Anna Backens - Premonition

The idea of reality vs. fantasy in some of the films like Big Fish that were discussed in class related to the film Premonition. Also true love is another aspect of the film's main character's journey. The back ground of the film is that a middle-aged mom, Linda Hanson, has a perfect life with her husband and two daughters until she receives a disturbing phone call that her husband has been killed in a car accident. Linda is in shock and begins to feel a deep grief inside of herself when she has to tell her daughters the news. The next morning, Linda wakes up to see that her husband is alive and she looks at him in astonishment. In disbelief, she thinks that it is just a dream that he died. The next morning Jim is dead again and her family is making funeral arrangements.

At this point Linda does not know if her premonitions are true forewarnings or fantasies she has construed herself because of her own desire to see Jim again. All she knows is that events happen in random order and she has no control of when they will happen. In this story, time does not stop and does not follow any time line, so no incident follows in order of another.

Linda is alone in her journey against time because she is the only one who has been afflicted with the premonitions. Linda cannot determine which premonition she will have next but she puzzles together which days each event occurs on and finally narrows down which day she thinks Jim died on. While Linda is in a race to save her husband's life, she finds out that the day on which he dies, is the day that he tells her he is leaving for a business trip but Linda finds out instead that Jim is leaving to have an affair. At this point in the movie, Linda is devastated and becomes angry at her husband for cheating. She comes to a stop in her search to save when she realizes he doesn't love her anymore and asks her mother, "Is letting Jim die the same thing as killing him?" Linda realizes that now she has the power of someone's destiny in her hands. From this, Linda ventures to figure out what went wrong in her marriage and fights to restore it realizing that she really does love her husband. Love is awakened with the two as they reconcile and remember why it is that they first loved.The film points out predestination for the main character; she fights to change her life but the events seem to be determined already. There is imagery seen when Linda gets blood on her hands from a dead bird, symbolizing she had the power of life and death in her hands.