The Drama
Many many many thoughts, but perhaps the most pressing is how unsurprising the “twist” is, and what that perhaps says about the state of America and its handling of gun violence.
No doubt there will be complexities that get lost on an international audience, despite how America centric our world has become. To deny this would be silly, we don’t grow up being trained in school how to deal with shooters, or live in fear while we learn. However, what I find deeply fascinating is how unprovoked I was to this twist, how normal it felt, and how that normality scared me.
It speaks to the ever desensitising of society, particularly young people, people growing up with a centralised platform like the internet. It’s not out of the ordinary to have somebody like Emma slip into these dark thoughts. - well side note the choice to make Emma a black woman is certainly interesting… given the lack of people with her profile who have committed crimes like this, like truly there’s only been a single person and they were accompanied by a white man, that is a whole other conversation though that the film seeks to not touch, or it does? I think it does affect some choices and especially audience perception of the film.
The film wants to tackle this idea of what is worse: Doing a medium bad thing or thinking of doing a bad bad thing? But I actually don’t think the film is about this at all. The film isn’t particularly concerned with Emma. She has reckoned with what she’s done and instead the film is Charlie’s and his contention with his ability to understand and move past what he’s learned about his lover.
The whole film has this pressure cooker of a timer, the wedding. It’s genius because not only does Charlie have to reckon with his feelings but he’s forced to accelerate that process. One does question whether or not he would’ve had any issue at all with Emma, were it not for the starting scenario. Placing Charlie in a position where he is surrounded by others is particularly important because it seems as if he’s more concerned with their thoughts than how he feels. So not only is he trying to understand himself what’s happened, but he’s also trying to justify his love and his decisions while not even sure he believes them himself.
It makes for such a brilliant character study, I truly was enamoured by Charlie and his choices and this might just be my favourite Pattinson performance.
I love how the entire thesis of the film attempts to explore the idea of starting over, and who that is granted to. Most of the characters in the film remain static from their “bad thing”. They have yet to work through that bad part of themselves, and it manifests itself in their actions, this is especially clear in Mike and Rachel. Yet these people are granted a second chance.
On the other hand, Emma has worked through her darkness. Her upbringing, and modern life in general is a breeding ground for individualism, it’s an explanation for why she had the thoughts she did, but not the sole reason - of which I don’t think there is. However, she worked through it, and found that community was the antidote.
The whole film hinging on the idea that we require justifications for actions and that if we don’t have this then something’s wrong is decidedly an issue with moral reasoning, something we’ve become obsessed with. We must have explanations for a world which is chaos, it’s contradictory. Similarly wanting clear lines, knowing when they’ve been crossed will never get us anywhere. At the end of the day the only people whose thoughts matter are the people you love, if they’re willing to see past the darkness and allow for a second chance.
People will never know the whole story of anybody else, so why concern yourself with their thoughts, maybe the scary thing is that we will never truly understand the people we love, but if we truly love them and know them as best as we can, maybe it’s on us to grant second chances, even if the world says otherwise