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As for the movie. It was pretty bad for a few reasons.

1. This whole, letting really old men be in action movies has gotten out of hand. The first shot of Harrison Ford in this movie made me just about fall out of my chair. He looked like an 80 year old man (as joked in the movie). Hell, he looked too old in The Fugitive. We were also assaulted with Al Pacino in a very terrible action movie 88 minutes and Micheal Douglas in more movies than I care to recall. But make no mistake, it’s not about ageism as it is about offering respectable roles to our mature actors/actresses (this doesn’t seem to be as big of an issue with women). For instance, as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman have aged, their accepted roles reflect their maturity.

2. It would also appear some of the story for this film was ripped from various other movies. There is no honor in that at all.

3. When you have to make Aliens a large part of your action adventure movie set in the past, your movie is officially garbage.

Which leads me to the following statement: Hollywood needs to officially shut down. In a short period of time, it is no longer producing art and entertainment. Make no mistake the psychological cycle we are all in is simple. Entertainment is a large part of our lives so when a new film is made we will still go and see it, hoping we will be entertained like we used to be in the past. However, if you check around for reviews from the general public after these films have made their money opening week, then we can sense that an overwhelming number of movie goers are consistently disappointed with movies they have seen. Sure making films is still lucrative for Hollywood studios on some level because they are counting on the initial release where the masses aren’t aware that their movies are garbage until they’ve already shelled out the money.

It’s time the moving going public comes to terms with the death of Hollywood and filmmaking returns to the grassroots level.

A Summary:
A 13 year old girl (Jodie Foster, who looked 10 at the time but was actually 14), lives alone in a house where she had been living with her father who had a terminal illness. Knowing he was going to die, he came up with a plan for how she could live alone for three years. He paid the lease on the house for three years and then walked out and never returned. He also didn’t want her mother to get custody of her so he told her to put some white powder (which turned out to be cyanide) in her mother’s drink if she finds her. Her mother did indeed find her and she put the cyanide in her tea and served the tea along with almond cookies. So when her mother commented on the almond taste of the tea, she blamed it on the cookies. She killed her mother and put her body in the cellar, keeping the body preserved with things you can put on them she discovered from library books. There is a pedophile (Martin Sheen) who is constantly after the young girl. His mother leased the house to the girl and her father. The mother is a high class bitch who barges in and bosses the girl around. She insisted on going into the cellar. When she did, she saw the dead body of the girl’s mother, screamed and tried to leave the cellar. In doing so, she accidentally hit her head, fell down the stairs and died. So now there are two bodies in the cellar. When trying to get rid of the woman’s car, she meets a boy who walks with a limp who looks to be about 16. He helps her get rid of the car and the two of them become friends then lovers (that’s right). He lies for her and helps her bury the bodies under a tree in the yard while it was cold and raining. He eventually gets pneumonia. Oh yeah and at some point the pedophile killed the girl’s hamster. Then there is a bunch of nonsensical stuff and basically, while the boy was in the hospital the pedophile has snuck in an hid in the cellar. He thinks he knows the girl has killed his mother and someone else and basically tells her, she’s going to be his mistress (yeah an effin 13 year old!) to keep him from telling. So she makes him some tea with the cyanide in it and kills him.

Alright, where to begin. First of all, I was absolutely sick of people just barging into this young girl’s house. Perhaps that is the feeling the director wanted viewers to experience. It felt as if anyone who felt like it would just walk into this girl’s house. It did give you a sense of this child’s powerlessness; which I guess is what the movie is about; however bizarre and stupid a tale it is.

The things that really bothered me the most are the scenes with the pedophile and this young girl murdering people and becoming a predator for the sake of “freedom” or for any reason for that matter. I’ll touch more upon these topics in my post about predatory filmmaking.

There was a scene in the movie where the young girl gets completely nude. I remember thinking to myself “I seriously hope that was Jodie Foster’s adult sister”. It turns out, it was in fact her sister because Jodie Foster refused to be nude and had to put up a fuss about not doing it. I find it disturbing that a child had to stand her ground with grown ass adults about not wanting to be nude on film. Imagine if she wasn’t as strong a child as she was? Or if she was so disillusioned about fame that she thought it was a good idea at the time? Jodie Foster’s older sister was also used as a body double in Taxi Driver. I was bothered by the young girl having sex with the boy because of her age. Teenagers have sex, bottom line so I’m not going to trip too much on that. But she was too young, period. And she had no parents so to me, it felt even more wrong because she had no guidance and despite how intelligent she was, she was still a very young person. Apparently Jodie Foster had a problem with this as well but the director wouldn’t budge.

