Despite its delicate subject matter, It Ends With Us is a struggle to care about
I recently enjoyed the opportunity to travel through Eastern Europe with my girlfriend. From Hungary up to Estonia, we travelled by train, plane, bus, and boat across vast swaths of the continent for three weeks. We had a great time; the only downside to a holiday like this is that we were constantly on the go.
We were never in a city for more than a couple of days, which meant early rises to get as much in as we could—not to mention the bouts of travel between locations. We’ve been home for nearly a month, but I’m still feel like I’m operating on a sleep deficit. I can get nine hours of sleep and still spend my days longing for a nap.
Cue It Ends With Us.
The seats at my local cinema are the deep, ‘deluxe’ kind with leg rests, so it’s not hard to get comfortable. I hadn’t chosen to see It Ends With Us for another reason than ‘I suppose I’ll see that’ but given how the first half of it is the movie equivalent of a lullaby, you can’t blame a guy for closing his eyes.
Wanting to End it All
When florist Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) starts dating neurosurgeon Ryle (Justin Baldoni), she’s… she starts dating him and… she’s a florist—wait I said that already… She used to date a homeless boy when she was a teenager so there are flashbacks to that…
Look, the first half of this movie is nothing but dull set up. Now, I’ll fully admit to closing my eyes during stretches of the more tiresome dialogue, but I never fully fell asleep, so it’s not like I’m struggling to describe this movie because I wasn’t conscious for it—it’s that literally nothing of interest happens for so, so long.
The premise is that two people are dating. There is nothing about these people that make them interesting. The man is rich, and the woman’s dad died. I know this is a straight-up romance movie and not a rom-com, but the lack of comedy during their courting and lack of depth to the characters punishes active engagement in the story.
I needed a better reason for why these characters ended up dating than “They’re attractive, who cares, shut up”.
Skipping to the End
I aim to avoid spoiling anything after the first quarter or so of any movie I review, but I can’t begin to touch on anything remotely interesting unless I talk about events that don’t happen until an hour or so in.
I wholeheartedly do not recommend this movie, but if for some reason you still want to see it without knowing what it’s actually about, feel free to stop reading, because I’m going to get into it.
Still with me? Of course, you are.
So, this is a movie about domestic violence. Lily’s father used to beat her mother. The boy she dated in high school’s mother was also an abuse victim. Lily struggles with the possibility that Ryle might be abusive as Atlas—the boy she dated in school—re-enters her life after a chance encounter.
This is all, of course, quite tragic. I’m hesitant to criticise how It Ends With Us portrays how victims cope with domestic abuse. Indeed, the moments where such violence is depicted on-screen are stomach-dropping and hard to watch.
Ultimately though, the movie puts you in the uncomfortable position of… not caring. The reaction the movie’s looking for is a deep, sombre, empathy for its characters, but up until this point, it has done so little make you like Lily, or Ryle, or Atlas, or anyone. The movie squanders its first half on the most humdrum of romances that by the time the story is doing something even a little bit interesting, it’s too little, too late.
End of the Line
The most interesting characters in fiction are the flawed, broken ones. Lily is neither. At best/worst, she comes across as somewhat emotionless, maybe even a little apathetic to the world around her, but it’s not like this is the flaw her character learns to overcome. Lily’s traumatic backstory doesn’t seem to have much of an impact on her as an adult.
Maybe this is on purpose. Maybe It Ends With Us challenges us to empathise with all victims of domestic violence—even the ones you don’t have a strong connection to—but I doubt it. It reads more like a lack of subtext, or even just a lack of thematic clarity. I said that this movie is ‘about’ domestic violence. That’s not fully true. The ‘topic’ of the movie is domestic violence.
While the movie is obviously not ‘pro-domestic violence’, neither is it condescendingly ‘anti-domestic violence’, operating instead inside a moral grey area. While I commend the movie for finding an element of realism in how it handles such a sensitive topic, it fails to deliver on anything else.
The romance is drab, the drama is soapy, but most importantly, I didn’t care about Lily. She is an incredibly passive character; a character lacking any definition outside of the men who are interested in her. She doesn’t learn any lessons, which, because she’s the main character, leaves the film feeling voiceless. I don’t know what the point of It Ends With Us is.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into things, but when a movie like this—one attempting to tackle such an important, sensitive subject—fails on so many fixable narrative levels, it’s extra disappointing. Important subject matter isn’t a substitute for good writing. This is a bad, boring movie marred by behind-the-scenes drama, which wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t drowning out important discussions about the very real issues this movie pretends to care about.
So, don’t feel bad about resting those peepers. You aren’t missing much.
***
Thanks for reading my review. If you liked it, consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien
Comments