return to oz

(Note: This is a SPOILER page. If you've not seen Return to Oz yet, watch it first before reading this.)

Confirmation of Dorothy's insanity

At the end of the movie, Dorothy talks to the mirror in her bedroom, and Ozma appears in it. Dorothy then quickly yells to her mother to come and look, but Ozma puts her finger over her mouth (to say "Shh! Don't tell!"). The mother then asks what's in the mirror before she gets to the room, and Dorothy, now understanding she cannot reveal her fantasy world to anyone for fear of being sent to another mental institution says, "Nothing. Just a reflection."

Now if you noticed, from the time Dorothy was found on the shore to that scene in her bedroom talking to Ozma in the mirror, the unnamed girl (who is Ozma) from the beginning of the movie is never mentioned nor seen in the flesh.

That's because she never existed as a real person.

Yes, this does mean when Dorothy was in the mental institution that any scene with the unnamed girl in it was a "waking dream" (as said by the doctor in the beginning) on Dorothy's part; she was alone the whole time.

Dorothy herself escaped from the restraints on the bed, and was never attempting to save anyone at the river and only jumped in out of a state of panic.

Or did she?

It is totally possible she never jumped in the river at all. It could very well be that when Dorothy ran away, nobody saw her escape from the mental institution, and I'll tell you why from these two scenes that follow one right after the other:

Lights.

The moment Dorothy "sees" Nurse Wilson, the power is now back on and stays on. In fact, you actually see Nurse Wilson flicking a switch and turning a light on. This gives Dorothy a very good reason to run because she knows if the power is on, the electrotherapy can continue.

And you thought that was a plot hole. Nope. 🙂

Remember that in the doctor's office in the beginning of the movie, the doctor turns on a light:

A century of [*click*, lamp turns on] electricity.

Dorothy is directly looking at the doctor and the lamp when that happened.

Why are the lights significant? Because the power is out and could not have been repaired that quickly. Remember, at the end of the movie it was said the clinic was hit by a lightning strike and burned to the ground. For all we know, what we're seeing is Dorothy's hallucination of what's going on and not what's actually happening. The light she sees in her mind might have been fire from within the building due to the strike.

This also may explain why Nurse Wilson was seen as arrested and being carried away in the wagon at the end. Being that the doctor died, she may have been the one to take the blame for Dorothy's escape/disappearance.

It could be said that Dorothy did run near the river but never actually jumped in; she simply stopped and hid until she fell asleep or collapsed from exhaustion.

Dorothy is always alone

At no time do you ever see Dorothy playing with other children. She suffered a traumatic event, lives in a remote part of the state where there are apparently no other children, and was more or less left to her own to figure out how to deal with it.

Being alone or feeling alone (as is the case with Dorothy because she has nobody her own age to talk to) will do strange things to you over time. In Dorothy's case, she invented a fantasy world complete with all the loving caring friends she could ever want; something she doesn't have in real life whatsoever. Part of the reason Oz is so complex is because Dorothy has had tons of time to fantasize about it, and it is even mentioned in the movie that Oz is large.

I mention this because it's very easy to say that Dorothy is simply creating imaginary friends to make up for ones she doesn't have in real life and that it's all a-okay - but that would be incorrect. Dorothy has created a world, and an admitted large one at that. It's one that prevents her from sleeping properly, and was enough of a problem for her guardians to take drastic measures in an attempt to fix her head.

Why Dorothy is insane now and not before

In the 1939 film, Dorothy was not insane but the movie strongly indicated she probably took a nasty blow to the head - and was in a coma for a small while before coming out of it.

In RtO, the doctor says this verbatim in the office scene:

The brain itself is an electrical machine; it's nothing but a machine. When it malfunctions - a blow to the head, for example - then the brain produces useless excess currents, and these excess currents are our dreams and... delusions.

Right after the doctor says the word delusions, the unnamed girl whom we later find out is Ozma makes her first appearance as a reflection. That's obviously not a coincidence.

Dorothy is for all intents and purposes so far gone that her waking dreams are now completely real to her, have been for some time and she no longer has the capability to distinguish real life from delusion.

The Wheelers

I'm going to mention the most hated characters in the movie, the Wheelers, and am dedicating this special section to specifically explain them better.

These characters are hated by most people who watch the movie because they don't know where they come from, why they're there or what their purpose is.

I'll answer all those question for you right now: The wheelers make the exact same noise that the wheeled hospital bed does in the mental institution. In fact every single time a wheeler is up close you hear that grinding metal noise of the hospital bed. The movie tried to make it very obvious where the inspiration for wheelers comes from and why they're bad guys.

A wheeler even at one point outright says, "Got you! Trapped!", just like Dorothy felt when she was restrained in the hospital bed.

The problem with wheelers however - and I totally admit this - is that as characters they're pretty weak. They don't serve to really move the story along that well and serve as time fillers more than anything else. That and most people don't make the connection between the wheeled hospital bed and the wheelers themselves; it's a really easy thing to miss even with all the clues.

Return to Oz is a very dark movie - even if in an understated way

The only reason RtO doesn't carry itself as a totally dark film is because the central character is a child. When people watch it, they see the wild-eyed imagination that kids have.

That's not Dorothy.

In thinly-veiled fashion, RtO is showing a little girl that is losing her mind. She has learned at the end of the movie to hide her fantasies, so she's not cured.

This is the last scene in the movie:

That little white dot you see (just to the right of the house) is Dorothy with her dog. She continues to still be very alone. Nobody is around.

This is not a happy ending because the happiness is only temporary. After being outside, she will go back to her room and her mind will be filled with the fantasy world of Oz once again.

Dorothy is fast losing her grip on reality and will inevitably go completely insane at some point in the future.

Published 2011 Feb 25