There's an old man sleeping in the boy's bed. The old man expires. The boy cheerfully asks his mom if he could have his room back. The boy doesn't look the least bit affected by what just transpired. After the authorities remove the body, he returns to his room and retrieves the tape recorder under the bed. The boy listens for evidence of an afterlife. This is his coping mechanism. Edward(Bill Milner) lives in a do-it-yourself retirement home with his enterprising parents. It's the family business. In a house of impending death, a house overrun with septua- and octogenarians, the boy keeps his sanity intact by not developing any emotional attachments towards his borders. They're test subjects. That's all. They're better dead than alive. The mother has the wrong idea when she encourages Edward to make friends with the oldsters. If he did, it would be like watching your grandparents die, over and over again.
Edward is much too young to be a misanthrope. Naturally, the boy befriends another misanthrope and that's how he learns to appreciate the U.K. geezers who've infiltrated his house. Clarence(Michael Caine) used to be "The Amazing Clarence", a traveling magician, but now the only amazing thing about this second-rate entertainer is that he waited this long to perform his final trick. Lucky(or is that unlucky) for him, Edward foils his suicide attempt, even though the boy isn't scared of death, and wants to know what happens next. Not wanting to jeopardize Edward's status as a sympathetic character, the boy rescues the old man from his smoke-filled vehicle without hesitation. But the boy has a morbid streak, a fascination with the mysteries of the other side, so it would only be natural had the boy mulled outside the tragedy-in-the-making before reluctantly conceding to heroics, which forfeited a golden opportunity to record the post-mortem dynamics of a suicide. "Is Anybody There?" has all the makings of a dark English comedy, but it's death-obsessed protagonist is no nihilist; he wonders aloud, at one point, "It can't be all black." Edward is asking the wrong person, of course, since the magician is a seasoned nihilist, who tells the young boy that nobody is there after you die. "Is Anybody There" agrees with Clarance; the film is godless too, indicated by the withholding of its potential for supernatural renderings. Instead of ghostly voices from another realm, the film stays in its earthly realm, as Edward captures his father's pathetic advances towards the maid, to his utter horror. The genre film that never materializes is suggested in a scene where Clarence reaches into his bag of tricks and brings back the "dead" at a pretend seance. Despite the film's light tone, the message that life is the true and only horror comes in loud and clear. Looking for horror, as Edward does, is kid's play. No longer able to handle the magicians's numerous infidelities, "the disappearing woman"(Clarence's wife was his sidekick) disappeared for real, leaving Clarence a haunted man. At Edward's birthday party, the unfaithful husband, battling the onset of Alzheimer's Disease, indirectly tries to atone for his extra-marital affairs when he turns off the safety on his guillotine, a trick in which he enlists a volunteer from the audience. By severing the tip of the male volunteer's finger, the magician is making amends for his cheating ways through this symbolic gesture of castration. Later in the film, the performer of trick has a trick played on him, as the disease-ravaged mind perceives Edward's mom to be his beloved wife, whom he apologizes to, at long last, for his past indiscretions. Soon after, he dies.
So the boy learned a lesson. In the film's final scene, he seats himself in the stair lift and ascends his way out of frame at a diagonal angle. The boy has learned to appreciate the living. Walking in an old man's shoes is more interesting than a dead man's shoes lying bedside next to his motionless body.
Edward is much too young to be a misanthrope. Naturally, the boy befriends another misanthrope and that's how he learns to appreciate the U.K. geezers who've infiltrated his house. Clarence(Michael Caine) used to be "The Amazing Clarence", a traveling magician, but now the only amazing thing about this second-rate entertainer is that he waited this long to perform his final trick. Lucky(or is that unlucky) for him, Edward foils his suicide attempt, even though the boy isn't scared of death, and wants to know what happens next. Not wanting to jeopardize Edward's status as a sympathetic character, the boy rescues the old man from his smoke-filled vehicle without hesitation. But the boy has a morbid streak, a fascination with the mysteries of the other side, so it would only be natural had the boy mulled outside the tragedy-in-the-making before reluctantly conceding to heroics, which forfeited a golden opportunity to record the post-mortem dynamics of a suicide. "Is Anybody There?" has all the makings of a dark English comedy, but it's death-obsessed protagonist is no nihilist; he wonders aloud, at one point, "It can't be all black." Edward is asking the wrong person, of course, since the magician is a seasoned nihilist, who tells the young boy that nobody is there after you die. "Is Anybody There" agrees with Clarance; the film is godless too, indicated by the withholding of its potential for supernatural renderings. Instead of ghostly voices from another realm, the film stays in its earthly realm, as Edward captures his father's pathetic advances towards the maid, to his utter horror. The genre film that never materializes is suggested in a scene where Clarence reaches into his bag of tricks and brings back the "dead" at a pretend seance. Despite the film's light tone, the message that life is the true and only horror comes in loud and clear. Looking for horror, as Edward does, is kid's play. No longer able to handle the magicians's numerous infidelities, "the disappearing woman"(Clarence's wife was his sidekick) disappeared for real, leaving Clarence a haunted man. At Edward's birthday party, the unfaithful husband, battling the onset of Alzheimer's Disease, indirectly tries to atone for his extra-marital affairs when he turns off the safety on his guillotine, a trick in which he enlists a volunteer from the audience. By severing the tip of the male volunteer's finger, the magician is making amends for his cheating ways through this symbolic gesture of castration. Later in the film, the performer of trick has a trick played on him, as the disease-ravaged mind perceives Edward's mom to be his beloved wife, whom he apologizes to, at long last, for his past indiscretions. Soon after, he dies.
So the boy learned a lesson. In the film's final scene, he seats himself in the stair lift and ascends his way out of frame at a diagonal angle. The boy has learned to appreciate the living. Walking in an old man's shoes is more interesting than a dead man's shoes lying bedside next to his motionless body.