I disagree—her "game" isn't over and she hasn't run out of "tools." 😉 She basically wiped out her rival for good; now the Queen is even more dependent on her due to that stroke, and she’s got a husband who's easy enough to manipulate. In that killer final scene, Abina actually shows a hint of self-reflection for the first time. Everything she did was for social climbing, driven by pure survival instinct in a cutthroat environment. She always looked forward, never back. But in the end, she realizes her new status is built on some seriously dirty work—both figuratively and literally.
Like I said before, I thought the movie was great, even if the script isn't exactly groundbreaking. Honestly, it felt better and warmer than most Lanthimos films. 🙂
I don't know, man, I just don't see it that way. It’s not like the Queen is actually addicted to her or anything; the Queen has an endless supply of staff at her beck and call whenever she needs something done. She doesn't *need* her. Honestly, she basically talked herself into being a high-end escort. Because she was so obsessed with securing that fancy social status, she ended up effectively becoming a sexual commodity for both the husband and the Queen in practice.
I just don't see any way for her to pull that off without completely blowing her chances at landing that fancy corporate promotion she’s been chasing. 🤷
Even if she tries to play it off, nothing can really take the edge off that sheer, pure satisfaction Weisz felt—it was all about that raw drive and motivation. It’s like that whole "close your eyes and think of the United States" vibe. 😬 It all boils down to this one conviction: that being physically close to the Queen is the only way to actually pull the strings of the nation. If you can get close enough, you can nudge her decisions toward whatever you personally think is best for the country. And let me tell you, Weisz was absolutely obsessed with that idea. That whole power play—that was her entire game.
Abina is purely, obsessively focused on her own status. Honestly, she couldn't care less about who the United States is at war with, when those conflicts happen, or how they're fought. At the end of the day, the only real win she gets out of all this mess is having some fancy title on paper, while in reality, she’s nothing more than a slave to the situation.
But honestly, I just don't see any way she has the leverage to go about changing that right now.
True, but the whole ambiguity of power is baked into the motive from the start. The Queen at the top of the pyramid is simultaneously the most isolated and most persecuted figure. It’s only in that final scene that Abigail finally grasps the full weight of her success—or her downfall.
I have to give props to the wide-angle shots, too—they frame the characters within these massive, almost overwhelming spaces that really nail their spot on the social ladder. On the flip side, the whole vibe feels super staged, like a painting or maybe even a fish tank. Kinda grotesque, honestly.
Yeah, sure, but a Queen is a Queen. When you talk about actual power—the ability to indulge every random whim, make the calls, change her mind on a dime, or just shut down whatever she feels like—she’s in the exact same spot at the beginning and the end. Despite being physically and mentally a wreck, her position hasn't budged. She doesn't even have to lift a finger if she doesn't want to. She could flip the whole script tomorrow if she felt like it, and everyone else would just have to deal with it.
Abina's game is over. The tool has been used up. She’s effectively stripped herself of the one last thing—maybe the most vital thing—that she held onto even when she was at her absolute lowest point in terms of practical standing: hope. Hope, the ghost of any idea, any plan, any desire or ambition that might actually improve her situation. She knows it's done. This is what she fought for. That’s why I think that closing scene is masterfully handled. Instead of some heavy-handed dialogue where they spell everything out three times over to make sure you get the point, they cement the entire theme through one long shot of Abina’s defeated face. You can practically feel the hopelessness, that trapped sensation, and the hint of apathy that’s going to be her permanent state of being moving forward.
And honestly, it's not just the final scene. Even with all those specific little plots, games, and twists that some people write off as the movie's "bad side" or just a bunch of nonsense, there are a few moments—like that one part about the different games the two of them are actually playing—where a single question or one seemingly throwaway sentence forces you to rewind in your head. You find yourself connecting the dots yourself, drawing conclusions based on what *wasn't* said.
