Everybody of course has a little bit of cringe at their early creative endeavours — but if you do some research, you will see that there is a lot of evidence to show Eggers finds The Witch near impossible to watch. His directors commentary on YouTube (https://youtu.be/K6FoU_CYlAg?si=b7hguxljhexZXRsk) kind of explains it — he seems very bogged down in extremely obscure historical details that only he and like two anthropologists would ever notice, and a handful of shots/frames that he (and really only he) says are imperfect.

And I don’t mean that he simply thinks it could be better (it would also be strange if he thought it was perfect, no notes) but he seems to think it’s basically trash that shouldn’t exist.

I point this out because The Witch is probably the most technically impressive debut feature in some time, and shows a great deal of control of process — other debuts, while good, often have flaws that even a layman would notice but forgive for being the first of something. The biggest sin The Witch commits according to its director is having the wrong kind of wood seams, and it’s a hanging offence.

The obvious answer is that he is a perfectionist, but IMO it’s not as if his later films necessarily blow it out of the water. I like a few of his movies but I find The Witch to be where he strikes a good balance between historical fidelity and an actual tangible character arc for the protagonist. A lot of his other movies don’t feel emotionally accessible in the same way. His perspective and great dislike for it is therefore interesting to me.

Anyway, posting it here for discussion. Agree or disagree, whatever.

Perhaps even more than Cassavettes, Sayles had to forge his own path when it came to financing and definitely didn't have the Hollywood pull Cassavettes had as an actor. Sayles, often working anonymously as a screenwriter-for-hire and then using the income to help finance his productions, very much depended on the individualistic work of writing to get his foot in the door. It's not easy to make a career out of scripts, and I believe his own films have netted him only a marginal total profit. He's always banked on writing for others as income and then done whatever the fuck he wants with the money.

He received the MacArthur Grant, or the 'Genius Grant' in 1983, which I'm sure helped with the self-financing. Quite an impressive feat. He fully-funded his first feature, 'The Return of the Secaucus Seven' as well as 'The Brother from Another Planet'. I believe he financed 'Lianna' himself, also.

Sayles, apart from directing, writing, and editing most of his work, has established himself as an actor's director; he's acted in his own movies as well as other people's, and he seems to have a rapport or understanding of actors that has earned him a very easygoing reputation. I think he's a proper workman of film.

Through this process, he's arguably created two masterpieces 'Lone Star' (1996) and 'Matewan' (1987), and a slew of genuinely great films alongside these. I find that the subject matter of his films is so granular that he's clearly in the business of making whatever he's interested in worthwhile for the viewer, and not at all bothered by what audiences would want from him on paper. It's amazing to see such a writerly filmmaker able to stack up a filmography as varied as his.

What do you think?

Light Spoilers for You Can See Everything ahead - be forewarned!

It would be difficult to put onto the page all of the thoughts that have been crashing through my head since I saw “You Can See Everything” last night. But of course, the thing that has been keeping me up the most - literally keeping me up; it turns out the 10 PM showing was not the best for getting a good night’s sleep - is trying to wrap my head around the psychology of Elizabeth Holmes. I wanted to raise a few ideas here that especially stick out to me as a therapist with experience working with some very mentally ill people in my professional life.

To me, the scene that stuck out the most - that, in a way, feels like the closest thing the film has to a thesis statement - is when Nathan, in the first conversation he ever has with Elizabeth, brings up the magician David Blaine’s magic trick in which he seems to drive an ice pick directly through his hand. As Nathan explains to Elizabeth, people think it’s a trick, and that there must be some sort of smoke and mirrors. But the truth is that David Blaine has spent years hollowing out a small hole in his hand for just this purpose. The trick is that there’s no trick.

In much of the discussion of this film that I’ve seen (as well as the discussion of Holmes in the documentary itself!), it seems like people really, really want to believe that the Elizabeth Holmes we see is an intentional manipulation, that she, just like David Blaine’s ice pick, is smoke and mirrors. Firstly, I think this interpretation is natural: many of the lies that we encounter from others, or that we ourselves tell, are knowingly told for personal gain. But beyond that, I think there is something almost comforting in believing that Holmes is some sort of chess master-like expert of deceit. In every episode of Scooby-Doo, we feel relief when what appeared to be a monster is unmasked to be nothing more than a normal person with banal, explainable motivations. It is a comfort to think that Holmes is a rational person, acting knowingly (though immorally) in her own best interest, just as we want to see ourselves as rational, self-aware people.

However, I think the film challenges us to consider another possibility. What if the trick is that there is no trick? What if the ice pick really is going through David Blaine’s hand? And, to add my own analogy, what if, instead of being a Scooby-Doo monster, with a rational actor underneath just waiting to be unmasked, Elizabeth Holmes is nothing more than a mouse in a maze who has unthinkingly learned the best way to get to the cheese? 

That may sound harsh to Elizabeth Holmes, but I don’t mean it to be. There may be ways that all of us fit that mouse in a maze description. To explain what I mean, I want to take a slight detour into my work as a therapist. I currently work at a mental health treatment center for individuals with severe mental health disorders. As I watched the film, I more and more began to connect Holmes’s behavior in the movie with my experience working with individuals diagnosed with personality disorders. Many personality disorders - Borderline Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder - can include deceitfulness or manipulative tendencies as part of their presentation. And while this deceit can sometimes be the intentional kind of lies that we’re used to, it would be missing the mark to say that it always is.

Let me illustrate this with an example. At our treatment center, we worked with a client with a serious trauma history who ended up being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. One of this client’s core problems was that she was pathologically dependent on others and completely avoidant of ever taking ownership over her life. This manifested in some truly remarkable ways. Despite seeing many, many medical professionals who failed to find any diagnosable issue, this client suffered from frequent seizures, which could manifest as her fully falling out of her chair and writhing on the floor for minutes. These seizures predominantly happened when others were around, and seemed to increase as expectations in her life became unmanageable for her. At other times, this client claimed to hear voices, to have multiple personalities, or to suffer from various other medical ailments, though all of these behaviors lessened when they didn't result in attention from others or in someone else stepping in to take care of her.

