of my channel, when I did my extended video on the editing in Suicide Squad I indulged
in the well worn trope where a reviewer plays up needing drugs or alcohol to get through
the process. In the script it was supposed to be cooking
oil as a total subversion of the trope, but at the last minute I decided to use an old
cough syrup bottle instead, instead recreating the trope. Anyway, lets talk about the art of storytelling
and The Book of Henry! Im going to warn you, The Book of Henry
is an infectious movie. Theres a decent risk that knowing about
this movie will make you insufferable to friends and family as you insist on recounting every
mind-numbing twist in excruciating detail.
The Book of Henry is a case study in what
happens when you spend twenty years writing and re-writing the same script. Crime novelist Steven Horwitz originally
started shopping the script around in the mid 90s. It got some buzz and made the rounds, but
ultimately wasnt produced. Horwitz held on to it and kept making changes
as the years passed and he grew older.
Its no wonder, then, that the film is something
of a cross section of two decades of cloying childrens films and films-about-children,
from Little Man Tate and Radio Flyer, through Pay It Forward, to Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close. The end product is, from a critical perspective,
like a sudoku puzzle. The failings and poor decisions are interlinked
in a way that explaining one requires understanding the relative construction of the others. There is not a singular problem, but a complex
system of co-dependant problems that are ultimately rooted in the insurmountable flaw that is
the movies basic premise.
This is a movie about a mother, Susan, who
sets out to murder her neighbour, Glen, and kidnap his step daughter, Christina, following
instructions left behind by her genius son, Henry, who just died of brain cancer. Or its about Henry, a kid genius who decides
to kill his neighbour, Glen, but develops terminal brain cancer and spends his final
days preparing meticulous instructions so his mother, Susan, can carry out the murder
and kidnapping after his death. But its also a heartwarming, life-affirming
reminder that cynicism weighs us down and we should be doers, not dreamers, and we should
murder our neighbours, but only if their kids are sad, because as we all know, a sad teenager
is an abused teenager. So to start this off properly Im going
to try, as best I can, to simply, factually, recount the plot of the film without commentary,
questions, or asides.
Alright lets go. Henry and his younger brother Peter get on
the bus while Henry, in voice over, waxes philosophic about the nature of man, suggesting
that sometimes people will surprise you, while the rest of the time people are exactly who
they seem to be, which is to say: cruel. In class Henry improvises his essay project
in front of the class, mocks another student, and tells his teacher that he shouldnt
be in an advanced class because [better for psycho-social development] While waiting after school Henry buys and
sells stocks over the pay phone until mom, Susan, pulls up in a beat up car. Henry tells her she should buy a new car because
they can afford a new car, but mom says theres nothing wrong with the old car.
At home Peter bugs Henry over the radio until
Henry agrees to let Peter help him with his Rube Goldberg machine. That night Susan puts Peter into the bath
and then plays video games while Henry does the family finances, telling mom that she
needs to pay more attention. At bedtime Susan reads the two boys a story
that she wrote, she finds an engineering award that Henry won, and Henry gives the medal
to Peter. At breakfast the next morning Henry continues
to bug mom about the finances, trying to teach her how to use the computer, and the kids
correct her middle finger posture when she flips Henry off.
Theyre called outside by their neighbour
Glen Sickleman, the police commissioner, who complains about the leaves on their lawn,
and Susan dots on the neighbour girl, Christina. At work Susan banters with her co-worker Shiela. Her boss, Jon, gives her her paycheck, suggests
she set up direct deposit, and Susan says shell need to check with Henry. At school Henry asks Christina how shes
doing, and Peter gets beat up.
The medal that Henry gave Peter gets broken. Back home Peter sulks, Henry cheers him up
by doing this. Then Susan comes home with Sheila, the two
get drunk. Henry wakes up with a headache, spies on Christina
next door, and ominous music tells us something is up with Glen.