What I did find interesting was seeing Jodie Foster as a young person. It’s just amazing that the actress she was then is the same that she is now. Her acting style never changed. I guess it shouldn’t since what she was doing was working so well. It was also interesting to see Veronica Cartwright as a 12 year old in The Birds (1963) for the same reason. I remembered her only from the movie Alien (1979). The same for the Lawrence brothers (The two oldest were in the movie Pulse (1988) I watched the other day); very cute.

This film’s plot was pretty boring and well… stupid actually. The young girl lied so much you couldn’t really believe the story about the dad or the mother. Even if it were true, it is the most ridiculous plan a grown man could have come up with for this child. Jodie Foster was also wearing this really hideous wig the whole time as well. *Smile*

Now, on to the film. First of all filmmaker, Nancy Meckler, did an excellent job of telling this story. The film starts off with a black and white sequence of two young girls together. The older one is taking care of the younger one, then they are playing together. They are dirty and obviously poor. Then the mother comes in and takes the younger girl. It is clear the mother is quite fond of the younger daughter. She walks away with the little girl as the little one waves goodbye to the older daughter. Afterwards, the film starts with the dark stairs leading from the sisters’ room to the bloody murder scene on the main stairs and the movie starts from the beginning when the youngest sister, Lea (Jodhi May), comes to work with her sister, Christine (Joely Richardson), at a house owned by a middle class woman, Madame Danzard (Julie Walters), and her adult daughter, Isabelle Danzard (Sophie Thursfield).

Right away you can get a feel of the work environment. They are standing there in silence as Madame Danzard (Julie Walters) decides if she’s going to officially agree to have the younger one work there. Then she agrees, knowing she is getting two maids for the price of one. It is a tense moment. The effectiveness of this film requires viewers to put themselves in the shoes of the characters. If you are an emotionally connected person, you will have no choice.

The person who cast this film also did a wonderful job. Although these two look nothing like the real sisters, they look very effectively how you would think they should look for this story and their personalities are what make this story work well. There is no way Jodhi May would have been able to pull off the role of Christine and vice versa. So the casting was perfect.

So right off the bat this woman agrees to pay 150 francs a month (not sure if it’s for each woman or for both) and the only time off they had was on Sundays until 4pm. So imagine being paid that little, having to split it with another person, then give it all to your mother who only loves one of you, and the only time you have off is Sundays until 4 pm every week. That is already sounding like a seriously messed up situation. On top of that, they are sharing one small room with a small bed. They happen to be happy about that given they come from worse conditions. *I gathered 150 francs wasn’t much money because when they went for a photograph it cost them 50 francs.

A run down on the plot. The older sister convinces Madame Danzard (Julie Walters) to hire her younger sister and she would get two maids for the price of one. The woman, being the asshole that she is, takes advantage of Christine’s desire to have her sister with her. So the young Lea comes. The sisters are happy for a while. Every now and then Christine gets angry but it was usually over the relationship Lea has with their mother. After the two became sexual, the older sister would get angry because she thought her sister would leave her. Isabelle Danzard (Sophie Thursfield) tried to get Lea’s attention a few times. This was causing some problems between Lea and Christine but then they would have sex and all would be well. Then Madame Danzard started becoming more and more hateful towards the sisters and began to really make their lives hell. The sisters also began to retreat more and more into their own world and their relationship. Their doing so wasn’t entirely because they just wanted to get it on or be crazy, it was because they wanted to be free of the conditions of their lives. They wanted to be able to go away from their environment and live their lives together as they saw fit. These were two sisters trapped in a set position in life they were not happy with. So they’d been trying to save their money so they could leave. The climax of the movie was when not only did the iron short out, causing an already stressed Lea to burn the daughter’s silk blouse, but they knew they didn’t have enough money to leave. So what lead up to the murders in my opinion were two women who felt optionless in a situation that would have been extremely stressful to anyone.

From the start, the younger Lea (Jodhi May) just seems … young. She doesn’t come across as being of lesser intelligence and in the film she is the one who really initiates the sexual relationship. The older sister, Christine (Joely Richardson) seems more mature and she seems more structured and less carefree.