Was this client lying? It depends on what your understanding of the word “lying” means, as Nathan and Elizabeth discuss at one point in the film. It is almost undeniable that this client was not “really” suffering from much of what she claimed to, and that these behaviors came from a desire to manipulate others to get outcomes she wanted (attention, care, reduced responsibilities). But I have to tell you, the longer I knew this client, the more it seemed to me that she was completely, perfectly convinced that everything she described was real. She was no Scooby-Doo monster, and there was no mask - this was “her truth”, to quote Holmes. As opposed to intentional lying, this client seemed to have learned that acting in these ways could manipulate outcomes in her favor, despite the fact that she was completely consciously unaware that manipulation was the intended function of her actions. Over the years, these behaviors became more and more reinforced, just as a mouse learns to navigate a maze to get a reward without ever understanding what it is doing, what a maze is, or that it is even in one.

In the simplest possible terms, one doesn’t have to understand why they do a behavior in order to do it, and benefit from it. And, while “You Can See Everything” argues convincingly that we can never know the truth about Elizabeth Holmes, it is at least worth considering the possibility that Holmes herself does not understand the full extent of her own manipulation, even if manipulation is the intended effect of her actions. Consider what we see in the documentary: Holmes seems to have her head in the clouds, to “not care about money,” to operate on a different wavelength far removed from the earthly concerns of most, even while she also has a knack for placing herself in romantic and business partnerships with men (first Sunny Balwani, then Billy Evans) who care a great deal about money. Consider, too, how well this works for Holmes: Billy Evans negotiates to ensure that they will get paid for their participation in the documentary, and yet Holmes has complete plausible deniability when confronted about this by Nathan, and can maintain her “creative visionary” persona even while she profits from her husband’s actions. Indeed, it was precisely this dynamic (with her prior partner Sunny) that led to Theranos’s success in the first place. Even just the fact that Holmes appears to so effectively win over Nathan, and by extension the viewer, is a result of her strange, disarming presence. But are Holmes’s persona and actions an intentional manipulation, or is it simply how she's learned to act because it gets the best results? What if, when Holmes claims over and over again that she has no idea what happened or how she could have arrived at this point, we believed her? 

For me, the brilliance of “You Can See Everything” is the extent to which it calls into question not just whether any of us can see into the hearts of others, but how much we even struggle to see what is within ourselves. Because, of course, it is not just Holmes who may do things without understanding why; all of us have layers of unconscious drives that dictate what we do more than we may care to admit. It’s worth wondering what mazes we've been running through, and what we've been running toward, without ever stopping to notice. 

I went into this film with a pretty open mind, although I knew it bombed at the box office and received a fairly mixed critical reception.

I will preface by admitting my bias towards Hugh Jackman, as he's one of my favorite actors of his generation.

I'm not really sure what I would rate this movie, because I feel like the more I think about it, my rating increases, so I'm not going to apply a letter grade to this review.

Spoilers ahead:

I thought this movie was incredible. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but it was certainly not what it was, in the best way. The opening sequence with the girl seeking revenge sets the stage for a character that is empathetic, but unmistakably evil. Kind of makes you wonder throughout the movie whether or not evil requires malicious intent, because Robin Hood breaks that mold. It also sets the tone right out of the gate, and let's you know this movie will not be fun, and probably won't be one for much redemption.

Every actor in this movie is throwing 100mph, especially Jackman. I think Jackman has the best tortured stare of any actor I can think of, and he carries this film with it. Murray Bartlett is pretty awesome as the leper, and I genuinely didn't even know that was Bill Skarsgard as John, that guy disappears into roles like crazy. Jodie Comer is also pretty great.

There's a lot I could keep saying about this movie that I really like, but I think I'd prefer addressing some of the biggest criticisms I've seen, because I genuinely don't understand where some of these critics are coming from.

First, complaining a movie is a slow burn to me is just beyond stupid. Go watch tiktok. But to elaborate on this a tad, I do think the film's tendency to rely on just looks, ambiguous themes, and a lot of exposition without dialogue probably just doesn't resonate with the modern audience.

Some people were also upset that it "revised" the legacy of a belove folk hero. I'm not sure if these people watched the movie, but that was literally the entire overt plot of the movie... All I can really say to that is go watch it again I guess and try to follow the theme of tainted/exaggerated legends being rooted in historically inaccurate accounts.

Then, one of the biggest criticisms of this movie I keep seeing is that the first half of this movies sets up Robin Hood as an irredeemable character, then the back half of the movie delivers no payoff... I just can't disagree more.

First, to me, Robin Hood in this movie is less of a hero/villain and more of a personification of death, or rather the punishment of vengeance. It's established several times in the film that Robin Hood is almost curse to slay generations of victims that seek him out for revenge, and none ever succeed. One of the core lessons of the movie is to NOT seek vengeance, and to learn to live with the life you have been left with. It's setup as almost a burden of Robin Hood to have to continue to deliver this lesson.

Second, there was payoff. The ending scene establishes a break in the cycle. Robin Hood dies, and leaves Margaret with the false heroic legacy in order to stop perpetuating the vengeance.

To add to this, the costume, effects, settings, were all just top tier.

In many modern films, some of the most shocking and well-known scenes contain little or no dialogue. Instead, directors rely on ambient sound, or total silence, to build internal tension and move the narrative forward. Think of films like A Quiet Place, or the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, where sound (or its absence in many cases) forces the audience to pay attention to the subtle physical acting, rhythm, and environment. Do you prefer current or old movies?

I am an only child (and daughter) with a dead dad. I think that’s why I waited so long to see this masterpiece. I wasn’t sure I could emotionally bear it. Without getting too personal, I related to this movie in ways I was not ready for. Like Sophie, I attempted to get my dad to open up about his past as a child, and didn’t understand why he left so much a mystery to me. (He would not even tell me his real name!) Well, after he died, as a young adult, I learned a bit more about the unthinkable trauma he had endured growing up, and I realize now he was trying to protect me. To see such an intimate and raw portrayal that reflected my experience in this movie was honestly really affirming if heartbreaking. I’m sure many others connected in a similar way.

The restraint of the film, and particularly of the final scene, when Calum walks through the doors and disappears into Sophie’s memories, is what makes this movie land so hard for me. It didn’t leave me crying, it just left me wanting a minute more of Calum, and because I knew he was gone, I sat there feeling empty. It mirrored the experience of death and grief so realistically in that way…I was waiting for us to see Calum die, or see Sophie learning the news. But instead, so often when someone dies, it’s like they just disappear. You often don’t get to say goodbye, aren’t given any closure. Just the memories, confusion, and wanting to go back and relive a moment. And my inability to cry after the movie really reflects my own relationship with loss and grief. Just a profound feeling of emptiness and an inability to comprehend someone ending. I’ve never seen it on the screen until now. Charlotte Wells, thank you. I wish I could give you a giant hug. 🥲

Hello True filmers!