The next morning Susan drives the kids and
Christina to school, Henry keeps looking at her, on the ride to school and in class, then
he gets up, storms into the principals office, and says goddammit Janice, how
much longer does this have to go on? They argue about Christina being abused by
Glen. Goddammit Janice tells him she needs conclusive
evidence, and Henry says hell handle it alone. The kids get picked up by Susan after school,
and they stop by Sheilas, and then they get groceries and see a dude beating on his
girlfriend and Henry wants to get involved but Susan tells him to mind his own business. Henry calls Child Protective Services on Glen,
then while everyone is unpacking groceries Christina puts a lot of weighty emphasis on
the fact that Glen is her step father.
Susan agrees to drive Christina to and from
the upcoming talent show because Glen isnt planning on going. Susan tells Henry to be less serious. Henry says he should have gotten involved
in the supermarket and that violence isnt the worst thing. CPS checks on Glen and Christina, but the
head of CPS is Glens brother, so Henry starts driving around town on his bike, making
notes in a red notebook, buys books on crime scene investigation, and scouts out a gun
store where he overhears some dude trying to buy an illegal gun by dropping the name
Dominic.
Back home Susan is playing Gears of War and
Henry tells her to shut it off. At bedtime theres an argument about whos
enchilada number one and whos enchilada number two, then Susan sings them a song. In the middle of the night Susan is woken
up by Peter screaming because Henry is having a seizure. Hes rushed to hospital, its incurable
brain cancer, and Henry explains his own disease to the neurosurgeon.
Sheila visits Henry in the hospital and kisses
him. [I am not okay with this] Henry and Susan argue about the finances,
Henry tells Peter to make mom read his red notebook, Henry and Susan argue about finances
again, then Henry dies in the middle of the night. After a few days, Peter comes home, Susan
is making brownies for dinner, and doctor hottie comes by for a house call where he
gives Peter his cell number. At work Susan is losing her mind, Jon sends
her home and tells her that Henry told him via letter that she has six hundred and eighty
thousand dollars in a chequing account, and even more in stocks and bonds.
At home Peter finds Henrys red notebook,
which [I think Henry wants us to kill Glen] Susan argues with the book, calls CPS herself,
spys on Glen, and then is told by the book to check the safe where she finds tapes and
a walkman. The tapes walk her step by step through withdrawing
money from the bank, avoiding security cameras at the gun store, and buying [stuff] Susan then gets a copy of Glens signature
which she uses, as per the tapes instructions, to forge custody papers for Christina. At the talent show, doctor hottie shows up
because Peter invited him. Once the show starts Susan synchronizes her
watch, jumps into her new car that Henry bought, drives back to the tree fort, and sets up
to take the shot.
While shes aiming, back at talent show
Christina dances a sad dance, and Goddammit Janice, seeing the sad dance, goes and makes
a phone call. Back at the treehouse Susan has a brief moment
where she realizes that holy crap shes taking instructions from a tape recorded by
her dead eleven year old and decides not to shoot the police commissioner in the head
with a sniper rifle. Standing ovation. Theres your big Kuleshov Effect moment
of the movie, by the way.
Glen confronts her [what the hell is going on?] She threatens him, jumps in her car to get
back to the talent show, Glen goes home, makes a phone call, and shoots himself. Susan gets back just in time for Peters
magic act, where he summons the spirit of Henry from his trunk in the form of a fake
snowstorm. Christina learns her step father is dead. The court gives custody to Susan.
Susan burns all evidence of her crimes, and
the movie ends with Susan tucking Enchilada number one and Butterfly number one into bed. Credits roll. [Title card: Money Problems, or Lack Thereof] This might seem like an odd point to start
the actual autopsy with, but lets talk about the money issues in the film. In the middle of the movie, after Henry dies,
Susans boss Jon gives her an envelope, a letter from Henry, that says she has six
hundred and eighty thousand dollars in the bank, and even more in stocks and bonds.
Theyre rich! Henry has, from beyond the grave, saved the
family from poverty! No more will mom be forced to miss bedtime
because shes working late! She can now realize her true passion to be
a childrens picture book author! This is a genre touchstone. These sorts of movies about exceptional kids
almost always have some element of overcoming or just dealing with financial difficulty,
often poverty. Its easy drama. Little Man Tate, Radio Flyer, and Pay it Forward
all hit this beat in one way or another.
