When I still was a student, my friend (who was very much into crime stories) introduced me to “You” series. At first I was skeptical, but decided to give it a chance. After all, the crime genre is not really my cup of tea. But you know what? I finished the first season and started to wait for the next one. And I grew very uncomfortable with that.

Up to this day I see countless reels on Instagram using in a humourous context video cuts from “You” with Joe, a serial killer, joking about stalking and finding out information about the object of your desire, juxtaposing the image of Joe to the desire of knowing every single detail about the person you want to be with.

Is it funny, or is it creepy?

I am sure it depends on how we see the protagonist in “You”. Many of us watched the show, and the general audience seemed to love and enjoy it. And mostly because of the main character. Charismatic, romantically obsessed, and a bookworm. Something tells me that if the showrunners made Joe less conventionally attractive, or gave him much less of a '“hopeless romantic” archetype, the audience would not sympathise with him that much. But as a result, in 2019 the series were ranked among the highest-viewed shows on Netflix in United States, becoming a massive hit in the country and internationally. I assume it not just the views that were keeping the show popular — the story a lot of people seemed to obsess about gave a lot of material for popular psychology blogs, doing deep dives of the protagonist, his psychology and childhood trauma that made him such a monster. The other characteristic that contributed to success of the show is its binge watching value: each episode barely ends with something that gives you all the answers and explanations, it is full of cliffhangers and to quit it even at 3 a.m. when you really want to know if he will finally get caught or not, seems nearly impossible.

And so at the time when I grew really uncomfortable with how likeable the character has become for many people, and started to question it, the last season drops. Showrunners make a twist in the last episode that mirrors my concerns about the perception of the main character: maybe the problem is you?

The series end with Joe saying these words, while finally being in the prison cell, reading another affectionate letter from his fan who expresses their obsession over Joe’s actions and personality. This letter is a hauntingly creepy evidence of what the show became to many viewers, depicting Joe as a romatically-obsessed person in search for true love. Because, in his worldview, everything he was doing to women, he did in pursuit of being accepted — which, for Joe, is a definition of true love. If you watched the series, you could easily notice that most of the time we see what is happening through Joe’s point of view, and eventually this view crumbles to pieces even for the protagonist. He is more than the unreliable narrator. He is the abuser and a killer, who justifies his actions to himself, while millions of viwers get to watch it.

And here, while being in a prison cell, he suddenly asks his audience, which itself became his own stalker — what is truly that thing that made you admire him and relate to him?

Well, okay. How should we approach such complicated topics in the movies then? Do we really have to understand the serial killers and their motives to make a really good story, and do we need such stories at all?

The mythology of the serial killer in media

I remember some years ago I read the material about an art project that was exhibiting the diaries of the war criminal Ratko Mladić. What visitors saw on these pages is that there was nothing fascinating or unique about the person who is responsible for deaths of many people. His wringings only included bureaucratic records, comments on logistics, phone numbers and name lists. The artist himself (Vladimir Miladinović), who created the project, called the writings banal and very boring. The exhibition mostly supports the concept of “banality of evil“, which discusses the role of people in the system responsible for war crimes, and yes, it does not apply to the serial killer domain, but I still believe the idea of that project challenges the way how we see the lifes of perpetrators and how the “great evil“ is supposed to look like.

The figure of Joe from “You“ is a blueprint example of the stereotypes that surround serial killers in our culture. Uncanny, enigmatic, charismatic, sometimes very artistic and even creative. Talented genius and a mastermind who sucessfully escapes police at every turn, predicting and foreseeing the next 10 steps investigators will make to find and finally catch him. Yes, people like him can be portrayed in different way, with different degrees and occupations in life, but usually this is how films and TV shows reduce the villains to a sort of mysticism that waits to be defined. Especially if it concerns fictional characters — they just must be outstanding to be sold. If there’s one thing that unites all the serial killers in the media culture, it is that they are anything but banal.

And there is one show I would love to talk about which demonstrates another side of a perpetrator nature. And this side is…pretty boring, to be honest.

“You“ is everything that “Ripley“ is not.

