• 2 months ago
In this episode, I analyze the film "It Ends With Us," featuring Blake Lively, examining its exploration of the cycle of abuse. Despite strong performances and writing, I critique the film's lack of psychological depth. The narrative, centered on Lily's tumultuous love life with Ryle and Atlas, raises questions about her growth and the portrayal of flawed masculinity. I highlight the film's failure to explore women's complexities and its reliance on victimization tropes. However, I acknowledge a powerful moment of reflection by Lily, urging viewers to approach the film with critical awareness of its themes on love and pain. I invite listeners to share their thoughts on the film's portrayal.

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Transcript
00:00All righty, hey, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, I hope you're doing well.
00:06So, yes, yes, yes, I took the bullet, maybe you can, maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't,
00:11I'd recommend it as a whole, but I went to go and see the movie It Ends With Us,
00:17with Blake Lively and a guy who basically is Sicilian Harry Connick Jr. with great abs
00:22and a steady though rather broken hand. And it is the story of breaking the cycle of abuse,
00:28something I'm very interested in, so I went to the movie, fingers crossed, hoping the best,
00:33acting is good, writing is pretty good, absolutely unbelievable scenarios, and to me,
00:39it has about the same depth of psychology as a single coat of paint on a soap water bubble.
00:47So, what is the story as a whole? So, there's this woman, see, oh, gosh, I mean, you've seen
00:54better naming conventions in Italian soap operas. So, the woman, she's in her late 30s,
01:04and she wants to open a flower shop, she wants to open a florist's, and her name is Lily,
01:10Bloom, Rose, or something, it's all flower stuff, right? And then you've got a guy who gets very
01:17excited, very sort of juiced up, he really riles her up, and his name is Ryle, see, because he
01:23riles her up. And then there's another guy, her first love, the guy she lost her virginity to,
01:28and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he's kind of bowed down,
01:33and all of that, and his name is Atlas, because you can read him like a map, you get all this,
01:39right? So, the movie starts with Lily, the main character, Blake Lively character,
01:48her father's dead, he was the mayor, and she's got to say five nice things about him at the
01:54funeral, but she doesn't, and of course, it's because he was an abusive, violent guy who beat
01:59up her mother, never touched her, apparently beat up her mother, I think maybe sexually assaulted
02:03the mother, I wasn't entirely sure of that, because I tend not to look directly at
02:07that kind of violence as a whole, so it was pretty ugly, nasty, and bad.
02:13And so then she's up on top of a rooftop in Chicago, apparently Chicago, where there's no
02:20winter, zero winter, doesn't happen, she's up on a roof, sitting on the edge, right on the edge,
02:25and then a guy comes in who's tall, dark, brooding, handsome, you can see his abs through
02:34a poncho, and he kicks a chair, and he's just really frustrated and upset and angry,
02:40and the conversation, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, the conversation goes something like this,
02:46hey, I lost my virginity to a homeless guy, says Lily, and then Ryle, the guy says,
02:56I'd like to have sex with you. I'm sorry, I wish it were more complicated, and the dialogue's not
03:03terrible, there's some sparkling bits and some clever bits, and they're all acting their little
03:06hearts out and so on, but yeah, basically it's like, I'm a woman with no friends, no father,
03:14no future, really, but I did have sex with a homeless guy 20 years ago, and he's like, well,
03:20I'm a neurosurgeon, super hot, super wealthy, super high status, super ripped, and I want to
03:28have sex with you, I don't do relationships, I only do lust, right, so these are two empty,
03:32broken, damaged, messed up people colliding together in cinematic slow motion with Spanx,
03:39so not a super elevated start to the romance. So there's lots of flashbacks to when Lily was a
03:51teenager, and there was a guy across the street who lived in a boarded up building, he was homeless,
03:57and she takes him some food, and then they end up having sex, because I guess that's courtship
04:06these days, she brings him food, and they end up having sex, and then she's, I don't know,
04:1116 or 17 or something like that, they're still in high school, and her violent father, Lily,