Single mom raising one or two kids at the
edge of financial ruin, working at a diner, driving a beat up car, joking with her coworkers
about the hardships of being rich. Heres the problem. The family in The Book of Henry is doing fine. Theyre fine.
Earlier in the film Jon explicitly points
out that they live in a nice neighbourhood. I mean, heck, they live right next door to
the police commissioner. Henry buys and sells stocks over the phone. Susan only seems to work part time, and its
never a worry about how theyll pay the bills.
Henry has brain surgery and no one is concerned
with how theyre going to pay for it. Hell, our first introduction to Susan is contextualized
by money. [I wish youd get a new car, its not
like you cant afford it.] These beats comes up several times, where
Henry explicitly points out that they can afford stuff, and she never disagrees. In fact the opposite.
She chides him and says that being able to
afford it isnt the point. He also tells Susan that she can afford to
quit her job at the diner and focus on writing. Hes constantly telling her to pay attention
to the financial statements and investment reports and bank statements, but the reveal
that they have all this money doesnt really mean anything from a story standpoint. This scene works just as well if that line
is cut, because the actually important line is this.
[No, youre not fine] Hell, if anything the scene accidentally implies
that she was pretending to be in a paycheck-to-paycheck situation and that Henry has outed her wealth
to her friends and coworkers, humiliating her. Now, the fact that the family isnt living
in poverty isnt itself a problem. Just because its a staple of the genre
doesnt make it mandatory, we dont need that for it to be effective or complete. But, as you can see from all these examples,
the issue of money comes up often.
It is not an unstated dimension or a background
detail. The weird thing is that it actively works
against the theme of the film. This is a rare film that opens with a thesis
statement. Henrys improvised essay in front of the
class is a direct philosophical statement aimed at the audience, and in Henrys little
Tyler Durden Jr.
Screed he explicitly denounces the exact sort of obsession over money that
he then spends the rest of his life pursuing. [Montage] Ha ha ha, its a bad movie. [Title card: Henrys Plan is Bad and Stupid] Henrys plan is bad and stupid. Its exactly the kind of bad and stupid
Rube Goldberg Loony Tunes assassination plan that youd expect to be cooked up by a dumb
eleven year old.
That in and of itself could be something fun
and interesting if it werent offensively paired with the incredibly heavy subject of
rescuing someone from being raped, and the fact that an adult follows the plan almost
to its completion before having a minor epiphany that maybe murder isnt actually the answer. This is all paralleled by constant assertions
that Henry is, in fact, a super mega genius who thinks of everything. So for fun lets point out all the flaws
in this flawless plan. From the start I need to emphasize that this
is a plan to kill Glen.
Its also, theoretically, a plan to rescue
Christina from abuse, but first and foremost its a plan to kill Glen. Well talk about this in more detail later,
but so little of the plan revolves around or involves Christina that, really, rescuing
Christina is just the justification for a plot to kill Glen. You could swap the motive for anything else
and very, very little would change. The first thing to highlight is that most
of this plan is drafted before Henry knows hes going to die, meaning that he was,
in concept at least, intending to somehow follow through with these steps.
This is a big screenwriting problem because
the writer already knows Henry dies before the character knows, so the plan is accidentally
built around the convenience that Henry doesnt need to execute the plan. A lot of the smaller details of the plan are
suggested as part of various preparation montages, and illustrations from Henrys notebook,
which we fortunately get in close up during the opening credits. Despite all the attention given to minute
details like the type of bullet used and clearing all the branches, the basic concept of the
plan is really simple. Get a gun, lure Glen out into the woods, and
shoot him in the head from the comfort of the playhouse.
