In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Infinity Pool, we will explain the film’s ending.
Cast
- James Foster – Alexander Skarsgård
- Em Foster – Cleopatra Coleman
- Gabi Bauer – Mia Goth
- Alban Bauer – Jalil Lespert
- Jennifer – Amanda Brugel
- Bex – Caroline Boulton
- Charles – Jeffrey Ricketts
- Dr. Bob Modan – John Ralston
- Detective Thresh – Thomas Kretschmann
- Written by – Brandon Cronenberg
- Directed by – Brandon Cronenberg
The end of Infinity Pool explained
Recap
The end of Infinity Pool begins with James Foster’s attempt to escape Gabi’s hedonistic clan and return home to America and his wife, Em. But Gabi and crew intercept the bus, force James off of it, then torment him until he runs into the woods. Injured, he arrives at a farm house where he has an intense dream. The dream begins with the child (of the farmer James hit with a car) strangling James, except the kid’s face is a mask and beneath the mask is Em, James’s wife. She laughs and strangles and men in masks dance around. Eventually, Em tears James in half, his body split down the middle.
Upon waking, James heads outside. Gabi and the rest of her group are there, waiting for James. Gabi gives a speech about James’s need to fight a literal clone of himself. That through this he’ll find out what kind of creature he is and free himself of his past. She calls it a sacrifice. James refuses but Gabi releases “the dog” and a fight ensues. James versus James. One snarling, the other crying out in fear. One clothed, the other naked. The “dog” ends up on top of James, strangling him just like Em was in the dream. But James fights free, rolls on top, and bashes his doppelganger into oblivion. Gabi runs up, kneels down, cradles James, who cries in her arms, then nurses James from her bosom.
The next scene is James back at the hotel, put together, on the phone with his wife. It seems they’ve made up. In his luggage, he has three of the jars of the ashes of his clones. He leaves for the airport with Gabi and everyone. They’re all back to acting totally normal. None of the hedonism or craziness. At the airport, James says goodbye to Gabi and Alban. He then looks at everyone else in the airport. Conversation bubbles. Kids laugh. There are a lot of people. A sudden cut shows an empty airport. Suddenly quiet. James by himself. Another cut brings us back to the resort. It’s shut down for the rainy season. We see the infinity pool. Then James sat in a chair, on the beach, in the rain.
Meaning
Infinity Pool is about the process of breaking out of stagnation. Other movies might take a very grounded, realistic approach to someone dealing with their guilt, shame, fear, and issues. Brandon Cronenberg opts for the defamiliarized and surreal. But it amounts to the same thing: a reckoning with the self. In the movie Flight, for example, Denzel Washington plays an alcoholic pilot, named Whip, whose world comes crashing down due to drinking. At the end, Whip has to make a choice: alcohol or everything else life has to offer. It’s not easy, but he chooses life.
James Foster has to make a similar choice. He’s been in a very negative place. His entire self-worth has been tied to the idea of being a writer. Except he’s uninspired and his one novel was probably only published because his wife is the daughter of the head of a major publishing house. Everything James has he owes to his wife. This has resulted in a lot of internalized negativity. Toward her, toward himself, toward the world. All of Infinity Pool builds up this idea of James letting go of who he has been, discovering Ego Death, and finding a way towards rebirth.
In Flight, this plays out with Whip going to a hearing about a plane crash. A crash that would have been a tragedy if not for his heroic actions that allowed the plane to land with minimal loss of life. Except the investigation found empty vodka bottles even though passengers never received service. A committee needs to determine who was drinking on the job: Whip or a flight attendant who didn’t survive. Whip, earlier in the movie, was willing to put the blame on the flight attendant in order to save himself. At the end, having gone through his transformation, he comes clean. He not only admits to drinking before the flight but to being intoxicated that very moment at the hearing. He goes to jail. But a flash forward shows us that he’s in a much better place. He’s sober, healthy, and improving his relationships with loved ones he had driven away.
Infinity Pool executes its own version of that exact scene but in a defamiliarized way. The feral version of James Foster represents who he has been. Everything he detests about himself. All the ugliness that’s lived inside of him. This is the part of him he’s been internally battling for who knows how long. Who will win? The worst version of James or a better one? It’s the same fork in the road that Whip faces when he has to decide whether to take the easy path and blame the flight attendant or be honest and start on a path of truth and healing. It’s just Whip’s scene is reality-based and James’s is aggrandized. Both characters end up reborn. Flight allows us to feel that through Whip’s change in demeanor and behavior. Infinity Pool can mythologize it through the visual of James performing the action of a newborn.
You would expect, though, that having won the confrontation that James would head back home, renewed and positive and ready to live his life in a more confident way. Except he doesn’t return home. He stays in Li Tolqa. Why?
One of the undercurrents of Infinity Pool is the dynamic between James and his wife. There’s an odd power dynamic. Em’s the one with money. She’s the one who finances James’s life. At one point, she says her father told her to never marry a writer. So she did just that. How she explains it frames their relationship as a bit hollow. And what we see at the very beginning of the movie is a disconnect between the two of them. Em denies James’s attempt at intimacy. Then abandons him at breakfast. Later in the film, she returns to America while James stays behind, having hid his passport and pretending like it was potentially stolen. This creates a long stretch where Em is out of the picture, so it’s easy to forget the importance of their relationship.
But there’s a reason why James’s last dream goes from the farm boy choking him to Em choking him. The farm boy was the one who performed the execution on James’s first clone (who was probably the original James). To connect the person who actually killed James to Em tells us that Em has, in a less physical way, been harming James. Cronenberg makes that quite clear through the visual of Em on top of James, choking him. It represents what their relationship has been.
It’s not a coincidence that in the fight with feral James that the two end up recreating the dream. Feral James is on top of James, choking him, just like Em was. When he fights free, reverses the position, then punches feral James to a pulp, that’s significant. It’s also not a coincidence that the very next scene is James on the phone with Em. If he goes back home, he’s going back home to her. To be her trophy husband. To be the man she married just because it upset her father. To be, in a lot of ways, nothing.
We see this “return to what you were” with Gabi and the others. On the bus, they all talk about the mundane things they’re returning to. Chores, People. Routines. In Li Tolqa, they were not those people. They’ve been wild, free, daring. They unshackled. But James is no longer that person. He destroyed that part of himself. He can’t return to Em. Because he can’t return to who he was. Which is why he, ultimately, retreats to the resort.
It’s a strange conclusion because in some ways it’s positive but in others it’s really negative. It’s positive because James has decided to be true to himself rather than return to a situation that’s withering his soul on the vine. It’s negative because he’s just sitting in a closed resort, in the rain. In Flight, we know Whip’s on a better path. But Infinity Pool doesn’t give us that same closure. It’s not like we see James sit down at a computer he had continuously avoided and begin to write something. It’s not like there was a better romantic partner he can now pursue. It’s not like he had some great job offer on Li Tolqa he’ll accept. So what is next?
Some people will be fine with how inconclusive James’s story is. The fact that he’s gone through the rebirth will be enough. They don’t need to know what happens next. To others, it will come off as a bit indecisive and unconvincing. Not because it fails to neatly and explicitly tie things up. But more so because it can feel like the movie didn’t know what to do next so cobbled together an ambiguous final few minutes with which to trail off.
What are your thoughts?
Is there more to the ending that you think should be part of the Colossus Movie Guide for Infinity Pool? Leave your thoughts below and we’ll consider adding them.
Write a response