I just watched Paweł Pawlikowski's "Cold war", and am looking forward to seeing Fatherland as well as Ida. But I was just wondering, do the subreddit know of any other films like his? European "meditations" (damn that's a pretentious framing, but I'm sure you understand where I'm going with it) on European history? Preferably more recent ones. If we go further back there are films like Rossellini's "war trillogy", or Wajda's movies, Kieslowski's tricolor films. Two of these three are polish directors it occurs to me. Fassbinder's Marriage of Maria Braun is kind of a historical tale of Germany too. The Heimat TV-series. Please add more if you know of any!

Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish classic Persona premiered 60 years ago today, on October 18, 1966.

Going into this review I would first like to preface that I do not fully understand this film. But… I also do not believe anybody truly does. “Persona” is a film with no direct explanation or reasoning for the events that are depicted throughout its runtime. Parts of the film seem somewhat random, out of place, and overtly radical such as the opening projector montage. Although that montage doesn’t make much sense I think it’s truly brilliant and one of my favorite opening scenes of all time. It’s random, intense, and made me feel deeply disturbed, setting the tone of the film perfectly.

The film focuses on the story of a nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) taking care of an intentionally mute patient named Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) in an isolated seaside cottage. Throughout that loosely told story are several central themes such as identity, public mask vs. private self, grief, guilt and the burden of creation. All of those themes are roughly introduced in the somewhat random prologue with the projector and carry on throughout the primary story with Alma and Elisabet. Although the crucifixion, spider, killing of a lamb and a boy waking up in a hospital and seeing a wall with two blurry women on it seem unrelated to the overall story of the film it serves as a brilliant introduction to the tone and some of the general themes the film covers. “Persona” is a perfect example of how art doesn’t have to be fully understood to be enjoyed.

I was extremely fond of how Ingmar Bergman depicted themes of identity in this film. Towards the start of the film (before they go to the cottage) Alma and Elisabet are in a hospital room and Elisabet tears up a photo of her son. Later on in the film (at the cottage), Alma finds Elisabet’s husband outside calling for Elisabet. She greets him and takes advantage of him mistaking her for Elisabet and sleeps with him. After that interaction, Alma confronts Elisabet about why she tore up the photo of her son at the start of the film and starts to tell the story of Elisabet’s life for her and how after a failed abortion she gave birth to a boy whom she despises, but who craves her love. Right after those scenes is an iconic composite shot of each of their faces forming a single head. Sven Nykvist’s cinematography really stands out here. By utilizing an extreme close-up for the faces merging together Nykvist creates an intimate and claustrophobic atmosphere reflecting the psychological erosion.

 Through describing Alma taking on the “persona” of Elisabet, pretending to be her, and a literal shot of their faces molding together, Bergman shows how these identities we display to the public are maintained only through distance, and through minimizing that distance the personality differences shatter as well. It shows how we as human beings are porous vessels and are immensely affected by the desires, judgements and personalities of the people that surround us. 

“Persona” has a very unique sense of isolation, paralysis, and physical disintegration which I think are the result of Ingmar Bergman’s personal crisis at the time. While writing “Persona,” Ingmar Bergman was hospitalized with severe vertigo and depression. Throughout the film, you can see how Bergman’s psychological troubles at the time are reflected in the two lead characters, each having their own mental struggles. I believe that Ingmar Bergman’s hospitalization interrupting him when he was at the peak of his career directly influenced his decision to have Elisabet Vogler go intentionally mute during a huge stage production.

“Persona” is by no means a story that anyone can fully grasp. It’s riddled with various details and aspects that are never explained, and that’s not particularly a bad thing. The film ends with Alma leaving the cottage, a film crew capturing her, the boy in the opening montage being shown once more and the projector from the beginning coming to a halt. I believe that the intent of Ingmar Bergman showing the film crew was to strip the film of its own mask, breaking down the fourth wall. Obviously, there are people who are sure to disagree and interpret it differently but that’s the beauty of ambiguity; everybody has their own interpretation. “Persona’s” inability to be dumbed down to a single explanation is a testament to its brilliance.

I think part of why this film is so important today is because it covers the harsh reality of the difference between our public and private selves which is even more relevant in the digital age where we can all carefully curate a digital persona of how we will be perceived.

First off let me say this is not something that I set out to do from the beginning, and so for parts of it the connections may seem a bit forced. I’ve been vegan since 1994 and I’ve seen tens of thousands of movies, and often after seeing a move I’ll start thinking of a “vegan angle” to it… I finally gathered them all together in a list and put them in an order that makes sense, at least to me.

Since images are not allowed here is a link:
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Row 1: Delicatessen — Ravenous — The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover — American Psycho

Consumption becomes a claim to power when another being’s body is understood primarily through what it can provide. In Delicatessen, the butcher turns prospective employees into provisions for his tenants: employment, commerce, and neighborhood solidarity sustain an arrangement whose victims disappear into its benefits. The vegetarian underground makes that apparent necessity contestable. Ravenous gives consumption a more expansive justification: eating people literally produces strength, allowing the predator to mistake the rewards of violence for evidence of its legitimacy. Manifest Destiny extends this appetite across a continent. CTWL locates the same entitlement within domestic and commercial ownership: the gangster treats his wife, the restaurant, and its occupants as possessions subject to his appetites. When his wife’s murdered lover becomes a prepared meal, the distinction between possessing someone and consuming them becomes brutally literal. In Psycho, restaurant culture and bodily violence inhabit a world where surfaces receive meticulous attention while individuals remain interchangeable. The opening’s bloodlike sauce makes elegant presentation momentarily indistinguishable from injury. Consumption conceals the encounter it depends upon: someone lived before something became available for consumption.