After that, as per the illustration, the body
falls into the river, and then the gun gets thrown off the bridge into the lake. The biggest hole here is that every version
of the plan revolves around shooting Glen. Henry explicitly scopes out the gun store,
and gets the name Dominic, at a point when he assumes the headaches are just stress. Except if we take the cancer out of the equation
this is where the plan ends, because even with the whole Dominic thing, even the gun
store owner willing to bend the paperwork rules for cash isnt going to sell a sniper
rifle to an 11 year old.
The next biggest hole is the body. Again, the scriptwriter knows that neither
Henry nor Susan will actually kill Glen, so they dont bother to sweat the details,
which leaves us with Henry intending for Glens body to fall into the river, and by river
I mean creek. This creek. Now, to me, someone who watches way too many
police procedurals, this isnt so much a hide a body creek as much as its a hey
boss, we found-a-body down by the creek creek.
So Henrys master plan to kill Glen is really
just kill him in your own backyard and hope no one suspects his neighbours. Once we move away from the concept, into the
weeds of the details, is when the plan really falls apart into needless complexity. The hilarious thing is that Henry repeatedly
stresses the need to plan for every contingency, but then fails to plan for even basic contingencies. The most glaring hole is in step one: lure
Glen out into the woods.
Apparently the best idea the authors could
think of was making noise with a walkie-talkie strapped to an amplifier. Seriously, thats the plan. Susan whistles into a walkie-talkie and this
noise is suspicious enough that Glen gets his gun before going to investigate. It also needs to be stressed here that everything
in the details of the plan hinges on a very tight schedule, as Susan needs to be seen
at the talent show, get home, kill Glen, dispose of the evidence, and get back before anyone
notices that shes gone.
So plan for every contingency, but the whole
thing falls apart if Glen watches a movie, gets a phone call, takes a shower, or does
literally anything that would prevent or delay hearing the noise thats supposed to lure
him to his death. A great problem with the plan is that Henry,
via tape, has Susan run around to a bunch of different ATMs to withdraw a few hundred
dollars in cash at each. He says that this is to avoid suspicion and
get around withdrawal limits, but hitting up a bunch of different ATMs in a short span
of time is exactly the kind of behaviour thats going to draw suspicion. Also, sweetie, youre rich.
You have well over a million dollars in investments
and cash. Just go to the bank and take out the money
like a normal person. Its not even that much. She only takes out $1500, which is, one, not
enough to buy the hardware she gets from the gun store, and two, not a suspicious amount
of money.
Thats buying crap off Kijiji money. Oh, also, last note here, just because its
hilarious [plywood is slightly thicker than the human
skull] This isnt a flaw in the plan, its just
a really dumb line, one that they were so proud of they made sure to include it in the
title cards. Youre shooting 30 caliber frangible bullets,
his skull isnt going to be the problem here. [Henry is a Dick] [emotional intelligence] Thats a mind-boggling statement that just
says so much about the way Colin Trevorrow sees the world.
Henry is the least emotionally aware person
in the film. Hes actually a huge prick. I mean, his first actual scene is him dunking
on this kid, Tommy, for not being grown up enough for Henrys tastes. Rather than being a kid who has been unfairly
forced to grow up by a negligent, absent, or addicted parent, Henry has self-appointed
himself to be the adult.
This is tied to the movies characterization
of Susan, which well get to shortly, but theres no indication that things wouldnt
get done without Henry around. Henry is the kind of person who self-martyrs
because they see other people as incompetent. The film also tries to play Henry two ways,
and cant decide which is which. Susan tells him to spend less time focused
on his school work, and theres a whole half a scene about all the awards that Henry
wins for extracurricular activities.
So on one hand were supposed to think about
Henry as the kind of keener who does all the bonus work, and then some. But then in that first scene, the Tyler Durden
Jr. Speech, Henry is supposed to be reading an essay that hes written, except hes
clearly just improvising. He didnt do the work at all.
So theres the other implication, that hes
a waster, the smart kid who thinks the work is beneath him. To cap it off, he mocks his teacher. [Psycho social development] This whole moment is demonstrably false. Every shot of him in class, he looks absurdly
bored, and he doesnt have friends.