04:16when she was younger, her violent father comes home, catches the homeless guy in bed with his
04:20daughter, and beats him half to death, beats him half to death, beats a child half to death,
04:27there's ambulance, hospital, he's got blood all over his face, I assume that the dad's hands are
04:33bloodied and broken, and the kid's entrails are all over his house, but apparently nothing happens,
04:40no, nothing, he doesn't go to jail, doesn't get charged, there's no assault, attempted murder,
04:44there's no, nothing. Now, maybe it's explained he's the mayor or something like that, but
04:50it's never explained why, how this guy can beat a child half to death, and everything's fine,
04:57and then the mother, Lily's mother, who's a sympathetic character throughout the movie,
05:01Lily's mother, you see, stays with violent, psycho, rapey, half-child murdering dad,
05:11and no explanation, oh, it's just easier to stay, why? I mean, she's barely home anyway,
05:15maybe she has a job, in which case she has income, if she doesn't have a job, she's going to be able
05:19to take this mayor for all that he's worth, so why does she stay? There's only one kid,
05:24as long as she's got nine kids to take care of, so why does she stay? Nobody knows,
05:27doesn't mean anything, doesn't get explained, other than it was easier to stay, so what does
05:33that mean? So, of course, Blake Lively is a beautiful woman, and she's got a great figure,
05:40I think she's had like three or four kids or something like that, so, you know, aces to her
05:44are good for her, but this is what women need, to be turned on, this is a wild thing for me.
05:50So, I mean, okay, he's brooding, dark, handsome, lots of stubble, and he's ripped like Wheaties,
05:57and so, yeah, good for him, you know, that's, of course, the inevitable happens, or the inevitable
06:02is never mentioned, which is that this guy is all muscle, and a hugely wealthy neurosurgeon,
06:10with a house so perfect, it looks like it was designed by an OCD gay man, who can't allow one
06:17speck of dust to land anywhere, everything's perfect, but he never goes to the gym, he never
06:21exercises, and they drink, everybody drinks like a fish, but they all have perfect skin,
06:27and perfect figures, and all of that, so none of that particularly makes any sense,
06:31but that's just kind of the way that it is. So, here's the vanity of the writer, so there was a
06:36writer, the woman wrote it, it was a huge selling book, I'd never heard of it, it's not really my
06:41circle, so the woman wrote it, and then another woman adapted it, I think Ryan Reynolds had a
06:45hand during the writer's strike, and some of the scene on the rooftop, or whatever, but this is
06:51the vanity. So, she has this, as a teenager, she has this guy who's homeless across the street,
06:58and he gives her this speech, she's like, you know, I wasn't in that house, because
07:06I was kicked out of my mom's house, so his mom apparently likes sleeping with guys who beat her
07:11up, so he, I guess, gets in the way, or something, or tries to stop, so she kicked him out, because
07:16she'd rather get hot sex beat ups, or whatever, right? And he says, like, I didn't move into that
07:21place, because I was homeless, I moved into that place to kill myself, and
07:32I'm looking out the window, preparing to kill myself, I look up, and there's your face in the
07:36light, and I didn't kill myself because of your face. Like, what a wild thing to think of, like,
07:44how vainglorious are you that your face in a window stops men from killing themselves?
07:49That's pretty wild. Of course, it has to be inevitable, this is like
07:54Bridget Jones' Diary 2, 3, or whatever it was, 6, 6, 6, which is something like this.
08:01You can be a single woman in your late 20s, late 30s, and all the hottest, wealthiest,
08:09most successful guys in the world are absolutely obsessed with you, and will do anything to make
08:15you theirs. So, the guy who was homeless, he's a Marine for eight years, and then he becomes this
08:22amazing restaurateur, and he's good-looking, fairly ripped, successful, wealthy, runs the
08:29hottest restaurant in town, and is obsessed with Lily, and then neurosurgeon-ripped, tall, dark,
08:36and handsome stubblehead is also obsessed with Lily, and would do anything to have her, because
08:42that's what happens to single women with no history of successful relationships in their
08:47late 30s, the most top-tier, successful 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% guys are just completely obsessed
08:54with them, and will do anything to make them theirs, to make her theirs. Oh, my gosh.
