A lot of people have been searching for whether or not Kenneth saved Belinda in Safety Not Guaranteed. I touched upon it briefly in my lengthier piece, but here's the quick and dirty response:
Yes, he does save Belinda. Remember the box Kenneth keeps in the truck? If Kenneth runs into trouble in the past, he leaves a note in the box. I think this means if he doesn't manage to save Belinda in the past, then he'll leave a note in the box with instructions on what went wrong. Apparently he was able to save Belinda by running his car into her home. It is never revealed exactly why running the car into the home saves her. He does say that a car killed Belinda, so either A) he made it up, and simply used the story because it was convenient and personal, or (more likely) B) a car indeed killed Belinda, and as a wide-eyed boy with a crush on her, he was able to scare her off and find somewhere else to live where the other car could never harm her.
Because Darius has an unselfish plight similar to Kenneth's, he trusts her enough to take her back in time (unlike the selfish Jeff). Kenneth pretends to act surprised by Darius' revelation that Belinda is still alive because Kenneth purposely distanced himself from Belinda out of love and solely relied on the box to communicate if his mission was successful. Thus, because the box was always empty and Darius had similar intentions as Kenneth, he had planned on traveling back and saving Darius' mother all along.
One particular detail I think confirms your theory—the final line in the original newspaper ad: “I have only done this once before.”
ReplyDeleteHe had done it once before. This second time was for the sake of the respondent, hence why he was so adamant about getting someone who had truly experienced pain.