I think you all really missed the mark on the intention behind the ending. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
I'd argue that the ending is about giving both Willa and Lockjaw a chance to gain understanding and then briefly examining what that understanding means to the characters. Lockjaw thinks he survived an attack by French 75 members when he goes to meet with the Adventures-- ensuring that the audience gets a chance to see him reckon with the understanding that they're his killers is somewhat coincidentally a bit like Tarantino ensuring that the audience gets to see that Hitler dies in the fire at the end of inglorious Basterds. It's pure fan service, like an ironic grace note reserved just to twist the knife on such a terrible person.
And as for Willa, she has zero agency in the movie until the very end, really, and was always and entirely reacting to a present brought about by her mother. The letter, in my opinion, is more correctly read as a final reminder of how shallow and self-serving her mother really is. It's so saccharine, the kind of thing a narcissist writes not to comfort Willa but to imagine that one day she'll read it and think positively about her mother with essentially no investment of time or energy on her mother's part. Willa immediately going to hug her father is, as I saw it, a fundamental rejection of what her mother represents in favor of her father. I think you can argue that more could have been made of it in the film, but I definitely believe that the audience is intended to see her dad as representing a fundamentally different choice than her mother, as he even early on is pegged by Perfidia's mom as not truly being a revolutionary. That dialogue isn't an accident; he may have committed violence, but he very clearly changes into a father once Willa is born, and her reaction to the letter, as we see in the future, is something more like coordinated non-violent protesting, which seems slightly more closely aligned to the more laid back revolutionary posture of her dad. I definitely think Alyssa is much closer to being on the mark with her interpretation, here.
Perfidia is very clearly one of the villains of the film, in fact-- symbolically shown in her affair with Lockjaw (which she doesn't seem to mind), and literally embodied in her being the rat that leads to the systematic dismembering of the group while she gets away. In the sense that she serves as a non-trivial perspective on the overall revolutionary movement, I think suggesting that Anderson is overly sympathetic to the left is unfair; she's a giant chunk of how that movement is presented to the audience, and if you choose to read her final letter as self-serving manipulation of her daughter, she is portrayed in an unremittingly negative light. She and Lockjaw are perfect for one another, and it's even reflected in the fond reverence he holds for her. I think it's possible to interpret his lionization of her in his speech with Willa in the car as a positive referendum on Perfidia, but given the character of the man delivering it, I don't think you're supposed to take it that way. Her daughter grows up believing her mother to be a hero, learns the truth, finally sees her mother for what she is, and ultimately rejects her in favor of her father.
Lastly, I'll just add that I think that all of the reviews that try to treat this as a movie speaking about our present moment are really missing the mark. Considering this movie was years in the making, I think those reads are pretty spurious in general, even politically, but in terms of where the focus of the movie is pretty much from the 40-minute mark on, it's clearly a movie about Willa and how her life has been shaped by the choices of a person she's never met and the somewhat terrifying consequences of those choices as they come back into the present. I mean, Sensei is a pretty one-dimensionally positive character, and his willingness to help Ted obviously generates sympathy from the audience, but even his revolutionary involvement is very clearly separate from Ted's search for Willa. Hell, the fact that Ted can't remember the passwords is a pretty obvious way to show that he's no longer really a part of this movement-- he's a guy whose life was kind of ruined by it, honestly, and now he's trying to stop it from also ruining his daughter's.
Y'all really missed the mark on this film, IMO. I was disappointed that you mainly all chose to evaluate it first and foremost through a political lens when the movie works so hard to keep the focus pretty tightly on Ted and Willa as they reckon with the ongoing fallout caused by Lockjaw and Perfidia.
Saw the movie in 70mm. We thought it was a great movie. What we took from it was that it basically painted both far left and far right groups as bad and how stupid both can be.
Both were made fun of and in today's environment it an "entertaining" way to look at both sides. Like look at how stupid both extremes are.
I don't know about how this movie follows the book since I am not familiar with it. I felt as most of the time I disagree with Sonny's interpretation of movies. Most of the movies he likes I don't like and maybe he's just reading a bit too much into this.
As movie craft which is all I see it as, it's pretty good.
Sonny has a finely tuned ear for when left leaning film makers put their thumb on the scale. It made him a really valuable voice in 2015-2020 when film criticism was sort of a lefty monoculture and bad movies were routinely getting over praised due to their politics.
But, it can sometimes have him jumping at shadows. I think the movie was much more self aware of the ways in which the French 75 were a failure and enabled the likes of people like Lockjaw than Sonny allows.
I mean, the whole reason Benico Del Toro is in the movie is to show the path the French 75 didn’t take, of effective non violent resistance. That’s why the Molotov cocktail is a false flag- Del Toro and his crew wouldn’t put up with that undisciplined nonsense.