09:01Everybody starts their business, nobody knows how. She starts this florist shop, and the
09:07inevitable quirky sidekick, like in every women's movie, there's the quirky sidekick,
09:12and so the quirky sidekick comes in, and this is how she gets a job. So, Lily is cleaning up
09:19the old dirty place she got a lease to open a florist shop in, woman comes in and says,
09:24hey, are you opening a store? Yes, what is it? It's a florist. I hate flowers. And then she gets a job,
09:33because apparently that makes sense. You know, somebody can just phone or email me and say,
09:38hey, Steph, I hate philosophy, and I say, yeah, me too. Let's work together for philosophy. Anyway,
09:43so it's just, so where does she get the money to start this business? Where does she have,
09:47does she have any business experience or any business knowledge? Her mom doesn't,
09:51she doesn't have any friends, no one's advising her, but apparently in girl fantasy land,
09:56you can just go start a business, and it's magic. It all just works perfectly. There's no
10:02problem with permits. There's no problem with capital. There's no problem with, you don't have
10:06to learn accounting software. You don't have to learn cash flow management. You just can go
10:11and start flower businesses, because this is, you know, this is what writers do. They just sit down
10:15and write, and they think that every business is the same way. It's just wild. It's just wild.
10:20And there's this funny thing, this funny thing, and, you know, this is a deep mystery for me
10:26with regards to women, so illuminate me, ladies or gentlemen, if you can. So, you know, hot,
10:34chadly, super rich, ripped surgeon guy is just dying to sleep with this, with Lily, right?
10:41Because that's what super rich, hot surgeons go for is depressed women in their late 30s. That's
10:46just the thing, right? In the book, I think she was 23, but Blake Lively is like 37 or whatever,
10:51and, you know, she looks it. No, no hate. I mean, I look 57 or whatever, so no hate. It's just she
10:57does, right? And so this is something I don't understand. It was the same thing I didn't
11:05understand about Fifty Shades of Grey, that apparently the man wanting you is way sexier
11:10than just having sex, that the man wanting you is way sexier than just having sex with him when
11:16you finally have sex with him, which is kind of like me being super starving. I go to the restaurant
11:21and the waiter spends like, I don't know, an hour and 10 minutes explaining to me all the specials,
11:26and I say, no, no, that's enough. I'm full. I'm full. I don't want anything to eat. I just wanted
11:29to hear you describe this, and the anticipation is the whole thing. And then I get foreplay and
11:34anticipation is a good thing. I'm into foreplay. I've got a forehead. It's just the way that it
11:38works. But my gosh, she doesn't appear to have any lust for him. She doesn't appear to enjoy sex.
11:44She's kind of depressed throughout the whole thing, and she has no lust for him. She never
11:48wants to tear his clothes off and all of that. Now, super surgeon dude turns out to be violent,
11:55right? So he hits her, although it's a bit hazy. It turns out later he did. He chomps on her
12:00clavicle. He pushes her down a flight of stairs, you know, so he turns out to be a violent guy.
12:08Now, secondary gains, you can't. Women are all perfect. Nobody, no woman in this movie does
12:13anything wrong whatsoever. They never make a mistake. They never put a foot wrong. They never
12:16raise their voice. They never call names. All they're doing is just heroically and angelically
12:20placating all of these volatile men in their lives and environment. It's just the way, you know,
12:25the noble heroic woman nun who doesn't really lust and wants the man for reasons that make
12:32no particular sense. Hey, I'm a sociopath who compulsively lies, and I just want to have sex.
12:40I don't want to have a relationship. Well, he says, and she says, yeah, I fucked a homeless guy,
12:46and that's how I lost my virginity. And they're like, sounds great. Let's make this a classic
12:51love story for the ages. It's just wild to me. It's just wild. But this, she gets very sort of
12:58sexy and excited when he wants her, and then she doesn't really seem to enjoy the sex,
13:02and she never rips his clothes off. She never gets lusty. She's like, maybe you put up with
13:06bad behavior from a boyfriend. You know, the hot crazy matrix applies both sides of the aisle.