And there is a total opposite side of how social deviance can be portrayed — “Ripley” series is a remake of the acclaimed “The Talented Mr. Ripley” 1999 movie and was released quite recently, in 2024. The story (initially based on a book) was stretched to 8 episodes, with black and white editing, and a beautifully written screenplay. I know that for many people the 1999 movie has becomes something sort of a classic, and it is really good in its own nature, but narratively I do prefer how “Ripley” portrayed the main character. I am not going to draw parallels with the book and how well it adapted its plot, but I am going to focus on the portrayal of the protagonist. Oh, and one of the reasons to watch it is the fascinating use of Mina’s song ‘Il cielo in una stanza‘ (I am writing these words now and listen to this absolute Italian masterpiece).

Andrew Scott, who plays the protagonist, is my favorite actor EVER, so of course I might be a bit biased regarding my likes of his works. But still, even Scott could not make me feel a bit of sympathy for his character. And, you know, I guess that was quite the point. Even if it was not intended so — worked out really well as a result.

Unlike the movie, here Tom Ripley is far from charismatic. He is far from being well-skilled and smart. He is scared and keeps wondering if he will ever get caught and cannot make his peace with that. Tom is awkward and clumsy in ever situation he finds himself in. At some occasions you might even question his feeling of common sense. The series makes you wonder what is this thing that helps him to escape from responsibilities again and again. It seems that not his outstanding intelligence and finesse that leads him through helping not to get caught, but pure and very accidental luck. Nothing more.

And here’s the thing about Tom Ripley in the series — he is deeply, awfully uncharming. And there’s very little things that will make you want to relate to him — probably except some fundamental human emotions and instincts like fear. Andrew Scott’s portrayal of Ripley has little mysticism around his persona — in the beginning of the story we get the hint that he used to engage in some sort of criminal affairs, which makes his character even more calculated and cold-blooded, and, yet still, seems very awkward in everything he does. And yet, he is still a serial killer.

The series have outstanding visual work while being filmed in different parts of Italy; here the culture and art (especially Caravaggio) gets a significant tribute. And you know what? No matter how strongly Ripley aspires to the heights of aesthetic values — trying his hand at art and delighting in the architecture and landscapes of Europe —this does not save him from the superficiality of his own personality, the one thing he cannot escape.

You can hardly find reels on Instagram praising anything about the personality of the protagonist from “Ripley“ series. And you know what? Maybe sometimes it is really useful to show another side of abuse and perpetration — the one that is not romantic, not carried out by a mastermind and a manipulative narcissist, but by somebody who is much more shallow than that.

What do you know about Ukrainian cinema?

This is the question I wanted to start my Substack with. It was one of the reasons I started to write about cinema — over the past two years I started to notice how little people from all over the world know about the culture of my home country. Unfortunately, Ukrainian culture is still quite often seen through the prism of the Soviet Union influence, or even confused with Russian. I already shared one article about Ukrainian films, you can find it here. And today I want to do more of a deep dive into a movie that is probably the most well-known Ukrainian film according to film critics and international viewers.

Yes, I am going to talk about my cinematic favorite ‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors‘. If you already have it on your watchlist, I highly recommend watching it more than once — you might initially notice just how beautifully shot the film is, but with every subsequent viewing you will notice more and more unique details like camerawork, editing, music, use of color and how well they all fit into the story delivery.

The origins of the movie

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, who wrote it while having been heavily inspired by the customs and traditions of the Hutsul people (who live in Western Ukraine and Northern Romania). The inspiration behind the book also defines how the movie is made — we learn a tragic story of two young people who are madly in love with each other, but it is always the inviting enchantment of the local folklore that surrounds the events and is treated as a separate character guiding the protagonists and shaping the events.

The most famous and well-known love story for many people would probably be the Romeo and Juliet story — a tale about a young couple, whose star-crossed love doesn’t even have the chance to thrive due to the family feud. ‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors‘ portrays a similar archetype of love: two children, Ivan (Ivan Mykolaichuk) and Marichka (Larisa Kadochnikova), become friends despite the conflict between their families, and eventually fall in love as they grow up.

Their happy-ever-after is doomed not only because of the family situation. Marichka tragically dies by drowning in the river while Ivan is away from the village. The rest of the movie shows Ivan dealing with complicated emotions and the haunting memory of Marichka; he sees and becomes obsessed with visions of her, even when another woman, Palahna, enters his life, who is seemingly meant to fill the grief void. She fails to do so, and, even after they marry and begin living together, Ivan avoids his wife and continues to rave about Marichka. Frustrated, Palahna starts to cheat on him with the local sorcerer (or molfar in Ukrainian), Yura.