When a movie pulls that off, especially with that kind of finesse, there's no way it can be total garbage.
I don't know much about cinematography. You're saying wide-angle? 🤣
I mean, I know it when it looks good. 🥳
I'm not sure if I'm missing something deeper because of the specific way he chose to frame the shots, but I'm hoping he did it specifically so that even someone like me, who doesn't grasp technical stuff, can still pull the intended meaning out of it. 🙂
Melissa Booth3 said:Was she any more "dignified" when her own father sold her off to that guy who was treating her like dirt?
Maybe technically, sure, but morally? Not even close. First, we’re looking at the fallout of someone else's depravity, but then we hit her own. It wasn't her choice initially, but this part right here? This is on her. To me, she hits a much lower, incomparably filthier level of character the moment she realizes she actually sold herself out—that whole "victim" shield just evaporates—than she did back when she was forced into it against her will.
fadedmason7 said:The visuals, production design, costumes, and score? All top-tier. The acting holds up too—though honestly, I was much more into Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman than Emma Stone. The script is where it trips up, though; it feels a bit thin and predictable, almost like a blunt instrument of political theory—think some nasty blend of Hobbes and Machiavelli. It’s just constant backstabbing where everyone is out for themselves, with rivals doing whatever it takes to win over the sovereign—basically weaponizing sex and cunning to climb the ladder. That whole "one rises while the other falls" career arc is also pretty cliché. Still, as a whole, the movie works surprisingly well—it's catchy and actually pretty funny in spots. 7/10
Plus, that final scene where they ask, "What exactly do you think you've won?" really drives home the point—that woman who fought her way to the top was never actually higher than she was in that exact moment. It’s a total Pyrrhic victory.
It’s not bad. Honestly, the ending is pretty damn good.
hiddenorca6 said:Just downloaded it! I'll get to watching soon, though I have to admit, I’m not exactly a fan of how Trier's movies tend to drag you through the mud.
I’ve always had a massive soft spot for director ego trips—those movies where the filmmaker basically uses the screen to take a massive, unapologetic dump on everything else. And honestly, when you look at the sheer number of directors out there, it’s only natural that some will occasionally pull it off with real class, like a true gentleman, while others just end up making a complete and total mess of the whole thing.
Honestly, when you look at how Lars von Trier handled movies like Breaking the Waves, Dogville, or Dancer in the Dark, it’s pretty clear he absolutely loves to mess with people. He’s got this way of just twisting the knife right when you think you're safe.
And honestly, he’s a bit too much of a mess now. Then again, he was high out of his mind back then, so you can hardly blame him.
I'm gonna go dive into some medical journals and see what they have to say about how drugs affect the quality and volume of bodily fluids. There might actually be some kind of cause-and-effect relationship there worth looking into.
Whatever, honestly, I don't hate this at all. Despite all the messy, side-tracked nonsense along the way, he somehow managed to vomit his way to the finish line without completely tripping over his own feet.
Most of his peers can barely hold an audience for an hour or two before everyone starts checking their phones, let alone actually keeping them hooked. But those guys? They’re out there raking in the cash at the multiplexes.