13:10Maybe you put up with bad behavior on the part of a boyfriend because he can just make your toes
13:17curl like an Oxford comma and give you 19 orgasms to the dozen. Okay, well, that's not healthy,
13:24but at least I can somewhat understand it. Maybe you have a really mean Kevin Spacey boss, but
13:30he pays you ridiculous amounts of money, so maybe that makes it, well, you can never talk about
13:33secondary gains. The women are just victims. Because she does this thing, it's, to me,
13:38it's kind of a negative thing. So she does this thing, he comes home, surgeon guy comes home,
13:43and she's on his, she's made dinner, and he hoists her up on the counter, like in a sexual manner,
13:50and she's like, oh, okay, this is what we're doing? Oh, okay, okay. And it's just, it's so
13:55bland and like, no, like, yeah, right, rip the clothes off or whatever, right? It's just like,
14:00yeah, okay, this is what we're doing? Oh, okay. And it's just so vanilla and neutral and
14:06passionless. I got no sense of hunger for him. And because, you know, hunger for his status,
14:12his money, his bod, his sexual, you know, men who sleep with a lot of women can develop
14:17skills. And so she's not like, at least with, in street cunning, Zaya Stella
14:25is keen for the incredible makeup sex she gets with Stanley Kowalski, right? So Stella,
14:30you know, the colored lights going round and round. So there's none of that. So if she's not
14:36thirsting for his sex and his bod, then the whole thing doesn't make any sense. Why would she put up
14:41with any bad behavior if there's not anything positive, right? So that's pretty wild. General
14:49message of the movie, of course, is general. Women are better off without men and men are
14:54more trouble than they're worth. And it doesn't matter if you're a single mother or whatever,
14:57your just life is generally better off without men. That is too much work. That's a very sort
15:02of common thing that happens these days. Her wardrobe is both appalling and ridiculously
15:09expensive where she gets the money for all of this. Who knows? There's never any money. There's
15:13never any dieting. There's never any exercise and everybody's wealthy, thin, and ripped. It is just
15:18the way that it is. So there's, I mean, there's a funny thing that happens as well, which is,
15:25you know, the explanation why is surgeon guy violent, right? Well, so when he first meets
15:33Lily on the rooftop, he says, oh, I just had a terrible, a kid died on me. His brother shot him
15:42and he died. They shot him by accident, right? Little kids. And it's, oh, I wonder what that's
15:47going to do to the brother. It's going to mess him up for life, says surgeon guy. So,
15:51spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, at the end of the movie, he says, she finds out that surgeon guy
15:58was the guy who actually shot his brother. So what that means is that surgeon guy uses
16:03his own personal killing of his brother by accident as a pickup line for depressed women.
16:08I mean, this is about as sour and horrible and sociopathic and negative and ghastly as could
16:13conceivably happen. Well, it's true that I did shoot my brother and kill him when I was a kid,
16:19but maybe I can use that to get laid. And it's like, whoa, that's just horrendous.
16:25Absolutely horrendous. Of course, the life without men, I mean, we all know this, right? Like,
16:32oh, men are toxic, men are bad, men are violent and so on. And therefore, you know, it's better
16:38to leave and be without men. And it's like, okay, but then why did the kids of single mothers have
16:42such horrible negative outcomes? If men are toxic, then the absence of men should improve things,
16:48but it statistically doesn't. And what does she learn anyway? What does she learn anyway?