Row 2: No Country for Old Men — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre — The Silence of the Lambs — Eyes Without a Face

The distinction between ordinary practice and atrocity becomes unstable when familiar techniques are applied to unfamiliar victims. In No Country, the protagonist begins by hunting animals and becomes prey himself, while his pursuer’s cattle gun transfers the technology of slaughter into human encounters. Chain Saw develops that transfer through the handling of bodies: a person is struck, hung on a meat hook, and stored as flesh. The spectator’s horror depends on recognizing procedures whose customary victims rarely receive comparable identification. Lambs extends bodily appropriation into eating and clothing: one killer consumes people, while another treats their skin as material for his own transformation. The FBI agent’s childhood attempt to rescue a lamb interrupts that entitlement with an attachment to the creature marked for slaughter. Returning the lambs from symbols of her trauma to frightened animals makes their suffering matter beyond its role in her development. In Eyes, the surgeon’s effort to restore his daughter turns other women into sources of replacement skin; experimental dogs inhabit the same apparatus of confinement and bodily use. His daughter’s release of the animals rejects an arrangement under which one cherished life warrants the sacrifice of others. Affection becomes dangerous when it grants unlimited permission.

Row 3: The Face of Another — Au hasard Balthazar — Woman in the Dunes — The Fountain

The meanings assigned to bodies can determine whose suffering becomes recognizable and whose remains available for use. In Face, disfigurement alters the protagonist’s social existence, while a manufactured face restores access to recognition without resolving who he is. His treatment exposes the dependence of sympathy on an acceptable surface; his subsequent behavior complicates the assumption that recognizable appearance guarantees moral character. Balthazar moves this problem from appearance to allegory. The donkey becomes a Christ-like figure bearing humanity’s sins; returning him to a donkey reverses that movement, revealing the ordinary condition of beasts of burden beneath the sacred interpretation. His exhaustion requires consideration without first becoming redemptive. Dunes reverses the position of an insect collector who becomes a captive laborer: the man accustomed to determining another creature’s movements discovers that food, shelter, and developing attachments can coexist with coercion. His adaptation does not retrospectively authorize his capture. In Fountain, devotion to a dying wife recruits an experimental animal and an extraordinary tree into the struggle to preserve a particular human life. The conquistador’s body eventually nourishes the vegetation from which he sought immortality. What he approached as a resource becomes the world to which he must surrender his own body.

Row 4: Dead Man — Ghost Dog — Under the Skin — Cloud Atlas

The familiar positions of observer, hunter, and moral judge become unstable when humans lose their presumed authority over other lives. In Dead Man, the wounded fugitive touches a dead fawn’s wound, mingles its blood with his own, and lies beside it. The animal’s death ceases to be scenery: their wounded bodies establish a kinship that does not depend on the fawn possessing human abilities. Ghost Dog makes that recognition less morally reassuring. The hitman’s care for pigeons and confrontation with bear hunters coexist with his profession, exposing how an ethical code can protect certain lives while authorizing the destruction of others. His contradictions raise the question of how convictions acquire their boundaries. Skin deprives humans of the authority to draw those boundaries: men entering apparently intimate encounters become bodies captured and processed within purposes they cannot comprehend. Their vulnerability makes the consumer’s position reversible. Cloud Atlas organizes bodily use into an entire social system. Manufactured workers serve customers before their own bodies are recycled into food; the function imposed upon them becomes the justification for denying that their lives could exceed it. Their awakening exposes the circularity of the arrangement: being created for exploitation cannot establish that exploitation is their proper destiny.

Row 5: Never Let Me Go — Ex Machina — Blade Runner — The Lobster

Institutions preserve their authority by deciding which demonstrations of inward life will count—and whether recognition will change anything. In NLMG, the clones’ artwork is collected as evidence of their souls, yet the society benefiting from their organs retains the power to disregard that evidence. Their sensitivity can be acknowledged while their destruction continues. Machina places the examination itself inside an owner’s controlled environment: the inventor confines his artificial woman and arranges the conditions under which a visiting programmer encounters her consciousness. The programmer’s desire to rescue her becomes entangled with an expectation of personal attachment; her independent purposes expose the limits of sympathy that anticipates a reward. Blade Runner gives manufactured beings an existence defined by compulsory labor and a deliberately restricted lifespan. Their demand for more life exceeds the commercial purpose of their creation, while “retirement” disguises killing as the disposal of obsolete equipment. Lobster makes classification itself an explicit punishment: failure to satisfy society’s requirements results in expulsion from humanity into animal existence. The protagonist’s dog is already his brother, preventing species appearance from settling the question of who remains within. Those required to prove their personhood face an authority whose own right to judge remains unquestioned.

Row 6: Cow — Okja — Chicken Run — Babe

The movement through human predation, captive bodies, and manufactured lives arrives at the animals whose exploitation those analogies have made newly visible. Cow follows a dairy cow through a system that organizes her reproductive life, separates her from her calf, and ultimately disposes of her. Remaining close to her makes production perceptible as a lived experience rather than an inventory of outputs; ordinary care cannot cancel the authority exercised over her body. Okja concentrates sympathy through a girl’s relationship with one animal, then confronts that attachment with a slaughterhouse full of others. The rescue is real, but its success leaves the machinery—and its remaining victims—in place. Chicken Run makes escape collective: the chickens recognize that their insecurity arises from the farm’s purpose, not merely from an unusually unpleasant owner. The conversion from egg production to pies reveals how quickly a supposedly protected productive life becomes disposable when a more profitable use appears. Babe secures an individual reprieve by demonstrating an unexpected talent, exposing both the possibilities and limits of recognition through usefulness. The pig’s survival leaves a question for every animal unable to herd sheep: why should continued existence require exceptional performance?

Thoughts? Any films you would add or remove?

I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere but it would seem to not be a coincidence at all Lance Oppenheim released Primetime within a month of You Can See Everything. The same director is taking apart the convention of media and how it's perceived, along with the obvious parallels of how the subjects of dramatized non-fiction (fiction based in non-fiction?) feel/are impacted by the work.

I don't really know if I had any thoughts or feelings about Chris Hansen before seeing Primetime. Living through To Catch a Predator, I always thought it was a at best low brow, at worst extremely exploitive. However I never really associated the show with the man. After seeing Primetime, I can't help but think Chris Hansen's greed and willingness do nearly anything on the show to gain notoriety/fame portrays him as a bad guy.

Compare this to Elizabeth Holmes' portrayal in The Dropout and how she claims it has impacted her in negative ways. Now is Elizabeth Holmes a malevolent person? That's a whole other topic. But she clearly feels helpless to this portrayal in media as inaccurate to actual events. Even Amanda Seyfried admits as much - That it's just a movie and isn't expected to be completely accurate to the actual events.

Just really had me re-evaluating how the real Chris Hansen felt about his portrayal.