They aren't even trying to hide the fact anymore, you know? It’s like they’re pretending this is some high-brow curation of the greatest cinematic achievements ever. Honestly, it feels like saying John Grisham and some random lifestyle blogger are equally in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Actually, let me rephrase that—it’s more like they're both competing for a Nobel in Physics. 👋
That’s why the Oscars are going to kick things up an absurdly high level; they’ll probably dig up some tiny, quiet, indie darlings that nobody’s ever heard of just to prove how "serious" they are. They want everyone to see that those little gems are infinitely more important than these total joke productions we're seeing now. 🤣
I mean, it’s passed the point of being funny. It’s just depressing at this stage, but hey, what do you expect? 😢
darklynx21 said:Honestly, the scene that really stuck with me was that final moment in the hospital between the husband and his sister; when he tells her he can't believe she left the kids alone in the middle of the night, and she just hits him with, "Wait, weren't you guys home? They weren't alone." And he's just like, "Yeah, you're right"—and it’s those little things that drive home how, despite all our talk about modern marriages and how progressive society supposedly is, the actual heavy lifting of childcare still falls squarely on women's shoulders 😉
As for the husband and his whole lack of a role, I didn't even feel it. It wasn't even enough for me to get angry at him or wish he’d done something differently or even bother questioning his presence. He’s just this totally bland, faceless guy who goes to work while the Tully situation unfolds, asks if things are okay here and there, and just drifts through the background while the plot happens. (I mean, by the end of the movie, even he probably forgot he was actually in the film because he was so damn invisible. 🤣 )
But even with that, I didn't walk away feeling like the movie was some critique of disengaged moms or just a giant sob story about how parenting is "women's work."
And please, don't try to tell me that was the underlying theme or the main driving force, because if you do, the movie immediately becomes a lot worse in my eyes. 🤣
darklynx21 said:Honestly, same here! And I actually consider myself pretty conservative when it comes to this stuff 😁 Siri, what kind of sickness is this where I just can't bring myself to turn off a movie even after I've already seen what happens 🕺
🤣
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Come on, that one scene was nothing—it was practically tame. Even if it had been what people say it was, it doesn't hold a candle to the absolute mountain of twisted scenes you see everywhere these days. 🙂
What really trips me out is how, for the first time ever, I actually caught onto what was happening right during that specific scene. It’s not even about the fact that I realized it, but more about how the hell the writer managed to pull off such a brilliant, spot-on realization and then just completely wipe it from my brain with the next few scenes? It was like the thought never even existed, keeping me totally oblivious until they finally dropped that girl's maiden name.
...just enough to kill any lingering desire to reproduce. 🙂
Just kidding. (Or maybe I'm not entirely joking)
Yeah, it flows beautifully and the pacing is spot on—subtle, gentle, and totally lacking in melodrama (which is a miracle given how wild the twist is), and both characters are just stellar (Mackenzie is such a freaking gem 😍 ).
Honestly, why does it have to be a woman who actually gets this or experiences it? 🤷
I hear stories about women tearing through Westerns or prison dramas without a single female lead, or watching baseball movies without knowing a single rule, and still walking away totally understanding the soul of the story. 👋
Man, Pixar, I haven't felt this much of a rollercoaster—the good, the bad, and the ugly—since my old man decided, amidst a whole lot of laughing, that he definitely wasn't dropping the cash on some massive grand piano with a literal black stallion sitting on top of it. 😢
Honestly, who knows what kind of person I'd be if he actually had. 🤣
But I’ve finally opened my eyes, mostly because I spent way too much time digging into this by actually talking to the people behind the desks—people who actually know what's going on while we're all left in the dark. I basically played saint and listened to about five hundred different agents from various insurance companies calling me right before renewal season. I grilled them on everything. I had nothing but time on my hands, so why not? 🎉
The big takeaway? There is no such thing as "the cheapest insurance." It turns out there are people working within the exact same company, even sitting in the very same office, where the price difference is massive. You could sit down at a desk with John Peric and get quoted $1,500, then just slide one chair over to Jane Maric and pay only $1,000 for the exact same coverage. In the same agency. In the same room.