16:53So her father's violent, surgeon guy is violent, and then the guy who she's kept in the beta
17:01orbiting wing forever and ever are men, the homeless guy she slept with when she was a
17:05teenager, he's violent too, because he thinks she's been beaten up. She says it was just a
17:10misunderstanding. And so he then physically assaults and screams in the face of surgeon guy,
17:17which is kind of unfair because he's a trained fighter and warrior. Surgeon guy is not,
17:21gotta watch his hands. And by the way, for a guy who's supposed to take care of his hands,
17:24he seems to do all of this ridiculously punchy, throwy, grab hot things, put your hands in broken
17:30glass kind of stuff. It's crazy. Surgeons take very great, I mean, I take great care of my voice
17:35because that's sort of my thing. So anyway, so Atlas, the homeless guy she slept with as a
17:42teenager who her father half killed, he is violent too, because he misunderstands something
17:52and just assaults, like doesn't wait to find out, just assaults. And it's all this cliche,
17:56no, no, no, wait, I won't understand you, don't understand, it's not the way. And everyone's just
18:00volatile and reactive and just kind of low IQ and all of that kind of stuff. So he's a violent guy
18:04anyway, nothing particular changes because of that down the road. Ryle has no family other than
18:13his sister, no parents or anything like that. So that's lazy writing on my, you're going to talk
18:20about the cycle of violence, you have to talk about his parents, because Lily gets to talk about
18:24her dad, but apparently Kyle is the author of his own misfortune by shooting his brother as a kid
18:30and all that kind of stuff. So that's not good. Now, Ryle, of course, surgeon guy is pathologically
18:37jealous and suspicious and all of that. And that's because he's a fairly literal piece of human
18:44garbage who uses the story, who transposes the story of him killing his brother to get women's
18:51legs open and sympathies flowing and other things flowing, I suppose. And so he progressively feels
18:57more and more unloved and feels that she's got to leave him because he's just terrible. He's like
19:01one of the worst characters I've seen in a long, long time. And we're supposed to feel like this is,
19:08you know, some great hard guy or anything like that. It's just monstrous, right? And also, so Lily
19:14has to go through all this absolutely terrible stuff. He's go through this terrible, terrible
19:18stuff in order to begin healing the cycle of abuse. And she had a comfortable home, a loving mother
19:25and a violent father, no question, terrible. He never hit her. But Atlas, the homeless kid, his
19:32mother kicks him out because his mother's boyfriends assault her, sexually assault her, we assume,
19:38and beat him up. So he's homeless, violence is directly against him and so on. And he's fine.
19:45He doesn't need to go to therapy, never mentions therapy, doesn't go through any healing process,
19:49just comes out of the army because Lord knows mental health is much served by, you know,
19:55killing people in the desert for eight years. So he comes back and he's a great restaurateur,
20:00he's a great chef, he's a great business owner, a great leader. Everything's fine. He's loving,
20:04he's caring, he's thoughtful, he's sentimental, he knows the right things to say, as does surgeon
20:10guy, despite having no experience in relationships, which is completely unbelievable. So how does he
20:15heal? How does he get better from his crazy trauma? Well, there's never any explanation
20:21for any of that. He's just perfect. And, you know, what kind of woman is it? Like, so by the end of
20:26the movie, she's almost 40, right? She's pushing 40 and she had sex with Atlas, homeless guy,
20:32when she was like, I don't know, 16, 17, maybe 18, probably 17, because 18, you're out of high
20:38school any of these days. So it's, you know, been almost a quarter century and she's like,
20:44but he's still here for me. I can pursue the bad boy. And then the nice guy,
20:4923 years later is just ready and is going to take on me. And he's going to take on a single mom
20:57with a kid by a violent, wealthy sociopath who hates him and can make her life legal hell for
21:04years. Yeah, he's going to sign up for that. Because Lord knows, really hot, successful,
21:09wealthy restauranteurs are just looking for single moms with psycho, violent, wealthy exes
21:13who hate their guts. Yeah, that's just going to be a great life, but it doesn't matter what the man
21:17wants. It's what she needs is the only thing that matters. And the other thing too, the mother is
21:22portrayed sympathetically, but Lily says, basically, if I stay, I'm a bad mother. But then her mother
21:28stayed, but it's apparently a good mother. And even though her mother stayed, not only when she
21:33was being sexually assaulted or raped, maybe, but also being beaten half to death. And then her
21:39husband beats a young boy, a boy, a young man, half to death, and she stays with him anyway.
21:45But apparently having the mom around, Lily's mom around, who stayed with this half murdering
21:51psychopath, it's totally fine to raise your kids. Totally fine to raise Lily's kids. It's a
21:55wonderful thing that she's there. It's just wild. It's absolutely wild. And also there's no talk
22:07about history. People don't talk about their childhoods. They don't talk about their past.
