It Ends with Us (2024)
Directed by: Justin Baldoni
Premise: Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel. Lily (Blake Lively) falls in love with a handsome neurosurgeon (Justin Baldoni) but their outwardly perfect relationship disguises increasingly violent abuse.
What Works: It Ends with Us is a domestic violence story but the filmmakers approach the material with nuance and intelligence. The narrative unfolds from the point of view of Lily and it leaps backward and forward in time to fill in her family history and her relationship with Atlas, a young man she partnered with in high school. Lily’s father was violently abusive toward her mother and Lily starts down a similar path in her relationship with Ryle. The reality of abuse gradually becomes clear to the viewer as it does to Lily. The violent incidents are initially shot and edited in ways that suggest they could be accidents but later flashbacks use different angles that fill in the details. Ryle is not portrayed as a straight up monster. The filmmakers recognize that otherwise normal people are capable of abuse and in that way It Ends with Us offers a more complex vision of domestic violence than we typically get from a Hollywood picture.
What Doesn’t: Hollywood films tend to be idealistic and aspirational. People on screen are more beautiful than they are in real life and concerns about money are usually invisible. The lifestyle seen in It Ends with Us are so casually affluent that it becomes distracting. Everyone is impeccably dressed and they live in luxury homes. The gloss of the production and the assumed wealth is distracting. It’s part of a larger problem with It Ends with Us; the movie lacks any grit or edge. The story is emotionally flat. The characters and conflicts of It Ends with Us don’t possess any human or organic qualities. It’s a domestic abuse narrative that looks like the images of a fashion catalog. The dramatization of abuse is admirably complicated but it rarely conveys danger. Even the sex scenes feel too safe and plastic and moments that are supposed to break our hearts come across hollow. The subplot between the adult Lily and Atlas is forced and unnecessary. The reintroduction of Atlas into Lily’s life rests on a big coincidence and the implied love triangle undercuts the reality of the movie. It feels as though the filmmakers are trying to force this abuse narrative into a conventional Hollywood template which makes the drama feel artificial.
Bottom Line: It Ends with Us intends to be a heartbreaker that inspires the audience and shifts their view of domestic abuse. It’s only partly successful at that. The depiction of abuse breaks out of some of the conventions but the picture suffers from too much Hollywood gloss.
Episode: #1009 (August 18, 2024)