I just watched this movie on Friday, and have been puzzling over the same thing!

When he was sitting at his desk and all three of his major problems just sort of "solved themselves" one after the other, I was convinced it was a dream, that he'd O.D'd while watching TV with his drunk stepmother.

The drugs thing at the end is the only thing that makes me think it WASN'T all a dream or some kind of afterlife. I'm sure Herzog meant for it to be ambiguous. I really want to watch it again soon and see if there are any clues I missed the first time. The animals that show up in almost every other scene definitely seem to be hinting at something.

Yeah, I'm quite tempted to watch it again to try to figure it out!

A thought on the fish...

Suppose the tiny fish in the glass represented him at the start, trapped, alone and unhappy in a tiny world. But at the end he's in a whole aquarium full of fish. Maybe now he's in better relationships with his family and his girlfriend: they're all still trapped in a way, but they're trapped together in a much larger and better environment?

There was an AskMe question about the fish motif that (apparently) appears in several Herzog films. Unfortunately, it got no answers.

It never occurred to me that the movie could all have been a dream.

But I think there is something to the fish and other animals in the movie. Remember the weird shots of the gator and the iguana? And the movie starts with the long shot of the water snake.

Maybe the animals have something to do with the Cage character? He's a depraved beast that can't help himself, especially as he descends into drug addiction. When he asks if fish can dream, he's trying to envision a better life for himself. But really he's just an animal going on (perverted) instinct--the fact that things work out in the end is a combination of luck and his animal-life survival skills.

That sounds pretty lame, but that's the best I got. Anyway, it was a rad movie.

I like that idea. The fish at the end did remind me of the one at the beginning. I can't remember what the little poem he found with it said; that's one of the things I want to go back and see.

er, animal-like survival skills

(I was referring to TheoEsc's fish theory- hadn't yet seen mullacc's comment when I wrote that)

Sometimes, I find, you have to take a scene in a Herzog film at face value and look elsewhere for the illusion. In this case, I think the illusion is how messed up Cage was on drugs. His craziest scene occurs when he gets the dealer to smoke from Cage's crack pipe. If I remember correctly, his other scenes where he seemed completely unhinged also occurred around the unsavory characters.

I took that to mean that he was putting on an act in their presence and the reptiles were his signal to back off on the drugs. The crack pipe was a calculated move. Winning the bet was half luck and half inevitable. The forgiveness was the out-of-picture gangster realizing that the kid wasn't worth losing any more good heavies over. That all three occur in the police station is pure Herzog playing with his audience. Thus also, Cage is still doing drugs a year later; the back pain is still there.

I only saw the movie once so you all probably can punch some holes in my explanation.

I loved the movie. At first I was all "Blaaahhh" then I was like "Ohh yeaaahhh"! The animal shots were totally awesome. the three story lines that solve themselves sitcom style at the end and his over-the-top reactions to each. It hit on so many awesome levels. It felt like a dream.

Such an awesome movie, but for all the wrong reasons.

Aha, I hadn't thought that he might be playing up the madness to impress the drug dealers.

Well, maybe the thing with the fish is that they probably never think about what they're swimming in any more than we think about walking through an ocean of air. And don't forget that diving into water was how he fucked up his back in the first place. He immersed himself, literally. He jumped into the water and came out hooked on painkillers.

Now, if you've ever been addicted to anything, you know that it becomes the norm, something that just has to be done. You don't question it too much, you simply do it. So I'd make the argument that Cage's character simply swims in a sea of drugs for much of the film. Right there at the end, he's still in the water when he meets that guy who no longer does drugs due to Cage's prior intervention. Think of that guy, maybe, as being like the first lungfish to flop onto the beach (i.e., escape addiction) and survive. He adapted, he changed, he escaped into a new environment, right?

So maybe the aquarium is in the last scene to underline just how many people don't question what they swim in, be it water or air or drugs. But the two of them are outside of the tank.

So what do fish dream of? Maybe they dream of escaping the water. Maybe they dream of escaping something they used to need but no longer do. Maybe they dream of evolving, whether randomly or with purpose.