I think that there are two different versions of this movie. One with the plot twist, one without it. The one without the plot twist is a very uncomfortable watch. It demands a lot of its audience. On the other hand, the real version of this movie, while very good, somewhat spoon feeds the audience. Now I’m not saying that the one without the plot twist shouldn’t exist, as it is quite good. On the other hand, I believe the one with the plot twist could ultimately end up as a classic and preserve the idea that less is more. Thoughts?

Wow…that was a surprisingly heavy movie. While the story was a bit unrealistically serendipitous at a few points, it has an incredible amount of detail, rich worldbuilding, excellent acting and offers a fascinating look at the Chinese perspective on American militarism. Food serves as a handy stand-in not only for community building but also nation building and economic development.

I also appreciated subtle character details that humanized people on all sides of the conflict. Apparently the star, Shen Teng, is a big comedic actor which makes his restrained, dramatic performance all the more impressive. I couldn’t help but think that his hero’s journey was reminiscent of the Odyssey, filled with detours and monsters to outwit before finally making it home years later.

Again, my main critique is relates to the story. While the chef character was apparently a composite of actual Chinese restauranteurs who stayed in Iraq after the US invasion, the scenes of him saving orphans and rescuing child soldiers seemed a bit too on-the-nose and over the top. As far as I know, nothing like this ever happened in the Iraqi context, so these plot points make an otherwise nuanced movie feel a bit propagandistic. There was also a child labor aspect that seemed a bit…questionably casual?

Overall though, I’d give it a 4.5/5, definitely worth a watch. It felt well-researched and well-shot, you could almost call it an epic tragedy.

Curious to hear if anyone else had the chance to catch it.

Before, she was almost universally hated. Now there are questions. Sympathy. And that is fair, because this woman has been through it. A demanding family, a rape and intimate partner abuse with Sunny. Nathan deserves a medal.

I have looked deeply into this case and can speak on it with some clarity.

Lizzy and Elizabeth

I present to you my well developed theory about what is going on with Elizabeth Holmes. I highly recommend reading the text messages between Sunny and Elizabeth where you can see the dynamics at play.

I welcome your feedback.

It all started with a girl. Lizzy. She wanted to change the world, starting around nine years old. She drew a time machine, complete with detailed schematics. Imagined how existing technology could combine in unique ways to create something new from the sum of it’s parts. This would be great, because Lizzy wasn’t born to an average family. Nobody chooses their family. The currency of her family was success, making a mark in the world. Generations of men before her had squandered the family fortune and daddy would never be happy unless she did something big. So, Lizzy sat in her room and dreamed and designed and thought about one day impressing her icy father enough that he showed something other than the lingering disappointment that things had not turned out better for him. No child should deal with this kind of pressure. Kids are supposed to play, to dream, to run and frolic and live lightly. Daddy was a serious man and so Lizzy thought maybe one day she could be a serious person too.

Lizzy did good in school. Of course she did. She was never exceptionally popular. She was too in her own mind for that. She didn’t quite think like the other kids did, the kids who imagined the fancy cars they would buy with their trust fund money. Lizzy wanted to help, to live a life of meaning. Daddy worked in DC, next to THE PRESIDENT, in the same city, doing things that were important for the world. But it was never enough.

Eventually, Lizzy went to college. She kept dreaming. Thought of a patch that could deliver drugs to people after detecting they were sick. A real time cure. Lizzy had seen people in her family suffer from illness and she wanted to do something about it. While other students were out partying, she was studying, on a mission to have meaning. Meaning, purpose, impact – those were the goals of this wide eyed girl.

One day Lizzy went to a party, because she wanted to at least try to fit in for a bit. She met the wrong guy and that guy took something from her that she could never get back. Her sense of safety, of agency, of being in control of her own body and her own existence. Lizzy ran into the arms of the nearly 40 year old man who she met in China when she was studying Chinese. He had taken the class seriously while others goofed off. She thought he was a man of purpose too. He just saw Lizzy and saw a project, something he could build on, and someone from whom he could enjoy the pleasures not usually afforded a man like him with a girl her age.

The man, Sunny, told Lizzy she was not enough. That she would never survive in this harsh world she was trying to enter. Lizzy had an idea, a potentially world-changing idea, of a machine that could read just a single drop of blood and tell you what was going on inside your body. She used her skill of imagining different technologies in different ways to create something new. And because Lizzy wasn’t playing around, she got it patented. But now she needed money – real money – and he told her that Lizzy was not up to the task. He created her schedule, told her what to drink, told her to destroy herself and build something new, something that could enter a room and command it.

Elizabeth Holmes was born. We all know how that story goes. But before Elizabeth, there was Lizzy. Lizzy hides inside Elizabeth. Elizabeth protects Lizzy. So that nobody else can ever make her feel the way she felt when that boy violated her. Elizabeth was created to make her daddy proud, to deliver results, to fake it until you make it. She listened to all the right people, got a nine billion dollar valuation, and seemed to be changing the world. The men were happy to lionize Elizabeth, to imagine themselves with her, to see their blonde prize pony deliver the goods.

One day, after following the advice of Larry Ellison and Sunny and George and so many others, Adam came and told Elizabeth that the workaround was not going to work. Elizabeth broke for a moment. Lizzy was exposed. She was shaking and trembling and terrified. This was the red line. This was the moment that could actually hurt people. Walgreens wanted what they wanted. And time was up. Elizabeth returned and buried Lizzy once again. There was too much at stake now. If Lizzy stopped the show, Elizabeth would be exposed as a fraud. Her family would be disgraced. Her company would be destroyed. And in her family, failure was not an option. So Elizabeth did what she always did, and told Lizzy to go away, demanded it, thought of what Sunny had said, to keep going, foot on the gas. They would figure it out. And so Elizabeth plowed ahead. And we know how that story goes.

Today, late at night, when only a few people are awake, because in prison someone is ALWAYS awake, I am convinced that Lizzy comes out. And looks around. And wonders why following all the men in her life led her to this place. She knows she made mistakes. She knows she did wrong. And she knows the world will never forgive her. So, like some sort of horror movie monster, Elizabeth comes back. Puts on the brave face. Angles for a pardon. And more and more of whatever is left of Lizzy slow withers away. The world doesn’t see her, they see Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is guilty and Elizabeth hurt people and Elizabeth is a monster. So Lizzy takes the hint. She stays hidden. Where maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth will be strong enough to protect her from feeling the full weight of a lifetime of bad decisions.