I must also point out that the mother in this movie is down right sadistic and the daughter, Isabelle Danzard (Sophie Thursfield), is actually worse off than the two sisters. She was literally a captive living with her mother. One would not have been shocked if she’d hung herself in the basement.

For instance, Madame Danzard (Julie Walters) seemed to constantly make it clear that her daughter, Isabelle Danzard (Sophie Thursfield) was trapped there and she may as well do things that took forever to complete, i.e. the beadwork. Then she got her daughter’s hopes up by saying they would take a trip to Paris. She waited until her daughter was smiling and excited, then she started breaking her back down slowly until she announced they would forgo going to Paris altogether. It’s kinda like the mother in the movie Sybil who asked a young Sybil if she wanted a cookie then kicked her down when she reached for it. When Madame Danzard was listening to some upbeat music and dancing around the living room, she deliberately put on some funeral music and stopped dancing when her daughter came into the room. It was as if she wanted her daughter to be in an unpleasant environment. In the same scene, when the daughter enjoyed a chocolate from a dish on the table, her mother came and put the dish away so she couldn’t have any more.

This film shows some different things that can happen in anyone’s life. For instance, the older sister, Christine, can’t stand her mother and for good reason. There are many instances where a parent will favor one child over the other. This was the case with Christine. The other downside to this scenario is that you will have siblings who care very much about each other but have two very different relationships going on with the parent. If you are the loved one, how do you cope with loving your mother who loves you and not the sister that you love so much? And if you are not the loved one, how to do you cope with loving you sister who is loved by your mother who doesn’t love you? The unloved one has some issues with loyalty. So when Christine sees that Lea still has a blanket her mother made for her, she gets angry. I don’t think this is some crazy schizophrenic reaction as some would like to think, this is the effects of the relationship dynamics at play between these characters. In addition, Christine seems to have suffered other major disappointments when trying to get close to other people. She tried to get close to a nun she idolized at the convent and the nun pushed her away and wouldn’t even talk to her. That hurt her a great deal as well and she carried that around with her.

One thing that keeps jumping out in this movie is the tremendous amount of stress these maids worked under. We aren’t talking about a time period where you could give your employer your ass to kiss and just go find another job. This was a time period of small towns and word of mouth and real references needed to get good jobs. This was a time period of real ass poverty. There weren’t any McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts trash bins you could rummage through for food if you were down and out. So you could see the extreme nervousness when the younger sister, Lea, started working there. The Madame Danzard went around checking everything with a white glove. Hell, I’ve quit jobs over less stress than I can imagine they experienced as maids during that time.

The classism in this film was also overwhelming. The mother and daughter joked about the lowly state of the sisters. They made nasty comments when the sisters came home from church as if they weren’t worthy of going. The mother wouldn’t even move her feet when she made the younger sister pick up tiny beads from the carpet. Also, classism and the inherent issues accompanying servitude, both sides had valid reasons for a little paranoia. For the middle class ladies, they experienced maids who were not trustworthy or who would gossip. For Christine, she’d worked in homes where she was in constant fear. She liked where she was currently working because she knew exactly what Madame Danzard (Julie Walters) expected and she knew on some level, because Madame Danzard checked everything she did, there would be no surprises. In addition, both sides never really spoke to each other so you can imagine the incorrect assumptions either side could come up with when they don’t know or communicate with each other.

There is also a point when you can see Christine doesn’t like to see her sister laboring. It was like she wanted something better for her sister. You can see this when they are on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor, and you can see her get angry when she sees her sister being made to pick up the tiny beads. Lea was all the Christine had. One has to consider that as well. All other attempts to make connections with other people failed for Christine. The only person she was close to was Lea. Lea did have her mother and Christine so it was a different dynamic.

I remember being completely amazed by the performance of these women at the end of this film. You could clearly see Christine trying very hard to hold things together. She did seem to really try to smooth the problem over. Madame Danzard was on the stairs breaking her down. I watched this scene and I thought it was a perfect example of stripping someone of their dignity. Madame Danzard had been doing so up to that point but the encounter at the end was a full assault.