The first half of the movie looks pretty realistic, with only a bit of the director’s imaginative touch: he allows the camera to capture the details of local life, and we slowly get to know how the relationship between the two young people starts to develop in a very poetic way. They are each other’s first (and, probably, true) love, and their relationship is as pure as the surrounding landscape.

With Marichka’s death, the movie takes a more mystical turn — we no longer can bet on the reality of Ivan’s vision. He constantly experiences hallucinations and sees Marichka’s ghost, and even though he seems to understand that it is impossible for her to be alive, the phantom of even a short-lived relief feels so alluring. The presence of the sorcerer figure, who apparently tries to cast a cursing spell over Ivan, only makes us doubt more about what is real and what is not in the protagonist’s perception.

The two women in Ivan’s life are like two centers of gravity for his existence: one is real, and the other one lives only in his imagination. During one of the public lectures, the movie director Sergei Parajanov even referred to Titian’s painting ‘Amor sacro e Amor profano’, (Sacred and Profane Love), which depicts two women representing different types of love. He said that for him, these women are Palahna and Marichka. This makes a perfect description of the movie setting with the protagonist being torn between the material and spiritual sides of the world.

The film’s impressionism

The movie moves along through contrasting dualities: bright images suddenly switching to black and white, organized religion existing alongside the supernatural and witchcraft, spiritualism lies close to depravity and sin. The plot unfolds in a linear fashion, but the same cannot be said for the camerawork; instead of just recording the sequence of events as a witness, the camera captures the characters’ perception of them — and, perhaps, the magic and mysticism they perceive in their surroundings.

Everything in the film that defies logical explanation is more than just decoration or artistic vision — it plays a central role in Ivan’s life and death. It seems the only thing offering him any hope is the image — or apparition— of Marichka, which in the end defines his destiny. The poetic nature of the protagonist’s emotions stands in contrast to the reality and materiality of the everyday world. They are like two parallel universes, each of them is governed by its own laws, and they are unable to coexist — except through the sacrifice of one by the other.

The perspective of protagonist’s struggle is shown through many ways aside from his acting — sometimes the camera movements seem to be echoing the moves of characters, sometimes it captures them through extreme angles, at times blurring and distorting vision as if in a delirium. Ivan’s grief is shown in black and white, and we can see the brightest color in the movie — red — when the protagonist dies, reuniting with his only love.

So what made this movie eventually so important for Ukrainian film history?

Soviet cultural production (especially film production) was governed by ideological expectations associated with so-called ‘socialist realism’, which put strict limits on what kinds of stories, aesthetics and social realities could be represented in works of art. So, to show anything different from that would be a huge risk, at the very least, for one’s career. But some artists and creators were willing to take those risks.

Sergei Parajanov created a movie that showed something competely different from what was expected during that time. Apart from highlighting Ukrainian folklore elements and touching on the subject of cultural sovereignty, the film was made not only in Ukrainian literary language, but it also included local Hutsul dialect. When the movie turned out to be a huge success and performed very well at international festivals, the soviet authorities asked Parajanov to translate it into Russian, which was a request he categorically rejected. Also, some critics claim that before the ‘Shadows‘ no other Ukrainian movie included such a variety of authentic Ukrainian music, including the wedding, Christmas, funeral and other traditional songs.

The film’s premiere on 4 September 1965 also became an important political act: in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, the movie screening turned into a protest against oppression of Ukrainian creators by the Soviet Union.

There are many reasons to enjoy this movie on many different levels — but it will surely bring you closer to understanding Ukrainian culture.

My literature teacher in school used to explain to us that our study program includes works more than 2000 years old for one reason: they are speaking about the things that will stay relevant no matter what. This is why during those classes we almost always talked about the themes of love and hate, good and evil, courage and cowardice.

As my teacher put it, if you learn the universal truths - you learn what life is.