I have sympathy for Lizzy. 

Even though all of them discuss similar themes and almost nothing happens, I find Ozu's films so endearing because all these little everyday things feel so nostalgic, and I can almost bet that I have lived them firsthand (at least they make me feel so). Children massaging granny's shoulders, parents eating sweets hidden from the children, children expecting parents to always come back home with toys. Every little experience, I cherish so much. Ozu makes a harsh life feel worth living.

As the title 'Early Summer' (Bakushu in Japanese) suggests, the movie depicts a period defined by change. It is a post-war, pre-modern period, as a character says about Noriko. The scars of WW2 are still fresh, and you can sense westernisation in every aspect of Tokyo life - toys, cutlery, dresses, the honeymoon culture, shortcakes, churches. It's a time when families are becoming nuclear, people are migrating for jobs, school friends are being left behind as you enter colleges, and friends from bachelor days feel distant as you get married. The world's drifting apart as globalisation knocks on the door. But life goes on.

I cannot finish this piece without mentioning Setsuko Hara, ever so charming. Very unexpectedly, Audrey Hepburn is also mentioned. Also, the conversations between Noriko and Aya are to die for, neeee?

Regarding spoilers: I will avoid plot specifics, but this post will touch on the major themes of the movie with a few references to key moments.

It has been striking to see the diversity of reactions to You Can See Everything, the documentary by Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim that follows Elizabeth Holmes in the days before she begins a prison sentence that she earned for defrauding investors by misrepresenting the capacity & potential of Theranos's blood-testing technology. There are a few moments in particular where Holmes says something that strains credulity - something almost certainly untrue - and we are left wondering whether she is being deliberately deceptive or if she actually believes this untrue thing. This is the crux of the story, and I think people are missing out when their reaction is along the lines of she's an inveterate liar; why are you even wondering about what's going on in her head? Because we are increasingly surrounded by bullshitters like Holmes, it's valuable to understand how they differ from liars... and how they can be much more dangerous & destructive.

So, how does a liar differ from a bullshitter? This video has a great summary, and although that link should start the video at the 4-minute mark, the prior part is worth watching if you haven't thought too hard about epistemology (ideas like when someone tries to speak the truth but says something untrue, or someone intends to deceive but they end up speaking the truth). The video cites the book On Bullshit, which lays it out as follows:

[The author] makes a distinction between "bullshitters" and liars. He concludes that bullshitters are more insidious: they are more so a threat against the truth than are liars who, like truth-tellers, are resolutely concerned with the truth, the latter in telling it, the former in avoiding it, unlike bullshitters, who are almost entirely unconcerned with the truth.

I came away convinced Holmes actually thinks she is (and always has been) speaking appropriately, while not really concerning herself with whether her words and actions are truthful. This is the way of the bullshitter. We can't know with any certainty what's going on in her head, but it seems that her mind has re-shaped ideas, words, and definitions such that her outlandish claims are actually... fine. (I hesitate to say "true" because the core idea here is that these people aren't concerned with the truth; they just want things to go their way.)

There's a great moment when Fielder puts her on the spot, asking "what do you think it is to lie?" and, as I recall, she comes up with a solid definition: "to say something you believe to be untrue". So how can someone know what lying is, say things that aren't true, and still earnestly believe they're not lying? They can "hack" this scenario simply by changing what they believe. The bullshitter believes their own bullshit, and I think Holmes fits the bill perfectly.

This portrait-of-a-bullshitter feels quite timely: our lives are increasingly being impacted by bullshitters, from the people in power to the feckless media to the influencers that will say anything as long as it benefits them. Theranos was famous for the disconnect between what was promised and what was actually delivered, and we see the same thing happening routinely in the US, from the government's wildly corrupt and anti-accountability sins to the chatbot purveyors bullshitting their way into a bubble so massive it will almost certainly tank the global economy. (For anyone feeling the urge to defend chatbots' abilities, I'll remind you that Sam Altman said "we are close to creating a genie that grant any wish". What the fuck?)

Responsibility & culpability look very different for the bullshitter, and in practice this grants them freedom to behave carelessly... without meaningfully grappling with the consequences. Even when facing incarceration, Holmes didn't express a bit of remorse. This is because she believes she did nothing wrong. I'm sure there will be no remorse from those in the government who have no regard for the truth (even after it has disastrous consequences), and the same applies to the people who are burning literal trillions of dollars on the ridiculous promise of AI-enabled miracles.

If you saw the movie and still want to shout at me "you fell for her spell, sucker - liars must be held accountable!", I don't particularly disagree. But I still think it's fascinating to investigate how a person navigates the world with essentially zero concern for what is actually true. Especially because these people are routinely tolerated in positions of power (which - I think - is having catastrophic consequences that are only just beginning to emerge).

I have seen too many movies and can distinguish between low and high quality, honestly I have become a bit blasé.

I can’t get excited for *Avengers*, *Expend4bles*, or *Fast and Furious,* basically most mainstream, popular movies.

Being a cinephile feels like being a specialty coffee aficionado who doesn't need (or even despises) extra sugar, whipped cream, caramel syrup, or other additives meant to enhance cheap coffee. You learn to appreciate the bare coffee for all of its intricacies and subtle notes.

Same as I used consider instant coffee and coffee mate as artisanal coffee I would think that Saw movies to be the epitome of filmmaking.

The plot twists in Digger is quite staggering (*spoiler alert*). And if these twists and turns finds a fertile ground there is the potential to harvest a golden fruit from this masterpiece of a movie:

To stagger.

Yesss ... I'm talking about putting on those fancy boots that makes you walk like an egyptian on mushrooms. And open the door to where entertainment meets the dead serious ... as in utterly cryonic frozen and holy f*** the very floor we are standing on is quite literally melting !?! And have been melting for quite some time. And the part of us peeking out from the frosty circular window on board the ship already knew this. Knew since the first little baby cover stories took their first stumbling steps into the arena of planetary history.

This is now a deliberate attempt to loose you: The pathological part of you (and me) that are constantly stretching out the arms to find something to cling to. Anything. The story of how a tuna was raised is taken as truth, and swallowed hook, line and sinker. And a part of us savours this. Find a little bit of breathing room, before we are again swimming in open sea with sheer panic just beneath the surface - looking for a saviour. Who would dive in that situation?

Digger would dive. Digger is who dove.

And our reaction? We throw all of our repressed hatred onto him , momentarily relieved that the scum of the earth is now externalized.