22:11They just gaze into each other's eyes and fondle each other's dimpled asses. Not that there's
22:17anything wrong with that. That sounds like a good Tuesday night, but nobody says, oh yeah,
22:24my parents were abusive. And nobody says, gee, why are you single? A beautiful woman single
22:28in your late 30s. There must be something that's going on here. You know, hot surgeon
22:33has never settled down. Why not? And of course, hot surgeon guy's, Ryle's sister is Lily's best
22:42friend, works in the flower shop, never mentions, by the by, never mentions that her brother killed
22:47someone. It never comes up, never mentions. And it's like, what? How is that a thing? How is that
22:53possible that nobody ever talks about anything? So yeah, it is really just appalling. Also this
23:00Lily as a teenager, she sees this homeless guy. Her dad's literally the mayor. I think he's the
23:05mayor, right? And her dad can't help this because there's no social services. Like the woman who
23:10wrote this book was originally a social services worker. And so she knows that there's tons of
23:17social services available for kids who are kicked out because their mother dates abusive people.
23:22So why can't she just, instead of getting him food and having sex with him, why doesn't she
23:29actually get him some help? But apparently that's not a thing that happens. And that's
23:37really, really, really sad and doesn't make a lot of sense. Oh, there's another thing too. Remember,
23:42surgeon guy doesn't take care of, he's punching, throwing things, grabbing things, doesn't take
23:46care of his hands at all. So then he's got this crazy 27 hour surgery. And the day before he,
23:52you know, slashes his hand half to the bone on broken glass and burns the crap out of it,
23:58grabbing white hot things out of the stuff. So his hand is gashed, slashed and burnt,
24:04but he just goes ahead and does the surgery anyway. I mean, no sense, makes no sense whatsoever.
24:10How could this possibly happen? Can you imagine the liability? You're doing a delicate surgery,
24:14someone dies, and then they find out that your hand was gashed half to the bone and burnt to
24:20shit, and you went ahead and did the surgery anyway. You'd never be cleared for surgery.
24:24My uncle fainted once or passed out once for 10 seconds landing a plane, was never allowed to fly
24:29again. You think you'd be cleared for surgery with your hand in a broken, bloody, burnt pore
24:34where you lost mobility and sense of touch? And oh my God, just phone a doctor and phone a surgeon
24:39and say, would you be allowed to operate in this way? And they would, of course, they would say,
24:44yeah, they would say no. But so it's just that level of eyes rolling like a Vegas slot machine
24:50unreality that it just makes the movie pretty hard to follow. So yeah, it's crazy. How do you
25:01beat up a kid and face no consequences and so on? So yeah, it's very sad. It's very sad. And the
25:07degree of delusion is just wild. You base your relationship based on lust, which isn't even
25:13really lust. And you don't talk about your history. Nobody talks about how messed up they are.
25:18Nobody gets any psychological help and you just pound your way through things, get pregnant. But
25:22then super hot restaurateur, wealthy guy from your past will just come in and scoop you up at the end
25:30of all of this and take in you and deal with your psycho ex-husband and raise your kid. You know,
25:39the man who can heal the heart he didn't break and raise the child he didn't make. It's like,
25:44she'll have no respect for him. He's a cuck and a simp. And that's really, really sad. And holding
25:49this hope out is really, really terrible. And she mentions this once, right? She mentions,
25:54oh, I got all the clock ticking stuff and all of that. I'm going to have kids. I want to have
25:58kids and all of that. Oh, and this narcissistic surgeon guy, when his sister has just given birth,
26:04he decides to make it all about himself and propose to Lily. And oh, gosh, it's just absolutely
26:13wretched. And Lily's, sorry, surgeon guy's sister has a husband who's Indian, who's like this great
26:20husband and this perfect guy. Because Lord knows that, you know, India as a whole is a culture
26:25that truly respects women. And, you know, just wonderful, most wonderful husbands in the known
26:31universe. Everyone knows that. And that's just the kind of stuff that you see these days, almost
26:36without fault and without pause. So, you know, overall, I think it's worth watching the movie,
26:43as long as she was kind of aware of the sort of relentless propaganda, but look for this sort of
26:47soulless lack of desire for the men that is. And this would actually kind of make sense in a way,
26:53because a woman who's, you know, pushing 40, who's been passed up and down like the duchy on the
26:59left-hand side, you know, she's probably luster pair bonding. She's just kind of depressed. And
27:03she's depressed about being good looking because she knows that's the only value she brings to the
27:07table. She doesn't do much to help him, her husband. She doesn't do a boyfriend. She doesn't
27:12do much to support him. She doesn't really run his household. She's just there and is attractive.