Even now, reading Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ is almost like part of the membership requirements for being seen and regarded as a well-educated person. So when the first infromation and pictures from ‘The Odyssey, according to Christopher Nolan’ started to leak on the exclusive media sources, and later the film itself began to be scrutinized pixel by pixel - let’s admit, we all saw it coming. And I am definitely not the first and definitely not the last person to share my online opinion about the movie adaptation of the epic poem.

My teacher would probably argue with Christopher Nolan on how he understood and showed us ‘The Odyssey‘. Even more, he would probably receive a bad grade from her. This movie adaptation is not about the universal truths anymore. It showed how our values changed and transformed. And if they did so, there is a question of whether the original work should change as well.

Yes, we can debate even more on how ‘historically accurate‘, or Homer-faithful the movie is. But we definitely cannot ignore how Nolan’s artistic freedom has driven the internet mad: it turned the movie discussion experience into the arguments over left-wing agenda in art, feministic perspectives, modern masculinity, war trauma and the ways ancient stories stay relevant today. You could love or hare ‘The Odyssey‘ of 2026, but Nolan’s work deserves some credit just for that.

I am not going to jump aboard of the ‘how well did Nolan copy Homer’s text‘ discussion train, but I want to ask another question: what does ‘The Odyssey‘ movie reveal about what we expect from a film like that today?

Text and film speak in different languages.

Most movie adaptations come from books - and it is almost like translating the book to a foreign language that barely has common linguistic roots with the original. There’s a wide range of undercurrents unfolding behind the words that the text itself cannot capture, but can be revealed through visuals. A text can describe that, but cannot look at the reader with eyes full of despair, convey a longing for home through a desperate cry, or make us feel the vividness of Odysseus’ memories of Troy burning under the heat of blind aggression. Film works with so much more than just the text - the effects, lighting, editing, background music, emotions made visible on the huge screen but not in the text. I don’t want to say that movies are better or more complicated than books; it is just to say how different they appear to be in delivering even the most similar things.

Almost everything we are dealing with in modern media is an interpretation…

…of interpretation of interpretation of interpretation. Even mythology can be seen as a way humans have used to understand and explain the world around them, moral and social orders, natural phenomena, our origins, disasters and unfortunes. And this is exactly how mythology is showed in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’: a famous and almighty hero is unable to return home for years due to a series of misfortunes, the majority of which constitute what is explained to us as divine punishment and intervention.

Even translations of Homer’s work can be considered a certain form of adaptation. We are talking not just about making the epic pome as accessible as possible - this also about the cultural gaps, rpose or poem form, word order, even the translator’s personal writing style. And guess what? All of that can affect your reading experience and perception of the work. For many reasons translation to another language never really keeps the meaning that was initially intended - and there are plenty of translations of ‘The Odyssey’ in English alone, all different in style and delivery. I read the translation by Samuel Butler from 1900, so I guess the text may also vary depending on the time when the translation was carried out, while more recent translations could sound more ‘modern’. By the way, Samuel Butler also assumed in one of his works that ‘The Odyssey‘ could be written by a woman living in Sicily , and not the male writer who we know as Homer - if you’re a fan of the ‘Woman Author’ theory.

Nolan’s Odyssey: traditional masculinity defied

One of the things that the audience was not happy about is almost total absence of gods in the movie. Yes, we do not see the gods on screen, but they always stay present and observant; just like Odysseus, who only sees Athena, we only know them through the impact of their influences during the film. We do not need to see the gods to understand that the divine concept is used more as an allegory for the protagonist’s moral compass.

Nolan is questioning the role of faith and mythology through showing the way Odysseus begins to re-evaluate his part in the fall of Troy and his relationship with gods; what appears to be coming from the gods is, in reality, his subconscious trying to process moral responsibility for the horrors on the battlefiled, failing the ‘Zeus’ law‘. Instead of blaming the gods, it is time for the protagonist to look back and come to terms with his own visions of honor and virtue. And it is also seems that Odysseus’ subconscious gives him a wake-up call within Calypso’s intoxicating paradise, setting him on the path home and letting Odysseus сhoose to finally confront and face memories - both good and bad. Odysseus does not remember his past life, or where he was going, but he keeps to say Penelope’s name in his sleep.

