Pre-Production Unit: Research - Grit Explained

[Spoiler Warning]

This blog is going to reveal a huge spoiler for Grit...

The overall idea/premise/setting of Grit is that none of what we see is real.

The entire film is taking place inside the protagonist’s head. This is because the protagonist suffers from a mental illness.

Sean isn’t the protagonist: Vision is. Vision is the True Protagonist and the only person who is real. He is the person who has imagined everything we have seen and his impression into this fake diegesis is simply his subconscious trying to make him realise the falsehood and to come out of his delusion.

In short: the vision we see is the True Protagonist’s subconscious.

Zoe isn’t real. Perry isn’t real. Everyone aside from Vision is a figment or creation of the TP’s mind.

More detail into the hints, suggestions of this are in a separate post: Grit Easter Eggs

The next question about this reveal is ‘why?’

The Vision represents the TP’s sensible and self-aware side. Occasionally pointing out things that don’t make sense in a bid to break the ‘dream’.

Sean is the side of the TP who is trying to fight back against the confrontations. He’s trying to deny the facts the Vision is saying and is striving to prevent him from ending the ‘dream’.

This is evidenced on several occasions when every time the Vision points out an inconsistency, the film ‘breaks’.

This is why the film ends in the extreme manner it shows: this is Sean attempting to get rid of any suggestions that what he is experiencing is false. He 'shoots' Vision because he believes that his world is real and that Vision is just his imagination. Like how we would try to not think of something unpleasant that we have just seen. In reality or from an outside perspective it is simply the True Protagonist shooting himself. Hence why only Vision is left in the aftermath of the argument. The 'dream' has ended and the final shot is us back in reality. The only outside perspective we get of the True Protagonists' life.

I did some research over the summer into Schizophrenia to see if it fitted with the events that occur in Grit:

The most common type of hallucinations are auditory ones; this, to an extent, fits with the film. If only Vision is real then in theory every other character doesn't have a physical presence. Meaning they are in Vision's head and therefore voices. 

I could say that the visual senses are affected and that the characters do have a presence but I feel this would be too convenient or typical of a film of this genre.

Perry shows a paranoia towards police; mentioning them twice in the film and could be argued as an attribute of delusions with Schizophrenia. This one however is trickier to make plausible. 

This is where my problem with the film lied: making a believable reason for the events shown. 

I left the story as this for the mean time and chose to focus more on the script and getting a first draft done.