
And that's when my brain exploded, so... perfect movie.
