Top 5 Ambiguous, Confusing Movies

Posted by Benjamin Chalek (ben@rankamovie.com) on January 24, 2007

Welcome to this week’s Top 5 ambiguous, confusing movies, brought to you by RankAMovie.com.

That’s right! This week we’ll take a closer look at some movies that have made people think “What was that?” That’s not to say that they’re bad movies…they’re just not easily understood.

Below is a list of the top 5 movies, as ranked by the visitors of RankAMovie.

  1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Try erasing your memories, and then thinking about them. Hmm…somewhat mysterious.
  2. Breathless
    Bonnie and Clyde meets Paris, and trying to get to Italy. You’ll have to see it to understand the rest.
  3. Big Fish
    A wild imagination and Southern American tales cause a young man to question truth and fiction. He may even learn to respect his father in the process!
  4. A Clockwork Orange
    Visually original, and challenges an audiences’ ability to withstand nudity and crime. Kubrick takes us on a wild ride into the criminal world.
  5. Memento
    How does a simple story become not-so-simple?…tell it in an unusual manner. This story twists and shifts the timeline of events, and changes from Black&White to Color, and back again. You’ll want to watch it several times to truly grasp the storyline…that is, if you remember everything.

You can view the entire list of ranked ambiguous, confusing movies.


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  • Huh? I am baffled by the visitors of RankAMovie because if those are the movies they find most ambiguous and confusing, they must not watch many movies, or they don't know what the words mean because four of the five don't belong.

    I'll give you Breathless, I guess, but Godard has certainly made less accessible films.

    What exactly was ambiguous about Clockwork? It was very straight forward.

    I would put on the list Last Year at Marienbad, L'Avventura, Persona, some of the last few films by David Lynch.
  • Ditto. Mulholland Drive probably belongs on the list - or other Lynch works - just because he makes metaphors, not storylines. Also good call on L'avventura.

    And what about Ishtar? What was going on in that thing anyway? :)
  • Joe F.
    I can think of over a hundred films that are far more puzzling than the ones listed.
    Most of the films from these filmmakers are known to be quite ambiguous: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Raoul Ruiz, Jacques Rivette, Phillipe Garrel, David Lynch, Chris Marker, Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Béla Tarr, Sergei Parajanov, Michelangelo Antonioni Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Theo Angelopoulos, Jan Svankmajer, Miklós Jancsó, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Hsiao-hsien Hou, etc.

    Note: If your going to say L'avventura, why not say La Notte and L'Eclisse? The remainder of Antonioni's modern malaise trilogy.

    In my opinion, every great film needs a hint of ambiguity.
  • stacy
    What about Donnie Darko?!
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