Still, he cannot remember everything without being open to the vulnerability of facing the trauma first. The legendary hero seems to be invincible, but Nolan makes him look so only on the surface. And so seems the ‘dark aura‘ warrior Agamemnon, appearing triumphantly at the gates of Troy and anticipating the city’s fall. We never even get to see his face on the screen - but we can feel his energy all along. Dominant, fierceful, aggressive, violent and authoritative. Is it ironic that such a powerful and desctructive force fell by the hand of a woman?

One of the most noticeable changes, actually, made a lot of sense in Nolan’s vision of ‘The Odyssey‘

Probably one of the biggest changes that Nolan adds to his adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ is the figure of Sinon (played by Elliot Page) - a young Ithacan who ends up fighting at Troy, and the one who is eventually picked to ‘present’ the horse to the Trojans. His character does not even come from the original ‘Odyssey’; we know him as a manipulative spy in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’. Nolan transforms the image of his character into his virtual opposite - the person carrying this name appears to be a sympathetic, innocent and honest person. And these traits are about to be used as a token of trust at the very beginning of the movie.

We are shown that Sinon is taken to war at a very young age, during the lottery selection, when Antinous manipulates the boy into taking his place. From that moment on, Sinon seems to be not just a soldier, eventually killed by a series of unfair choices other people seem to be making for him and instead of him: it is the society and its systems that are constantly failing him. First - by having an older and stronger man choosing his fate in the lottery system which failed to protect the vulnerable individual. Second - by being used in the power game of deception, leading to tragedy. And even though Sinon’s presence on the screen is very short, his death at the beginning becomes one of the most haunting images for Odysseus in confronting his memory.

On the psychological power possessed by women in the movie

It seems that women act as catalysts for Odysseus for dealing with his trauma and memories of Troy. Calypso helps Odysseus recall the events his conscience had buried, convincing him to stop eating lotus. The sirens crack open his wounds of what he had and lost as a consequence of departing for war. The figure of Circe becomes a literal reminder of the events at Troy; she transforms the travelling crew into pigs - or, as she explains it, gives them their true forms, ‘who they really are’. Having disrespected the law of Zeus at Troy, the surviving warriors suddenly find themselves facing the backlash of that, literally taking the shape of the base impulses they failed to resist. Homer’s Circe seems to be a more powerful enchantress and a goddess, but after seeing Odysseus resist her sorcery, eventually becomes sympathetic towards him and his crew, providing them with shelter and food for a year, pitying them for their misadventures. For Nolan, Circe is a verdict to these men.

As for Odysseus himself, Nolan didn’t want to portray a hero who is great at deceiving and inventing - he shows us how the price that he is paying for bringing ruin to the city that welcomed his ‘gift’ raises too high and goes bleedingly deep, haunting him on the way home. Only towards the end, arriving home and talking to Penelope, Odysseus faces his deepest shames in the epiphanic closure he finally achieves. This scene is followed with the flame-filled memory flashes from Troy - the sound of metal slicing through metal, explosions, screams, pleas, and ruins, ruins, ruins of the fire-breathing city.

Here we are getting to know the form Athena takes during her conversations with Odysseus: it comes from a priestess who had been killed - apparently in the goddess’s temple and right in front of her statue. I could not get rid of the feeling that there might be a reference to Cassandra there. Yes, she is absent from the movie, but in different literary sources she was found hugging the statue of Athena and was raped - making the goddess furious. And this also could be the reason of why Odysseus’ consciousness speaks to him through this female character.

Only one change was really unnecessary to me. Really

The thing that disappointed me a lot and that could have brought the ending to a more intimate and romantically meaningful note - no mention of the olive tree that made the foundation of the bed (which was a secret from every one of Penelope’s suitors except Odysseus himself). It is one of the strongest points and metaphors made by Homer, and it carries a special meaning to the description of Odysseus-Penelope relationship that was proven by time. The olive tree bed is the symbol of it. It shows that the real connections always find their way of thriving; just like the bed they cannot be moved by temptations or the sword, they stay and resist where they truly belong. And it is not just a metaphor for Homer - Penelope tests Odysseus with this fact, knowing that he was the one to ‘make it with his very own hands’.

Instead of referring to that scene, Nolan just extends the scene of fighting. So apparently the message is: to make his way back to Penelope, Odysseus has to physically prove that he is worthy of it, while Homer focused on a more sentimental point of describing love as an unshakable force and intimate memory that gives the hero his home back.