Henry spends his lunch playing checkers in
the cafeteria with the lunch lady, a scene where he does the whole movie smart person
shorthand of beating the game in one move just to show that he was in control all along,
which is, again, a huge dick move. Its also incredibly hack on the part of
the screenwriter. Like, this is just the worst kind of lazy
trope. Oh, and we cant forget the scene where
Henry, cop on the edge, bursts into Goddammit Janices office and threatens to turn in
his badge.
Henry also gets really judgy about Susan playing
video games. He mocks the way that she plays, and polices
what she does with her free time. Hes actually really, really condescending
to Susan. [Montage of times Henry is
a dick, dont forget violence isnt the worst thing] [youre doing it wrong] What? No, no shes not.
The middle finger is a gesture with a high
degree of plasticity. You have your classic style Detroit style The web shooters And, of course, The Logan. Theres nothing wrong with her form. Youre not being accurate, youre just
being a dick, and you deserve to get flipped off.
Oh, and how can we forget the part where Henry
cooks up a plot to murder his neighbour. [High degree of emotional intelligence] [Title card: Susan is Negligent, But Not Really] How the film characterizes Susan is, for me
at least, the weirdest part of the way the movie is constructed. All of the previous stuff about the way that
Henry interacts with her, theres a dissonance in that the movie still seems to think that
Henry is always correct. Hes an asshole genius as directed by someone
who doesnt think that hes an asshole.
The byproduct of this is that every time Henry
is a judgy prick to his mom, the framing and consequences always skew towards Henry. Even in the big death bed argument, where
Henry tells Susan to focus on the finances, and Susan says it doesnt matter, this isnt
ultimately framed as Henrys failure, his fear in the face of mortality, but instead
as Susans weakness. Within the framework of the story this isnt
Henry in denial, its Henry trying to tie up loose ends because hes the adult in
the relationship. Henrys plans and behaviour never actually
fail or fall apart.
The closest it gets is when Susan decides
not to shoot Glen, but nothing actually comes from that because Glen kills himself a few
minutes later. This moment, right here, where Susan goes
off-script, this is where the story finally picks up, where the stakes are raised, but
then it just ends and everything else goes according to Henrys plan with no fallout
whatsoever. So this creates a dynamic where the film is
constantly suggesting things about Susan that arent actually true if you think about
it for more than a minute. From a structural standpoint, the main problem
with Susan is that she has no arc as a character because none of her real problems are addressed,
and the problem that is addressed was never truly a problem.
Susans deal is that shes complacent. Shes comfortable, shes safe, shes
financially secure, and shes just kind of coasting through life, raising her two
kids, enjoying being in a place where nothing requires her constant, unbroken attention. She has plenty of time to bond with her kids,
drive them to and from school, take them to events, make them breakfast, and pack their
lunches. Now, she does have a bad case of Cool Mom,
shes overly codependent on Henry, and she has no real ambitions, but the family is,
objectively, doing fine.
Shes not super keyed into the family finances
because she doesnt need to be. Thats the luxury of being well off, regardless
of Henrys involvement. This goes back to everything we talked about
with the money sub-plot. Susan ostensibly doesnt know about all
the money that Henry has made on the stock market, but it doesnt seem to bother Susan
at all.
As far as shes concerned the family is
financially secure off whatever income she has, and nothing suggests that if it werent
for Henry theyd be screwed. I mean, presumably they survived just fine
before Henry started trading stocks, right? Being a Cool Mom is a character flaw, in the
absolute sense, but theres no stakes to it. Its not causing problems. Cool Mom is a surface level problem, a behavioural
problem, that makes other problems worse.
Being a cool mom didnt lead to Henrys
rapid onset terminal brain cancer being overlooked. Its only kind of a problem for one scene
after Henrys death where she has a very justifiable, but temporary, breakdown. Nothing that goes wrong in the second half
of the movie has anything to do with things she was failing to do when Henry was alive,
things that Henry was doing that she, the parent, should have been doing instead. The thing that the movie chooses to use as
synecdoche for Susans negligence is that she plays video games and has one girls night
with Sheila, but none of this is ever at the cost of anything.