To continue succesfully, basically

SURVIVE,

we need to establish a firm boundary to that part of us who have mistaken the map for the territory, who mistook perception for reality. This is not done by moving along the habitual pathways for how a movie, a text or for that matter anything unfolds.

This is what an LLM excels in, and for an LLM words are perception. And perception is reality.

Going off piste like this is challenging. It demands something from us: Instead of just leaning back and eating what is served from the neural pathways of least resistance, we must lean into and connect to the part of us capable of facing the situation.

A great movie ceases you and lifts you into a realm of imagination. An even greater movie ceases you in a way that allow you to witness that this is what is happening. Why is the latter superior to the first? Because entertainment is not what we need. It might be what we crave, but it is not what we need.

We need to train our capabilities to go off piste. And then maybe retracting to familiar territory. But eventually we need to go off piste and stay there, because .... psst ...

the boat is sinking.

And have been for some time.

The convoluted paths of this movie is NOT an attempt to loose you (the sober part of you), its just that the part of us who have bought into the idea that parts of our reality can be weaponized, did not even notice the subtle shift from hydrogen bombs to perception management that happened ages ago.

Mammals were successfully revived after being frozen back in the 60's, so for those invested hook, line and sinker in the lifeboat, cryonics have for a long time been the option if you had a desire to prolong life or avoid death. This long lost sheep is beginning to wake up and initially it does not like the view. At all. Which poses quite a challenge for anyone reaching down to reach this part of us right on the nose. It takes a big swing, balls and brains.

And Digger have it all.

And I am so glad that the movie was made.

Made by a filmmaker, Gus Van Sant, whose work I usually intensely dislike, to put it mildly. Van Sant is the rare filmmaker who is able to make a movie about teenage male prostitutes and make it come out tedious.

Yet, I appreciate his Psycho very much. It's an ode to a classic, of course.

But more than that, I love it because of how it brought a Black-and-White classic into the 21st century. Psycho 1998 makes an attempt at answering the question of how classic movies would have been received if they were made today. I wonder a lot about how 1998's teenagers reacted to watching the remake, right in the middle of the post-Scream renaissance of the slasher horror genre.

Psycho 1998 makes the case for the timelessness of great cinema.

In the film V for Vendetta, (anniversary screenings coming up!) V, the protagonist pulls an elaborate reenactment stunt on Evie. Upon learning of his deception, Evie is understandably upset. V then delivers this monologue to help explain:

“Your father said artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes I created a lie, but because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

After seeing You Can See Everything, I’m fairly certain Nathan is a fan.

If you’ve seen the film, what lies did you see and what truths did you find?

Got around to watching Na Hong-jin's Hope since it recently came to Amazon Video last week. And boy, what a ride it is.

Arguably the best aspect about Hope is how Na Hong-jin makes no allusions to what he's making. It never tries to pretend it's smart or deep with its story, characters, or any of the crazy events that go down. Instead, Hong-Jin embraces the B-Movie craziness while also paying homage to countless great monster films as Ridley Scott's Alien and John McTiernan's Predator. If anything, Hope is one of those rare films in recent memory where it feels like its primary goal is to keep the audience entertained, something it does pretty well.

What's more impressive though is the clear effort and production on screen. Hope has been circling around the internet as being South Korea's most expensive film and it does show, especially during the city sequences. Credit has to go to the production designer Lee How-kyoung, as the sets of Hope Harbor being rampaged and destroyed look incredible and even life-like. I can't imagine how long it took for the crew to set some of the environments up given the first half of the film takes place in the town.

And Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography. Honestly, out of this world. The way he jumps from long takes to framing characters from a distance plays out so seamlessly that it's almost unreal. It's especially notable during the action sequences that feel far ahead of most Hollywood action films nowadays. No split-second cutting or whiplash editing. Kyung-pyo just lets the action play out with only a few cuts and a lot of steady-cam movement. This results in some of the most fluid action scenes that still manage to look astoundingly wild. That one shot involving Sung-ki being dragged by the guy on the horse... just insane!

As for the CGI and VFX, I wasn't really thrown off by it as others. Yes, the monsters clearly stand out from the environments and are clearly made by a computer, but I actually think it works in the film's favor. It adds to the B-Movie charm quite well in terms of the fluctuating quality between the great sets and less than grounded creatures.

Nevertheless, I can see why Hope has been pretty divisive amongst critics and audiences as it's pretty simple otherwise. The characters are basic with no real arcs and a good portion of the second act slows things down considerably. I wouldn't say it drags since it does give some detail into the monsters attacking the town, but I still think Hope would've benefited from cutting it down by about 20 or so minutes. The fact too it ends on a cliffhanger is also something I'm concerned about, since it's not been confirmed if Na Hong-jin will be able to do a sequel.

Regardless, Hope is one entertaining action film that is just fun to watch. I'm still surprised to see it got nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes given this seems like the kind of film the festival tends to avoid.

I've been thinking about the rather unusual position Timothée finds himself in at this stage of his career, and I wonder whether we're witnessing a shift that could have much greater implications for his longevity in Hollywood than people realize.

There's an interesting paradox developing. He's arguably more commercially valuable, connected, and influential than ever before, yet I can't help but feel that some of the cultural capital that made him so compelling in the first place is beginning to erode.

What originally distinguished Timothée wasn't simply his talent or appearance. It was the perception that he represented something different in Hollywood. He occupied this interesting space between mainstream success and artistic credibility. He seemed unconventional, intellectually curious, somewhat elusive, and relatively uninterested in the machinery of celebrity. Whether that image was entirely authentic is almost irrelevant. It was a significant part of what made him culturally interesting.

Now, his public identity seems increasingly intertwined with the very celebrity culture he once appeared to exist outside of.

I don't necessarily think Kylie is responsible for this transformation, nor do I think their relationship is inherently damaging. But I do think it represents a fascinating shift in the world he's chosen to inhabit. The Kardashian-Jenner family operates within an extraordinary ecosystem of wealth, influence, visibility, and commercial opportunity. Those connections can undoubtedly expand someone's reach, but they don't necessarily translate into artistic credibility or cultural respect.

And I think that's where Timothée's position becomes particularly interesting.

Hollywood has always rewarded fame, but there's a difference between being famous because people are fascinated by your work and becoming someone whose celebrity begins to overshadow it.