For conclusion

Yes, Nolan changed a lot of things in his adaptation of ‘The Odyssey‘, and we can argue about whether some of these changes were really necessary. But before that we need to ask ourselves why and how some ancient works stay with us. Nolan did it his way by highlighting the ways messages from ‘The Odyssey‘ can stay relevant even for the modern society. So why do we punish movie directors for that?

One of my favourite things about Substack is how genuinely curious people are about other cultures.

Earlier I was mentioning that I would love to pay some attention to Ukrainian cinema and culture on my blog, and today I decided to start by sharing my favorite films with you. So, if you're looking for a place to begin to know more about Ukrainian culture and the progress it has been making over the years, these are the three films I'd recommend you!

1. ‘Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors’: poetic cinema, Ukrainian edition

If I was asked to pick one movie for the evening of Ukrainian culture presentation - this would be a choice. Not only because it's an incredibly beautiful film, but because of the circumstances in which it was created and managed to finally reach audiences.

The story is based on the novel of the same name by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky and tells the story of the young couple in Carpathians, whose relationship is challenged by the long-term feud between their families. However, this is not just a love story - most of the film feels like a surreal dream, in which director Sergei Parajanov draws no clear line between reality and the twilight realm of fantasy.

I could write an entire essay about how Soviet regime restricted any authenticity and independence in works of Ukrainian artists, writers, and filmmakers, but this topic deserves a separate text. In short, the creators were obliged to follow the ‘approved‘ socialist realism style, showing off how promising life under socialism is. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors turned out to be more of a poetic hymn to Ukrainian folklore, mythology and customs, which, as you can guess, contrasted strongly with what was expected by the Soviet government back then. The movie premiere even turned into a political protest against oppression of Ukrainian intellectuals.

By the way, if you've seen The Legend of Ochi, you might recognise some familiar imagery - the film's director has cited Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as one of its inspirations.

2. U Are The Universe: a recent sci-fi standout

I know many of us are still emotionally recovering from Project Hail Mary. I found your next sci-fi obsession!

When people think of Ukrainian cinema, they usually imagine historical dramas, poetic films, or social realism (especially given how well-known Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors have become among international viewers). Well, how about a space adventure with a touch of romance, nostalgia, and a longing for genuine human connections? The Ukrainian-Belgian film tells the story of the astronaut who learns about Earth being destroyed. He tries to come to terms with being the last surviving human right before receiving a message from another astronaut.

One of the film's greatest achievements lies in the levels of its’ technological quality and craftsmanship. It is quite a challenge to produce a convincing science fiction movie anywhere beyond the scale of Hollywood productions, but U Are The Universe managed to create the maquette of the futuristic reality you can hardly resist to believe. By the way, the visual effects were developed with the Ukrainian VFX studio Magic Room, and filming was completed in December 2022 (already during the first year of full-scale invasion of Ukraine).

The film also features a lot of Ukrainian retro music from the 1970s and 1980s, diluting the futuristic tale of civilizational collapse with something more poetic, nostalgic, and fragilely soulful. Something, that comes from the place where the hope lives - and a direction in which you’d want the film to develop.

3. My Thoughts Are Silent: humor, beauty, family

Incredibly funny, incredibly authentic, incredibly heartbreaking. Yes, in that order.

The sound engineer Vadim receives an offer from Canada to record authentic sounds from Ukrainian animals, and the most important - the one of the Rakhiv mallard, a rare bird from Carpathians. That is exactly where the young man is headed, taking his mother along for the journey.

My favorite thing about this movie is a very particular charm of its’ humor and irony. But also this movie proves one more strong point about Ukrainian films: poetic attention to nature. The forests, mountain villages, local wildlife, and even the sounds of nature are used not as an aestethic cardboard-ish cutout for the movie; it is a character that deserves to be preserved and taken great care of and that acts out its’ own part. Oh, speaking of performances - it has the potential to move you to tears and make you want to call your parents after watching the movie.

Of course, Ukrainian cinema history is far richer than three films could ever capture, but today I decided to focus on my favorite examples as a small introduction. Over the next few months I’ll be writing more about other movies as well.

Have you watched or heard about any of them? Let me know in the comments!

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Attention: spoilers ahead.