Why the hell does that happen? Turns out, poor John Peric only started working there last month, so he hasn't earned the kind of perks that Jane Maric has. She’s been feeding the corporate machine for years and has racked up enough benefits and authority to access commercial discounts that poor John can't even dream of touching. Then, if you move down the row to James, who’s actually the branch manager, he’s got a direct line to the CEO. If the CEO is feeling generous, he can authorize an extra 15% discount just because he asked nicely. Basically, he can approve whatever he wants. (Meanwhile, poor John, the guy you were just complaining about for being expensive, doesn't even know who the CEO is. He doesn't even know what a commercial discount is. He hasn't even figured out how to click the button for the standard discount in his software yet. 🤣 )
So, in the end, you might end up paying a few hundred bucks less than what some comparison site tells you—sites that don't have any of these nuances and act like they know where the absolute lowest price is. 🎉
I even chatted with this lovely lady—we ended up talking about what everyone's cooking for dinner—and she explained that certain things one insurer will cover, another won't, simply because that's how their rules are written. That alone makes a huge difference. I remember her telling me, for example, that an eighteen-year-old kid in the US who just passed his driver's test with flying colors might get a 50% good student discount from his parents without losing it. They just give it to him. It's a "hey, you're family, here you go" situation, whereas State Farm isn't allowed to do that. But then again, maybe State Farm lets you apply a discount from a personal vehicle to a commercial truck, while Allianz absolutely won't. It's a million little things like that.
Now I'm kicking myself for not writing all this down; who knows when I'll need this intel again.
It's complicated, folks. Really complicated. There is no "cheapest" or "most expensive" by default.
You have to talk to actual humans. Not a computer program. She told me straight up: "That person who used a comparison site to find a policy better go find someone on the internet to help them file a claim when they actually need advice, handle the paperwork, tell them where to go, who to call, or how to summon an adjuster when they can't get one to show up." She told me I should just write a letter to those comparison sites. 🎉
Anyway, I was blind, but now I see. Thanks, Barbara. 🎉
Yeah. Though, for the record, I didn't turn it off. Maybe it’s just because of Marion; she’s got this charisma that makes watching her a total blast, plus that chemistry—you know, the biology, physics, sociology, psychology of it all—that just seems to bleed out of her.
I honestly don't get why Brad even bothers showing up to sets anymore. Why not just take a cardboard cutout of him in a nature documentary, slide him into the frame whenever they need him, and call it a day? Just dub in some audio afterward and you're done. 🤷
Some completely uncharismatic hack wouldn't be able to convey a single thing on screen. They'd just exist and move around. That's it. 🙏
Anyway, go ahead and enjoy the movie.
Well, if people were actually laughing or crying, I guess that's on me. I suppose I passed along all that intense, messy love of mine. 🤷
This Japanese sex toy in the store stands out from the crowd of dildos just like how Lisa stands out in Michael's world.
And here we go, back at our friend's place. 🎉
The "friend everyone usually wants" is the dildo, while the doll—or Lisa—hasn't even been glanced at on the shelf for years. 🤣
And before things get heated, Lisa also makes sure to emphasize just how long it's been since anyone even pulled her off that shelf.
Look, I mean, occasionally your arguments actually make sense and aren't totally half-baked, but I’m sticking to my guns: the biggest letdown for me would be the sheer pointlessness and futility of trying to force all those connections just to reach the goal of saying doll equals Lisa.
vivideagle7 said:Even if it didn't ruin the movie for me, my gut feeling is that Lisa isn't just some doll.
Look, you can get all worked up if you want, but this whole thing reminds me of those endless debates over Mulholland Drive where certain people still insist you can just interpret the first half completely separately from the second—as if it doesn't have to be about what's actually happening on screen. They basically argue that Lynch is just some madman who ate too many hallucinogenic mushrooms and has no clue what he was even aiming for. Oh, and sure, he loves the idea that everyone should find their own meaning. He’d probably be damn proud of the people out there thinking totally differently than the rest of us.
And now we're stuck with this. Seriously, how much more evidence or direction do people need?
Honestly, if the author himself steps up and tells us everything was just a mistake, then fine, I'll just go scatter myself into ash and call it a day. But until then, why the hell would anyone bother planting dolls, subtle similarities, clues, connections, or hints if they didn't mean anything?
A-ha, because if the whole deal wasn't about that doll, the point would have been that as soon as he finished screwing her, all that sweet charm regarding how unique she was just vanished, and she suddenly became exactly like everyone else. Her voice and everything.