The more commercially powerful he becomes, the less he may actually need the audience that originally championed him. Yet that audience arguably played an important role in establishing his reputation as a serious, unconventional actor.

There's also the question of overexposure. Part of his original appeal was that he seemed somewhat inaccessible. Now, despite remaining relatively private about his personal life, his public persona feels increasingly calculated and self-aware. The mystery has been replaced by spectacle, and I wonder whether that's a sustainable exchange.

Of course, his professional achievements speak for themselves. He's extraordinarily talented, and I don't think his career is remotely close to collapsing. But artistic success and cultural relevance aren't necessarily the same thing. An actor can continue securing prestigious roles, commanding enormous salaries, and accumulating industry recognition while gradually losing the public goodwill and fascination that once made them feel exceptional.

Perhaps this is simply the inevitable transition from promising young artist to established Hollywood superstar. Or perhaps we're watching someone become so embedded in the machinery of fame that the qualities that originally distinguished him are becoming harder to recognize.

What I find most interesting is whether this trajectory is intentional. Is he consciously trading some of his artistic mystique for greater commercial influence, or is this simply what happens when someone becomes extraordinarily famous at a young age?

And more importantly, can someone maintain genuine artistic credibility when their celebrity begins to eclipse their work?

I'm curious whether others see this as a temporary shift in public perception or something that could meaningfully shape the next decade of his career.

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

I started keeping subtitles permanently on a few years ago and it has genuinely changed how I experience films. You catch dialogue you would otherwise miss entirely, notice wordplay and references, and never lose a whispered line again. Some people argue they are distracting and pull you out of the visual experience, and I get that — but for me the trade-off is worth it. I find I actually engage more deeply with dialogue-heavy films because I am processing both the audio and the text simultaneously. It has made me a more attentive viewer.

Curious where other film enthusiasts land on this — poll here: https://www.getqibble.com/poll-detail/do-you-watch-everything-with-subtitles-on-even-though-your-hearing-is-perfectly-fine

Digger amazed me. I went in without knowing anything, and I don’t know the last time a movie managed to change my perspectives and surprise me like this.

I also read and heard many criticisms later, and I want to comment on the one I find the most bizarre.

But first an overview of common problems people seem to have with it. Anything related to people’s dislike for Tom Cruise or his involvement with a movie like this doesn’t interest me too much. I don’t care about his personal life and find him to be an excellent actor, like Digger clearly showed. Overall there isn’t much to discuss here, if you just can’t watch Tom Cruise that’s fine but that also means you don’t have anything to say about Digger.

Second criticism is also something I can’t really debate, and that’s the fact that some people just didn’t like the experience. Either because the first part (satire) was too corny to them, and even if that was the point, it still wasn’t pleasant to watch; or because the second part (meta commentary) took them out of the movie where they could no longer care about the satire plot or had a good reason to care about the meta/ making the play plot either yet. Or because it looked ugly, and again, even if that is on purpose, it doesn’t make it pleasant. Those are the basic things I saw mentioned a lot.

Personally, I totally enjoyed the satire part for itself and was immersed in the story. When the meta segment took place, it made me curious to see where it’s going, while still being interested in the plot of the satire play too. And I thought it all looked very cool and unique. But I can’t convince anyone about what they find corny, boring, or unpleasant to watch, and I agree that the awareness that something is a purposeful choice doesn’t necessarily change the experience. My experience was just the total opposite, it pulled me in from the start and then just kept being more than that.

The third criticism is something I heard a few times and kind of annoys me, it seems more like a reaction to marketing (hiding the twists.). I heard a few people say how the big “twist” , by which they refer to the first twist that tells us the satire is actually a play, should have been known from the start, or how it was underwhelming. The structure of the movie clearly fits into three parts, the reveal of the play sets the second part in motion, and I am surprised by how many times people who talk about their disappointment with this twist totally forget to even mention that this sets the stage for the second twist that leads to the third part of the movie. For me, the first reveal had an interesting destabilizing effect where I realized there was more to what I thought I was watching, but the second reveal was the real shock and put everything in place.

So I am not sure why anyone would think that changing this flow would have been better in any way, or act like the movie blew its big twist after the first 15-20 min as if the second and more important one never happened. The sequence is so clean and makes perfect sense, so I don’t get this.

But my biggest disconnect is with people who seem stuck on the second part of the movie as if the third one never happened. I keep seeing the movie getting accused of wanting to be a satire but removing itself from being a satire by shifting to meta commentary about satires.

In fact it seems most posts here about this movie are super focused on what the movie says about satires and their power, or lack thereof, even implying that the movie’s main focus is commenting on Don’t Look Up or something. While obviously that commentary is an element the meta segment seems to be focused on, the movie then does the complete opposite from this perceived removal when it tells you that all the events seen in the satire actually happened.

This completely changes all the implications. Cruise’s character now 20 years later may have issue with some parts being too much of a caricature or unrealistic, but you as viewer would think that the overall criticism is that the whole satirical play is unrealistic and exaggerated, just to learn that the actual plot, the most extreme part of it, is completely real.

And then it really doesn’t matter if Digger is a cartoonish villain, or if he was actually a bit more charismatic and refined, or if he was on a plane with the president or not, because the most outrageous elements of his life and actions aren’t even a question, they happened.

Instead of staying in the meta space of examining satires while making a satire, the movie pulls you into a realistic drama where it clearly stands behind its story. It’s no longer a satire or a meta movie, it’s a tragedy.

It had a profound effect on me, that final switch of perspectives. It was sad and shocking, and I really can’t remember the last time I was surprised like that.

Even if it didn’t manage to affect you that way, I don’t get how anyone can blame it for not being brave or for hiding behind a meta satire, criticizing in a way that tries to avoid criticism etc. There’s no bigger statement it could have made then it did by declaring it was all real. It’s obviously not trying to remove itself from its message, it totally dives into it, and just in the moment when you think you get what it’s doing.

I mean, that scene where they are debating the point and validity of the satire (and I disagree that it was done in a way that made the director seem incompetent or the satire total trash), just to hit you with the facts that everything you were watching happened, you realize as a viewer that you didn’t even understand the actual issue of pt 2. They live in the post Digger world so for them it makes sense to debate the approach the play took, but for the viewer, you basically learn that the actually important part (plot of the play) never even was a question.

Anyway, I am not explaining anything with the post that the movie doesn’t explicitly say, and I am sure everyone who saw it got it, but that’s why I don’t get why this is what it gets shit for.