Do Movies Have to Have a Point?
Three times that my takeaway message was definitely wrong
***This article contains spoilers for One Battle After Another, Whiplash, Parasite, and The Master. The One Battle After Another spoilers are in the first paragraph, and each of the other movies are easy to spot because there’s a heading before I start talking about them. So, the spoilers won’t sneak up on you — each is part of a separate discussion.
One Battle After Another winning Best Picture made many people ask: Was the end of that movie supposed to be happy or sad? I don’t mean the Sean-Penn-getting-the-worst-performance-review-ever part; I mean the part where Willa leaves with her friends to engage in unspecified hippie troublemaking. Was that supposed to be “Aw, how sweet, she’s going into the family business” or “Well I guess nobody learned a goddamned thing here”? It’s unclear. Surely, Paul Thomas Anderson at least toyed with the idea of walking into frame at the very end and saying “Hi — wow, they sure did fight one battle after another! And here’s what you’re supposed to be feeling right now…”
But what if none of that matters? What if the movie doesn’t have a point and that’s fine? What of the Homer Simpsonian wisdom that stories can be “just a bunch of stuff that happened”, a view seemingly endorsed by none other than Vince Gilligan? I increasingly think that it’s fine for a story to just be a story, and that trying to make a Big Profound Statement often causes a movie to die of suffocation up its own asshole.
I’ve also noticed that my takeaway lesson from a movie is often a message that can’t possibly be what the creators were going for. But I honestly don’t think this is a problem with my interpretive abilities: I think that in the three cases I’m about to cover, my conclusion is the only logical conclusion based on what was on-screen. Which once again suggests that going for a message is a dicey gambit, and that filmmakers might be better off skipping grandiose statements and just telling stories.
So, here are three movies that I think have a pretty-goddamned-clear message if you’re following the plot, but that message cannot possibly be what the filmmaker was trying to convey. I’m about 12 percent joking with these interpretations, but that means that I will 88 percent argue that my interpretation is completely reasonable and maybe even required.
The movie: Parasite
The message: Poor people are liars and criminals
It’s incredible to me that Parasite was lauded a class consciousness statement downstream of Occupy Wall Street, when I think that the clear message of the movie was “poor people are dishonest and violent.” I know that cannot possibly be what Bong Joon Ho was going for, but consider what happens: Poor people scam rich people who are oblivious but otherwise inoffensive. Two poor families come into conflict, show no charity towards each other whatsoever, and immediately resort to violence. Finally, the poor people commit a grizzly series of murders that make OJ Simpson look like a petty shoplifter. The rich people are a tad insensitive, but the poor people are selfish, dishonest, knife-wielding maniacs whom it’s strongly implied live their best lives when locked in a basement.
It’s the story that Ayn Rand never had the lady-balls to tell! I would understand if the movie had been embraced by JD Vance types pushing the message that poor people live in a hell of their own making and the welfare state is a waste of time. But the movie was actually embraced by left-wing progressives who loved movie’s class- based message…they just didn’t seem to think much about what that class-based message actually was.
The movie: Whiplash
The message: Psychological torture works
I love Whiplash; J.K. Simmons’ jazz-obsessed totalitarian — the Hitler of Hep Cats — is something that we haven’t seen before. It’s a character study in a hyper-specific genre that manages to be relatable to anyone who’s ever aspired to be good at something. And the fact that Simmons’ jacked up alpha male inhabits the world of jazz — an art form that makes orchid tending look like MMA — makes it all the more fun.
But you have to say this about Simmons’ program of relentless child abuse: It gets results. The movie ends with Simmons’ tortured protégé achieving the jazz perfection that he sought, so…huzzah? We thought that we were watching a movie about the costs to a young person when they sacrifice everything in pursuit of a goal, but we were actually watching a movie about how Simmons’ character was a methodological genius and his actions were completely justified. Just look at the final drum solo — look at Simmons’ involvement, look at how it’s presented as a great and joyous achievement. This movie is basically Breaking Bad if the show had ended with Walt Junior saying “That meth-cooking plan worked like gangbusters — way to go, Dad!”
The movie: The Master
The message: Cults are good!
When people talk about cults, they always dwell on the exploitation and the mass suicide — no one ever talks about the friendship! The Master makes it clear that Joaquin Phoenix’s character’s problems began well before he encountered Philip Seymour Hoffman’s L. Ron Hubbard stand-in. Phoenix becomes part of Hoffman’s movement called “The Cause” — which was probably called “Schmientology” until studio lawyers demanded a change — and Phoenix’s life improves. He’s still violent and erratic, but at least he has friends. And, unsurprisingly, he spends most of the movie trying to forge a relationship with the people who show the patience and acceptance that have clearly been lacking in his life.
Real cults ask you for money. They make you wear weird clothes and have sex with their leader and maybe carve a message into your genitals for aliens to read. The Cause does none of that — they’re basically a group of people hanging out on a really cool yacht. I admit that I googled “the cause real? chapters near me?” while I watched, and was disappointed to learn that the group is fake. Real cults still require more time, money, and bodily sacrifices to Xequag The Galactic Prince than I’m willing to give, but if The Cause ever becomes real, I’ll be first in line.
I’ll say this one last time: I am sure that none of these movies meant me to walk away thinking what I thought. And yet, it happened. Which proves that it’s possible for a movie’s message to go catastrophically haywire. And therefore maybe it’s often — even usually — best for a movie to just tell a story. I’m fine with that; I get five times the FDA recommended allowance of punditry in my day-to-day life, I don’t need it from my movies, too. I accept Paul Thomas Anderson’s explanation that OBAA was “an action car chase movie” that got grafted onto a Thomas Pynchon novel — ya know, that old genre. That’s enough for me, and maybe that has to be enough, because maybe that’s all there is.
Whatever the message was of Parasite was wasted on me. I came away from that movie thinking, "Damn, that house is awesome."
Realistically drawn characters will contain ambiguity. Artists will often lean into this ambiguity, where the "point" of the work isn't to present a tidy moral, but shine light on a difficult conundrum that we all must wrestle with, like "how much crap are you willing to put up with to be able to take a really sick drum solo?"
Often artists do this knowing that audiences are trained on simplistic good guy-vs-bad guy entertainments, and that encountering ambiguity will on occasion cause them to have an uncomfortable and frustrating reaction called "thinking." Artists who succeed in tricking their audiences into thinking about stuff experience a perverse delight in their resulting confusion.