It was never proven that the Papin sisters ever had a sexual relationship and they denied having one back then. There is also a lot of psycho-bullshit aimed at “explaining” their behavior. I don’t mean trying to understanding what kind of stressors would drive them to do what they did, but there were labels and assumptions made that really don’t apply to them. One site claimed the older sister would have been labeled as paranoid schizophrenic today, however there is nothing about her behavior that would warrant such a label or that the sisters suffered from shared paranoid disorder. You can’t just label someone with a disorder when they have a valid reason for being paranoid. It’s a natural phenomenon. There was also no indication that they didn’t trust the whole outside world, just that they didn’t trust who they were working for eventually and they had valid reason for that. Both sides trusted each other at the start of the film but by the end, their lack of communication and the their division by class caused both sides to be begin to behave differently and become paranoid.

Close to the end of the film, Madame Danzard said Christine doesn’t speak and walks by her as if she’s not even there. Her daughter replies that she’s always been that way. Later Christine says Madame Danzard doesn’t speak to them anymore. Lea replies, she never has.

What is The Host anyway? The Host begins its deliciously creative tale with a man being forced to dump toxic chemicals from a military morgue down a drain which leads to the Han river. In doing so, the chemicals in the river create a freakishly large, mutated river creature.

This river creature eventually jumps out of the water to snatch food, i.e. people, which it stores for later. During the creature’s first encounter, it snatches a young girl and dives back into the water while the father stood watching helplessly. Naturally, the family of this young girl thinks she is dead.

The government rounds up everyone who was present during this encounter with the creature and quarantines them, claiming contact with the creature causes a virus. The family of the girl is rounded up and is waiting in a hospital when the young girl, not dead but “stored” in a sewer by the creature for later consumption, calls her father from a cell phone she gets from dead person “stored” for later consumption. This is when things start to get more exciting. The family has to escape the government quarantine and go look for the girl. Once they escape, their own purpose is finding the little girl.

What makes this movie so great? Well… so many things. For starters I absolutely love movies that are well filmed. Don’t we all? What I mean in this case is how completely well composed each shot is. Each shot is perfection.

My eyes were completely glued to this film the first time I watched it and the 100th time I watched it. I love creative writing and I think this film was a bit of that. It had wonderful imagery, great characters and the filmmakers did a wonderful job building suspense.

My favorite shots are:

1. The mutant creature diving into the water when it was noticed hanging from the bridge.

2. The shot of the creature running towards the people on the first encounter at the river.

3. The shot of the creature diving back into the water with the young girl and another person in its mouth.

4. When the men in the family were shooting at the creature and each time one got off a shot, they fell.

5. The shot where the sister shoots the creature with the flaming arrow then turns and walks away.

This film is full of great shots! I can say, however, I don’t like bratty children in any film so I was a little annoyed at the slightly spoiled nature of the young girl. I don’t care what the reasons were for making her character that way, I didn’t like it. She did have some redeeming qualities however. She looked out for the little one stuck in the sewer with her. I was hoping his brother would live because it was nice seeing a young man care for his brother and make sure he was safe. He deserved to live.

The end was a little silly too but hey, I loved it anyway. The little boy would not have survived. I bet that little girl wished her family new CPR. I know I did. Silly stuff is forgiven when you tell a good story.

I did think this film had some absolutely fantastic characters. Being both a filmmaker and creative writer, I absolutely loved the multidimensional characters in this movie. The actors/actresses did really well. The filmmaker also consistently played with the traits of the characters throughout the film. We also saw each of the adult characters grow by the end of the film. The father of the girl finally asserted himself, the sister went from being a slow poke who missed opportunities because she was too slow, to being a person of action and speed when her niece needed her, the other brother who felt sorry for himself the whole movie finally got over himself and did what he needed to do to help his family.

I also absolutely love the entire “First Encounter” sequence. I don’t even think I blinked my eyes the first time I saw it. The creature looked excellent (until it was on fire at the end). This scene featured another of many great shots was when the creature ran into the trailer at the river filled with people who thought they could hide there to escape it. This scene had a lot of great energy. It is hard to explain exactly why I was so captivated by this scene. Perhaps I could image myself filming it or being one of the people running and screaming. That must have been fun!

My favorite aspect of this film is that I had no idea it was supposed to be comical until the scene where everyone was in the gym mourning those who’d been killed. When the main characters fell all over the floor in grief, I just about died it was so funny (you have to watch it to see what I mean). It was also funny when during all the mourning the man yelled at the woman for parking in the wrong spot.

There were just so many things. Like for instance, the creature would put its prey in its mouth, head first, to keep them alive while underwater. It was a rather subtle thing to add to the character of the creature. This film also had great “Moments of Silence”. For instance, when the creature snatched the young girl, the grandfather emerged from the trailer and it was dead silent. The father watched his daughter being taken away and it was dead silent. Excellent stuff!