I think you all really missed the mark on the intention behind the ending. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
I'd argue that the ending is about giving both Willa and Lockjaw a chance to gain understanding and then briefly examining what that understanding means to the characters. Lockjaw thinks he survived an attack by French 75 members when he goes to meet with the Adventures-- ensuring that the audience gets a chance to see him reckon with the understanding that they're his killers is somewhat coincidentally a bit like Tarantino ensuring that the audience gets to see that Hitler dies in the fire at the end of inglorious Basterds. It's pure fan service, like an ironic grace note reserved just to twist the knife on such a terrible person.
And as for Willa, she has zero agency in the movie until the very end, really, and was always and entirely reacting to a present brought about by her mother. The letter, in my opinion, is more correctly read as a final reminder of how shallow and self-serving her mother really is. It's so saccharine, the kind of thing a narcissist writes not to comfort Willa but to imagine that one day she'll read it and think positively about her mother with essentially no investment of time or energy on her mother's part. Willa immediately going to hug her father is, as I saw it, a fundamental rejection of what her mother represents in favor of her father. I think you can argue that more could have been made of it in the film, but I definitely believe that the audience is intended to see her dad as representing a fundamentally different choice than her mother, as he even early on is pegged by Perfidia's mom as not truly being a revolutionary. That dialogue isn't an accident; he may have committed violence, but he very clearly changes into a father once Willa is born, and her reaction to the letter, as we see in the future, is something more like coordinated non-violent protesting, which seems slightly more closely aligned to the more laid back revolutionary posture of her dad. I definitely think Alyssa is much closer to being on the mark with her interpretation, here.
Perfidia is very clearly one of the villains of the film, in fact-- symbolically shown in her affair with Lockjaw (which she doesn't seem to mind), and literally embodied in her being the rat that leads to the systematic dismembering of the group while she gets away. In the sense that she serves as a non-trivial perspective on the overall revolutionary movement, I think suggesting that Anderson is overly sympathetic to the left is unfair; she's a giant chunk of how that movement is presented to the audience, and if you choose to read her final letter as self-serving manipulation of her daughter, she is portrayed in an unremittingly negative light. She and Lockjaw are perfect for one another, and it's even reflected in the fond reverence he holds for her. I think it's possible to interpret his lionization of her in his speech with Willa in the car as a positive referendum on Perfidia, but given the character of the man delivering it, I don't think you're supposed to take it that way. Her daughter grows up believing her mother to be a hero, learns the truth, finally sees her mother for what she is, and ultimately rejects her in favor of her father.
Lastly, I'll just add that I think that all of the reviews that try to treat this as a movie speaking about our present moment are really missing the mark. Considering this movie was years in the making, I think those reads are pretty spurious in general, even politically, but in terms of where the focus of the movie is pretty much from the 40-minute mark on, it's clearly a movie about Willa and how her life has been shaped by the choices of a person she's never met and the somewhat terrifying consequences of those choices as they come back into the present. I mean, Sensei is a pretty one-dimensionally positive character, and his willingness to help Ted obviously generates sympathy from the audience, but even his revolutionary involvement is very clearly separate from Ted's search for Willa. Hell, the fact that Ted can't remember the passwords is a pretty obvious way to show that he's no longer really a part of this movement-- he's a guy whose life was kind of ruined by it, honestly, and now he's trying to stop it from also ruining his daughter's.
Y'all really missed the mark on this film, IMO. I was disappointed that you mainly all chose to evaluate it first and foremost through a political lens when the movie works so hard to keep the focus pretty tightly on Ted and Willa as they reckon with the ongoing fallout caused by Lockjaw and Perfidia.
Whenever the Savant got released, they definitely should have Will Sommer made a cameo if not a guest star on the show.
Saw the movie in 70mm. We thought it was a great movie. What we took from it was that it basically painted both far left and far right groups as bad and how stupid both can be.
Both were made fun of and in today's environment it an "entertaining" way to look at both sides. Like look at how stupid both extremes are.
I don't know about how this movie follows the book since I am not familiar with it. I felt as most of the time I disagree with Sonny's interpretation of movies. Most of the movies he likes I don't like and maybe he's just reading a bit too much into this.
As movie craft which is all I see it as, it's pretty good.
Sonny has a finely tuned ear for when left leaning film makers put their thumb on the scale. It made him a really valuable voice in 2015-2020 when film criticism was sort of a lefty monoculture and bad movies were routinely getting over praised due to their politics.
But, it can sometimes have him jumping at shadows. I think the movie was much more self aware of the ways in which the French 75 were a failure and enabled the likes of people like Lockjaw than Sonny allows.
I mean, the whole reason Benico Del Toro is in the movie is to show the path the French 75 didn’t take, of effective non violent resistance. That’s why the Molotov cocktail is a false flag- Del Toro and his crew wouldn’t put up with that undisciplined nonsense.
Tim Apple should try getting a sack.