This movie has things in common with a mystery, because its constructed sort of like a puzzle, where you figure out what is going on and what has led up to the current situation mostly through a series of terse and vivid flashbacks. A fair amount of your brain power will be engaged in that process. This structural mechanism is appropriate however for compression, and *is* done very well, in the sense that it cleverly anticipates your speculations, and it is interesting rather than overly difficult or trying. As other comments here indicate however, the ending will not necessarily resolve all your questions, and personally toward the end I felt a growing unease that this would be the case, which unfortunately it was. I personally don't think resolution has to be counter to realism or realistic impact or whatever, that viewers going away satisfied isn't a compromise, necessarily.
From the title, and from the introducing-characters period of the movie, I took the movie to be about alienation. Nobody really connects. Nobody is ever really talking about the same thing, nobody establishes rapport -- its all social awkwardness. It has that painful quality to watch which is simultaneously interesting and makes you wince. Of course as it develops your perception of social disconnection moves from awkwardness to alienation to family breakup to of course mass murder and suicide. So the whole thing starts to get to you that way, building slowly, the horror of everyday life you can't not look at thing. Some people called it slow, I didn't find that, it kept my attention.
My contribution to explaining the mystery character is that there is no explanation, that this just completes the sense of alienation the film is trying to inspire.
From the title, and from the introducing-characters period of the movie, I took the movie to be about alienation. Nobody really connects. Nobody is ever really talking about the same thing, nobody establishes rapport -- its all social awkwardness. It has that painful quality to watch which is simultaneously interesting and makes you wince. Of course as it develops your perception of social disconnection moves from awkwardness to alienation to family breakup to of course mass murder and suicide. So the whole thing starts to get to you that way, building slowly, the horror of everyday life you can't not look at thing. Some people called it slow, I didn't find that, it kept my attention.
My contribution to explaining the mystery character is that there is no explanation, that this just completes the sense of alienation the film is trying to inspire.