I could spend forever talking about this movie but I gotta run! Hope you watch it and enjoy!

Other Great Scenes:

First things first; I had a problem with the whole process of creating certain types of men based on a desire to be the ultimate in human representation and also something greater than nature itself. It represented a group of people who in their severe insecurity desperately needed to be bigger than life; they imagine that possibility only to be achieved by becoming what they perceive as more formidable than nature’s worst or scariest predator or element (wolf/beast, immune from the cold, etc.). Although this perception of animals, the elements, etc. as being these formidable harsh things is immature and reveals a lack of understanding for the specific principles and forces that are at work in these worlds. I mean, a growling wolf doesn’t kill for fun or to prove it’s a force to be reckoned with.

Also, if you are a group of people who are afraid of death or don’t accept the cycle of life or your place in it, you embrace death to its ultimate, ignoring death’s true purpose. So in this movie they created people who pretty much live to die… defeating life’s purpose and also creating a society where no one is truly attached emotionally with each other. The reality will then be that you aren’t going to have a society where men can nonchalantly offer up their son’s lives for death at war claiming “I can easily replace him”, and have a society that cares about each other and it’s survival as a whole. That’s a contradiction some seem to think can exists and make sense. I mean, training your people to defend each other and the land you need to occupy to survive needs no “honor code” for justification. What was presented in this film is a whole other psychological beast.

Strictly from a story writing point of view, all history aside, we had basically 300 hundred ridiculously buff men in capes, panties and sandals, easily demolishing non-white races, a guy who claims to be a god but can’t even control his own emotions or one who will let some cat jump up in the air for like a damn hour and cut his hand off …. and the most ridiculous of all… armies of millions who can’t seem to figure out how to use THEIR shields?? I’m just saying… when there’s no challenge, it’s just a joke. With all they can imagine their perfection to be, it would only take one critical thinker to get the idea to spray all 300 of them with kerosene and throw a torch….

If it weren’t for the sole fact that it was said that women of Sparta were valued, I wouldn’t even go here with the male/female thing but since they did tell that lie, I had to point some things out. The love scene was the perfect example of the value of women in this film – just a fuck. She stroked his ego, then became a receptacle, and then became the ultimate in “her support of him”. It would have turned out differently had the shots been of both of them. For the entire film however, there was only one woman with a hint of power and even she wasn’t shit and had to whore for her man when he left; while all the rest of the women were carrying water and pots and looking like peasants…. They weren’t even valued enough to be allowed to raise their sons to adulthood. I mean, when the main female wanted to get support for her man and his little cape wearing buddies, she didn’t huddle up with all the other valued women and get some results.

“He praises the film for its portrayal of “the Spartans’ heroic code,” and of “the key role played by women in backing up, indeed reinforcing, the male martial code of heroic honor,” while expressing reservations about its “‘West’ (goodies) vs ‘East’ (baddies) polarization.””

Since when did servitude and blind support = women are valued? I guess valued as long as they back up and reinforce male martial code. Otherwise, it’s in the well you go.

There was historical truth in 300 based on the Battle of Thermopylae, the battle and the themes of the rest of the movie are two different things. The director kinda boasts about how historically accurate the film is but then hides behind it being a fantasy film when he gets ripped on about it.

My overall point is this, there are quite a few movies that offer a distorted and/or false portrait of cohesive societies of old. This was one of them. The Greeks huddled up to keep themselves from being defeated by the Persian Empire. Nothing wrong with that. That makes perfect sense. It was historically significant in that the Greek city states came together to repel this threat. That makes for a substantial film. But 300 just used that historical event to say something else … mans superiority over everything, and weak vs. strong based on being the best bringers of death, and their warped version of masculinity (truth be told any animal (including man) male or female will defend its self and its loved ones with ferocity if living in a functional community). There were many functional cultures in Europe and many other parts of the globe who weren’t punks but at the same time, didn’t make themselves conquers of nature and man simply because they could be good bringers of death. They defended themselves when there was a threat and took care of each other as a community as a basis for their sustainable survival.