Exactly. The whole thing boils down to this guy being so incredibly miserable with his own mediocre existence—seeing everything around him as just more of the same boring crap—that he basically took some Japanese doll and turned it into this massive mental spectacle. He built an entire script, a whole universe, an adventure, a story... a full-blown experience. I totally fell for it. For a split second, I let myself believe in this manufactured alternative.
The lecture is actually happening, so why would that be an issue? That’s literally why he was at the hotel in the first place. Look, it doesn't really change the core of the story, but it's there.
I can't give you a solid explanation for the friend, but it's possible something got missed, so maybe someone will dig up some detail later on.
If it really isn't there, then yeah, I'll admit it—the friend part makes absolutely zero sense in that case.
But honestly, I'll just let it slide. That's a minus five for me.
I’m honestly a little baffled here. Why on earth is Lisa—who is clearly just a doll at this point—acting like this whole thing is irrelevant? Like, how is that even still up for debate when everything was laid out so plainly and undeniably right in front of us?
The truth is, that specific revelation is exactly what kicks this story from being just "great" to being absolutely fucking incredible.
It’s all the better because we’re mostly preoccupied with this brilliant portrayal of his perspective on her uniqueness (he’s basically the only outlier, right?), which actually gives us these super clear breadcrumbs about what’s really going down.
No, the truth about what happened wasn't just some random bombshell dropped at the very end just to pull a cheap stunt. That’s usually what happens with those trashy productions that just want to shock the audience for the sake of it. This wasn't forced upon us to make us feel like idiots, left wondering what the hell we just watched. What a guy. What kind of mess is he dealing with.
The clues have been there since the moment Lisa was introduced. They're obvious. They drop one after another. In fact, they’ve been present since that scene where he’s clearly given massive importance just by staring at that doll in the shop window.
It’s practically screaming at you: Look! This matters!
That "Japanese, obviously" line should have been the moment everything clicked into place. But even then, it didn't quite hit for everyone. Even if the thought—wait, that's a weird thing to say, why is it *obviously*?—was hovering somewhere in the back of our minds.
You can't blame the writer for that. It's on us. We were looking in the wrong direction, even though the story was constantly trying to nudge us toward the right one.
So, it’s pretty unfair to whine now about how "it feels pointless at the end."
I’m all for taking a stand against this senseless post deletion. Honestly, there’s barely anything worth reading here anyway, just endless loops of "great show" or "moving on" 😍 (who cares?)
Lay out your arguments.
Posts like those should be nuked because they're nothing more than pure spam.
Let people actually talk, even if the conversation drifts a bit into weird territory through various associations.
For the folks who only want to read stuff like "That was a killer episode" 😍 , it isn't exactly rocket science to just skip over any discussions they aren't interested in. But for those of us who actually enjoy a deep dive, it's a total slap in the face when you wake up ready to keep the debate going, only to find it's been wiped out. Just gone.
Just censor the heavy insults and the massive spoilers, and call it a day. That's plenty. If someone goes full off-topic—like when someone starts rambling about The Sopranos in a thread dedicated to the Minnesota Vikings—then deal with that.
Noah Roberts46 said:I mean, if we're talking about directing, Birdman definitely takes the cake. Honestly? I think pulling off something like that was a way harder feat than what they did with Boyhood. 🤷
Is directing really just about how much technical wizardry goes into a movie? Like, is that the only thing they look at when deciding who gets the trophy? It’s getting tougher. Record it? Please. As if anyone actually gives a damn about watching another mediocre flick just because someone slapped a "cinematic" label on it. Most of this stuff is just noise designed to fill the void while we wait for something that actually matters. 🤔
I don't know, just asking.
I don't know, man. I’ve got this nagging feeling that isn't really the case. It feels like there are other, much more subtle nuances at play here that we're totally overlooking.
