Nelson’s first language is French, and I’ve chosen to include it here completely as written.
I have found very interesting the commentaries and thoughts published in Nine Sisters. Every one of them have added something else to the way I look this picture.
I want to contribute like someone else said with my “two cents”:
I consider the movie narrated entirely from Ash’s point of view. The (VR) is the first we know, the game’s world, thrilling, interesting, a world where you kill and nothing happen, you even enjoy it. The second world we know is the real one, pale colors, cold, lonely, especially for Ash who thinks animals are more interesting than people (she doesn’t even receive emails). For her, the game is everything and so she has to know the next stage, always. Who could blame her? In time video games are only getting better and better, every time. They are each time closer to be better than reality. I think that’s Ash’s reaction when she enters in Class Real almost at the end of the movie she almost fell down when she looks this new level: the colors, the sound, the environment, etc. Who wouldn’t prefer to live that “reality” instead the other boring one? Who wouldn’t prefer to live playing? Like Murphy says to her: ‘This is the world were you belong’ At the end I think that’s what she prefers, the next level… Avalon, she has found what was lacking in her life, she has found her place, (symbolized by the broken angel now restored or repaired). So she became an ‘unreturned’ for the other reality.
These are two extra thoughts:
Scene 1: Books with japanese titles and empty pages.
When you look a book (and I am not saying “read a book”) like Bishop does, you are not getting any knowledge, you are not reading, for you there are letters, lines but you are not learning or understanding anything, the book is “empty” without “real letters”, without “real knowledge” plus if you are not familiar with the book’s subject, let’s say for example the title of the book is: “Ninsolato Molecular Composition” and if you are from Poland, well you might say the title is written in “japanese” because you don’t understand a thing.
Scene 2: Dog’s disappearance.
I think the relation between the game system and the player is so close that a ‘reset’ could cause some kind of brain damage (temporary or permanent, I don’t know), but that’s the reason why she couldn’t see her dog. After all, all our perceptions the way we ‘understand’ our environment is through our senses (eye, ear, taste, touch, smell) these perceptions are electric impulses traveling to the brain which is the last place where we actually ‘live’ our experiences, if you can reproduce this ‘electric impulses’ and send them directly to the brain you could make a person ‘to live’ another reality (I think you could have only a brain without a body living a ‘real’ life) you would be fooling this person but for her or him all would be real, cutting this experience in a very rude way could make severe damage to him (her).