I can appreciate a good fantasy film. But knowing the power of film in a society where children, young people, and adults get their life meaning from TV and videos, it is dangerous to present stories with some historical truth as exaggerated historical fantasy or as if it’s something one should aspire to be even when it was jacked up back then. I mean, if these folks were interested in presenting a fantasy film that had a period effect, they could have made up a much more interesting storyline with better and more challenging characters. I have a hard time believing this movie didn’t have a main message about who is weak and who is not based on ethnic and sexual grounds and is using a bit of history as a shield.

And of course there is the selective “historical truth”:
“Touraj Daryaee, associate professor of Ancient History at California State University, Fullerton, criticizes the central theme of the movie, that of “free” and “democracy loving” Spartans against “slave” Persians. Daryaee states that the Achaemenid (Persian) empire hired and paid people regardless of their sex or ethnicity, whereas in fifth-century Athens “less than 14%” of the population participated in democratic government, and “nearly 37%” of the population were slaves. He further states that Sparta “was a militaristic monarchy with a council of elders which decided political matters, but it was not a democracy.””

Living in a culture where everyone is disconnected, it is easy to throw out substandard truths and attract people to concepts and realities they are missing from their lives. It’s unfortunate. This is also how Hitler was able to get an entire country on board for utter madness. He offered them a distorted truth and motivation for achievement of something the majority of Germans needed in their lives.

One thing that threw me off was the feeling that the story was about just the woman and possibly the young man; until I realized the story was actually about the woman and her husband. I believe the young man was a younger, nicer version of her husband and represents how he was when they were dating or first married. One thing that first lead me to this was the golf. What are the chances of this drifter coming into her home who happens to also be good at golf? Perhaps she was trying to stop him from playing golf because it may have been the first thing that caused her husband to become the man that he is (for instance, golf symbolizing business and affluence that her husband obviously strives for, (the ball hitting the woman in the car was to show how his goals in life have hurt people and have been destructive) Then there are other things; like with the police when they checked the young man’s background they said he had a degree, etc. (I also noticed that while this guy was a drifter he drove a nice BMW bike, his character was almost to say there was a balance between the finer things and being humble (i.e. hand washing clothes when you don’t have to, yet driving a nice vehicle). And once this guy was locked up, the woman’s husband tried to be much nicer but this is what lead me to think that the story is also just as much about him. I thought the husband trying to be nice once the drifter was “locked up” represented the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personalities of a lot of abuse spouses/significant others. It reminded me of when abusive persons beat their loved ones then try to act nice or remorseful afterwards; claiming they will never do it again. In this case, the husband was trying to reassure his wife he was a changed man.

I asked myself, why would the husband be able to interact with the young man? His interaction with this young guy is a war between the mean person he is and perhaps the good person he used to be when he was younger. His current self is so determine to stay on the path to what he thinks life should be like, it drives him to fight the more carefree side of himself. I mean the end is like “I know that nice part of me is somewhere around here threatening to ruin all that I’ve worked hard to get at his expense.”

The zero on the scale is pretty straight forward. Who they used to be when he was a different person, doesn’t exist anymore… If you want to get more silly you could say, when he fixed the scale, he weighed 60 she weighed 40 = 100 which could be taken as together they are 100% or that their relationship is uneven with him being more important than her.

One could also see that this young guy was just in the wife’s mind also because he seemed to do some dumb things that if you are a seasoned drifter, you probably wouldn’t do. Like, just hanging up the phone on the dead guy’s son AND still staying in the apartment like nothing is wrong. I mean, I’d like to think that a seasoned drifter would know he should bounce. Or always leaving his bike right outside the houses they break into. I mean really? But if this man is created by this woman’s mind, I can see why these mistakes were made because its really her who is making them.

I also think that whole prison scene again was back to being directly about the husband. He was trying very hard to cage that part of himself. The nice part of himself or who he used to be. So the nice part of himself, learned to be there stealth-fully(and in the end, the wife learned to relate to him as if he were still that nice guy he used to be. i.e. see past the abusive person who he’d become like so many abused women do). The cops were a part of the husband’s reality. They kept his nicer self in check.

I also think the couple who’s home they went back to and just let her sleep, represents what they could have been. Those two were shown watering or tending to plants whenever they were in a shot, representing two nurturing people; which would be required for a good relationship.

In the end, the wife decided to stay with the husband because as the scene would show, she was determined to hold on to the person he used to be (i.e. the young caring man). By the end of the movie, the husband had not changed. So this movie was simply a glimpse of the dynamics of abusive relationships. It covers some of the common behaviors and decisions of both the abused and the abusers.