Shes not playing games instead of getting
groceries or making breakfast. Shes not playing games instead of going
to work (which would still be pointless since the movie has explicitly told us that she
doesnt need to go to work in the first place.) Shes not drinking instead of helping with
homework, or getting drunk in the middle of the day, or inviting Sheila over six nights
a week. Shes just playing games, sometimes. [Turn it off] Yeah, the movie is super judgemental about
Susan not spending literally 100% of her time focused on her kids.
So as a character arc she kind of learns at
the very end to see her genius dead kid as the kid he was and not the small adult he
acted like. But hes already dead, so its not like
that changes anything. Aside from that shes just kind of complacent. Her sub-plot about wanting to be a picture
book author is, well, its disingenuous to even call it a sub-plot.
Its not Susans ambition so much as its
the one of her three hobbies that the movie approves of. [Title card: Christina is a Lamp] Alright, this one is the heavy one. Christinas involvement in the film is a
textbook example of a prop character. You could replace her with just about anything
and the plot would still work.
She could be a sack of jewels that Glen has
stolen and very little would actually change. The plot to kill Glen is supposedly motivated
by the desire to save Christina from abuse, but Christina isnt involved in it at all. Her agency in all of this is utterly absent. This is why its really just a plot to kill
Glen, not a plot to save Christina.
The whole story started from the idea of a
genus kid planning the perfect crime, and the dudes who made it were so busy high-fiving
each other for their wit that they didnt bother to ask if a story about an eleven year
old being raped by her step dad was the best vehicle for that. [Bts tonal tightrope clip] Jesus, they
think they nailed it. Anyway, Christina only has a half dozen lines
in the entire movie, and no one bothers to even try and empower her, only taking the
time to make a few anonymous phone calls before giving up. Yet were expected to believe that shes
so close with the Carpenter family that she has fancy personal handshakes with Susan and
slots effortlessly into the hole Henry left behind.
[Disgusted face] From a storytelling standpoint theres a
whole host of problems with how this entire plot unfolds. We, the audience, first get an inkling that
somethings wrong when Henry notices that Christina is sad on the playground. That night, by happenstance, Henry is looking
out his bedroom window when he sees, presumably, Christina being abused by Glen. Now, from our perspective this is the inciting
moment.
Henry has discovered a crime, and is now going
to start trying to correct it. The next morning he tries, lightly, to prod
Christina in the car, and then, in class, when she isnt interested in a donut, he
gets up, storms into the principals office and [goddammit Janice] This is complete whiplash. Were twenty minutes into the movie and
all of a sudden this isnt something new, this is an ongoing thing that he has tried
to report before? Hes dumping all this new information that
contradicts what we were just told. Everything about the framing, music, and acting
in the previous scenes indicate that this is new, not some long running thing that Henry
has been dealing with.
In the first scene with all the key players
nothing about this plot is indicated beyond the fact that the kids dont particularly
like Glen. Also in one of the weirdest creative decisions,
even though Henry says shes been coming to school with bruises, the hacks that went
with this visual shorthand [Henry winning a game in one move to show hes smart] decided
that they werent going to with a visible bruise. Its weird. Why wouldnt you show us that? Its the easiest thing to show.
Then goddammit Janice says she needs concrete
proof, but bruises werent enough, I guess? All of this repeats again at the end, when
Susan makes all the same claims, that she apparently has all this information stashed
away, but weve never seen any of it, which is just asinine in a story thats literally
focused on planning and details. We have the process Henry used to partially
forge custody papers, but zilch about gathering actual evidence against Glen. The movie has this really weird aversion to
making any of the characters actually flawed or negligent in some way. If the filmmakers gave Christina visible bruises
that they show us, well, suddenly every character who can see those bruises, including Susan,
teachers, and goddammit Janice, are accountable.
