Pipe or Monster?

            The movie has two distinct parts to it, the dream state and reality.  These two continue to mix between one another and become difficult to separate especially towards the end.  In the beginning, when it is clearly the dream or reality, one can see that the pipes are throughout the entire movie.  The pipes are silver, ribbed, and old in contrast to what modern day pipes would have looked like in that time.  The idea of the pipes being on the outsides showed that everything is exposed, nothing is hiding, it is all in the open for us to see.

            These pipes seem to haunt Sam throughout the movie in many different ways.  To begin with, his air conditioner breaks down and the company cannot come and repair it right away.  The pipes are weaving between the walls, and the colors blending into the walls making it hard to differentiate one pipe from the next.  As the movie unfolds and he begins to lose his sanity, his pipes lose their composition as well.  The pipes unravel, they are taken apart, and they explode in his apartment because of the mechanics wonderful maintenance job. 

            While the difficulty is occurring with the pipes, Sam is continuously being haunted in his dreams by a large, metallic monster.  This monster resembles the pipes and disaster he is facing in his life.  On a larger scale, the monster is one big pipe that Sam must overcome.  To begin, we see the monster haunting Sam, unable to defend himself but just continuously haunting him from dream to dream.  At the last dream, we witness Sam crushing the monster in his dream.   

            The lighting on the pipes is dim, dark never well lit.  The colors of the pipes never seem to change from place to place.  In Sam’s apartment they are gray and dim and even in the work place they continue to be dark and grim.  But in contrast, the monster is decorated in shining “armor” or just a cleaner pipe the kind of pipe that would be assume could be replaced like in the commercial in the opening scene.  One can notice that this light on the monster shows that we need to pay attention to it and must notice it.  The pipes, since they are muted, seem to fall away in the scenes and are not brought out; they fall away and blend in with the rest of the gray, bland walls. 

            These pipes continuously seem to become more and more confusing as to how they work throughout the movie.  Their appearance first begins and plain, simple.  One would assume they are just air ducts, flowing hot or cold air from one room to the next because they don’t move, they are attached to the walls where we would expect them to be, but at the end of the movie, they are woven together, sparking, being crushed.  This makes them hard to focus on and confusing us.  While all the pipes intertwine, they seem to be larger becoming one, unified pipe.  This unified pipe can also be thought of as the pipe monster in Sam’s dream.