Ben, An interesting perspective on this film... but just one set of comments related to one of your points. I don't think Neil Jordan (the film's maker) left Fergus' feelings for the Jaye character completely unexplored, but the extent to which it leaves them open-ended or ambiguous is, I think, purposeful. The film is leaving, for the audience's consideration, the speculation raised by Fergus' story-- the one that Orson Welles actually used first in Mr. Arkadin (/Confidential Report), about the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion stings the frog, thereby insuring both their deaths by drowning, because he could help his nature. The dilemma of the Fergus/Dil relationship is: given their natures, Fergus' in particular, what will happen to that relationship? Being a human being rather than a lower animal like the frog, is he destined to freeze it as it is? Or are there signs that changes he's already undergone may lead him to a newly complicated future with Dil, once prison's behind him? I think Jordan's film is at least a celebration of the positive aspects of being more than an animal, if your an optimist. If you're a pessimist, it can seem and be argued the reverse. Either way, it's a bittersweet medi- tation. Sorry for the semi-coherence of the foregoing. Off the top of the head, and constrained by trying to talk around crucial points in the film, that's as good as I can get it at the moment. Jeff Clark