Their failure to react or willingness to overlook
that information is damning, and makes them complicit in Glens abuse. The movie goes to weird lengths to give everyone
an out. No one makes actual, awful mistakes, they
just make implied mistakes. I mean, thats why theyre even doing
this flimsy due diligence in the first place.
Its all just shoddy convenience so that
Henry can be blameless when he decides to plan to kill Glen, make it look like there
was no other option, instead of implying that maybe Henry was actually just a little too
eager to kill Mister Sickelman next door. [Title card: Henry is Jesus] Easily one of the strangest elements of the
movie is the weird, mangled Jesus metaphor. First of all, the movie is called The Book
of Henry, an aesthetic call to the naming of biblical books. The Book of Matthew, The Book of John, The
Book of Jeremiah, Job, Ezra, Ezekiel, Mark, Luke, Esther, Ruth, Malachi.
Second, Henrys death is an aesthetic call
to pieta sculpture. The thinking mans Jesus imagery, for when
a crucifixion pose would be too crass. Third, Henrys number one disciple, the
one who first takes his words and convinces others of their importance, is named Peter. Fourth, the family name is Carpenter, which
is only about one step down from when Lost had a metaphysical guide named Christian Shepherd.
Fifth, at the very end Susan reads her new
story about how a flower dies and fertilizes a garden with its body, which is just a muddy
repaint of the Christian belief that Jesus died to exalt mankind, but is also clearly
intended as a metaphor for Henry who died but made things better in the process? Okay, so, the movie thinks that its message
is about apathy. [Henry clip] So the takeaway here is that the death of
Henry is what taught Susan to be less apathetic and to reach out and help others, that she
went from being unwilling to intervene in the grocery store to willing to kill Glen
and forge documents in order to save Christina. But she didnt kill Glen, and, in fact,
once she learns about Christinas situation, especially once she sees it for herself, shes
anything but apathetic. Sure, the things that she tries are largely
ineffective and she quickly latches on to the murder plot, but she doesnt need any
persuading to care.
Even in the grocery store, the problem isnt
apathy, its feeling powerless. Shes worried that if she intervenes it
will make things worse. This is not the moral failing she actually
overcomes. Its never even implied that killing Glen
might have unforeseen negative outcomes.
Oh, and if you want an actual example of a
bad deus ex machina ending, it would be when principle Goddammit Janice decides, completely
independent of the actions of any of the characters, to finally take do her job in a way that neatly
resolves all conflicts while absolving the central characters for any of their actions. Susan gets away with attempted murder because
Glen kills himself before he can tell anyone what she did. [Title card: A Lesson in Imagery] Theres so, so much more we could talk about,
but to wrap this up I want to talk about one scene in particular. My favourite scene in the whole movie for
how utterly absurd it is at every level of conception.
For Peters act in the talent show he pushes
out a large chest and says that he will make his brother Henry reappear. [When Im done hes going to be here right
among all of us] Now, theres a critical detail from earlier
that needs to be mentioned. After Henrys death theres no funeral
scene, not even in montage. This is important because this moment is supposed
to create some uncertainty.
Did Henry, genus child and Jesus metaphor,
in fact fake his own death and will now pop out to the delight of all? Who knows! So Peter opens the chest, kicks the chest
and it starts spraying fake snow out over the audience. Just, everywhere. Then everyone gets up, standing ovation. Peter and Susan hug.
So, this scene. This scene. Alright. Whats going on here, what theyre trying
to do.
This is, obviously, a callback to the mountain
climbing nonsense from earlier. Which no one in the crowd would be familiar
with, so this is literally just a chest that spits out fake snow. Metaphorically, this is the Book of Henrys
version of the baptism of fire inside its mangled Jesus metaphor. Peter, chief apostle, has preached to the
crowd the whimsy of Henry, and his spirit has descended upon them.
But you know what else it means, visually? It means that Peter has promised the crowd
that his brother Henry would be physically right here among them. And then he sprays them with a dry, white
powder. The visual implication, however unintended,
is that Peter scatters Henrys ashes over the crowd. Standing ovation..
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