27:18And that's, you know, really kind of depressing. So look for that lack of love. Look for the fact
27:23that women never do anything wrong, never do anything wrong. It's always just the man and his
27:28history and his problems and his pathology and his issues, because she never raises a voice.
27:34In the book, when he cuts and gashes his hand, one of the reasons he hits her is because she's
27:39laughing at him, which is, you know, you don't hit anyone for that, but you can understand how
27:42that might sting being glorious a man, a narcissistic man. But she never, she's absolutely
27:49perfect. She can't explore, and nobody can explore the dark side of female nature in movies.
27:54Nobody can explore secondary gains. Why is she there, right? Is it for the money? Is it for the
27:58status? Is it for the sex? Why does she put up with this stuff, right? Well, it's just because
28:01of her. So she can't take responsibility, even though she's pushing 40, because it's all the
28:06fault of her father and what happened, you know, 25 to 35 years ago, right? It's all the fault of
28:13her father. She has no agency. And so she has no agency. She's a victim. He's a bad actor.
28:20Her mother, even though she stayed with the guy who beat a kid half to death, is fine and
28:27wonderful. And, you know, she can't think of anything nice to say. Lily, the main character,
28:33can't think of anything nice to say about her mother. Then she says, her father, sorry,
28:37she can't think of anything nice to say about her father. She's got five things. She can't think of
28:42one. And then she says, when her mother says, I loved him, and Lily then says, me too. Is that
28:48lying? She's lying to her mother about loving her father. Is she telling the truth? But then at the
28:52end, she still can't think of anything nice about her father. So, I mean, I like the speech. I
28:58really do like the speech that she gives in the movie to her husband when, after the baby's born,
29:05she realized she's got to leave him. And she says, you know, so this is your daughter. And who,
29:12by the way, this is kind of weird to me. So surgeon guy shot his own brother, killed him
29:19when surgeon guy was a little kid. And then his wife says, I've named your daughter after the
29:27brother you killed. And he's like, oh, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. And I'm
29:31like, what? That's insane. So every time you say your daughter's name, because it's, I guess,
29:38a sort of gender neutral name. So then every time you're reminded of the brother you killed,
29:42every single time, you just, PTSD never ends. Your brother's death is now resurrected in your
29:47daughter's name. That's mental. I mean, that's honestly, I don't even know what to say, how
29:52bizarre and disturbed. That is a sort of beyond mental, really. But she gives him a speech. And
29:58she says, you know, when your daughter grows up, if she's got a guy who bites her clavicle and
30:03hits her and pushes her down the stairs and so on, and then she's got to leave, he says, yeah,
30:08she's got to leave and all of that. Now, that's a good speech, which is universal principles,
30:12right? And I've had this conversation a bunch of times with people in call-in shows about their
30:16own parents and stuff like that. But I think that is very interesting. And that was a good speech.
30:24The acting is very good. She does a great performance, as does he. The sister is kind
30:30of quirky and charming and funny. The Indian husband is funny and warm. And again, super
30:35wealthy and never needs to work, really. But I think it's worth watching. Obviously, be aware
30:41of the programming, the propaganda. It is a wild story in many ways. And as long as you're kind of
30:47aware of the machinery that's trying to manipulate you, it's well worth watching as a whole. And
30:53I'm curious what you guys think. What are your thoughts on the movie? And would you recommend it?
30:59What have I gotten right? What have I gotten wrong? What do you agree or disagree with?
31:02I would love to hear what you think. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I really,
31:06really would appreciate that. Lots of love from up here. My friends, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.