It will soon be several years since I realized that I do not really trust reviews from professional and well-known film critics. Still, when I saw a 5.5/10 on IMDb or 2.9 stars on Letterboxd profile of ‘Mother Mary‘, it kind of influenced my expectations about the movie more than I wanted, even though I like to imagine myself as an unbiased and uninfluenced movie reviewer. ‘Wow, must be a really bad movie,‘ I thought. But I guess it sounds way too loud as long as we all live in the same society, exist in information bubbles, and influence one another's views - especially on reviewing platforms.

So, let me cite some reviews and descriptions from IMDB users that watched ‘Mother Mary‘:

I watched the movie anyway. And what surprised me is that it was…actually good.

I kept waiting for the ‘impossible symbolism’ everyone warned me about. Honestly, there was not even a minute of the film that felt especially difficult to me - I mean, we all could assume that the red ghost allegory could stand for love. Or passion. Or obession. Or feminine power. Or neither. Whatever - what truly important is that maybe we needs to come to terms with giving up on our fights of trying to find the single meaning of whatever is happening in movies (it reminds me my favorite Roland Barthes’ idea ‘The Death of the Author’), because the true meanings behind director’s intentions can never be fully known or understood.

Not even the movie itself, but the audience’s reaction to it made me think: have we forgotten how to decode films, which are not so easy to understand? Or we just do not want to do this anymore?

The movie tells a story about romantic connection between a pop-superstar Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) and a fashion designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), who remained apart for years, and despite time and distance, can’t seem to lose the spiritual hold of one another. This bond balances between being something romantic, sexual, friendly, professional and spiritual - yeah, everything at once. Both women start to reconsider their relationship with Sam designing a new dress for the singer who is planning her comeback performance after taking a long break.

This is how the description of the movie can get so far, because the rest of the film, including the ending, will differ for everyone.

Did we just watch a story of the spiritual awakening and self-acceptance?

Or a biblical parabole?

Or maybe a deep exploration of the artist\muse dynamic?

Well, what about a lesson of fame as psychological imprisonment?

‘Mother Mary’ does not ask us to solve its’ mystery or find a way out of its’ interpretational maze. All these symbols, contradictions, and mixed emotions never seem to puzzle into a single moment of closure - neither for the main characters, nor for us.

So, why the broad audience didn’t like it?

It seems like the marketing of ‘Mother Mary‘ prepared audiences to decode one kind of film - pop-star drama with some horrorish vibes (the last one is quite popular nowadays). And, preferably, with an explosive performance in the end, “The Eras Tour“ style, with catchy songs. But this is not what we got.

Once I watched the movie till the end, I realised that the trailer did not sell it as it is. The movie itself turned out to be much better than what it was selling. The whole marketing campaign around ‘Mother Mary‘ promised a mix of celebrity culture, fashion, and modern stardom struggles with Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel and FKA Twigs in cast and Charli XCX in soundtrack: everything you need for something stylish, tiktokish project and a film with an immediate ‘wow‘ gasp.

Don’t we turn movie screenings into fastfood binges expecting an immediate satisfying and ‘filling’ effect?

Why do we need out own interpretations and reflections if the director delivers absolutely everything on the nose? If someone just tells you “stealing is bad“, are you going to argue? The popularity of more straightforward storytelling that is currently growing in the industry is not a problem itself, but it has surely changed what many audiences expect from cinema nowdays and bars being set for a ‘reAlly gOod MoVie’.

Art is challenging. Art is arguing. Art is reflecting. We do not walk through an art museum expecting every painting to explain itself in a caption, do we? We accept impressionism, surrealism, abstraction, and conceptual art as invitations to interpret. So why don’t we treat cinema the same way? You cannot expect every movie to feed you with the Marvel-esque level of entertainment with explosions and chase scenes at every turn, especially if the genre says it is a psychological drama. How about just not watching it instead?

This is not about watching movies only, by the way. Social media has trained us to fit our opinions about movies into ratings, rankings, and one-sentence verdicts. Once I found myself scrolling through Instagram and TikTok videos ‘3-seconds review of Oppenheimer’ or ‘One word reviews of all movies I watched this year.’ You know, I wouldn’t even dare to call myself a movie reviewer with what I am writing. But at this point the Internet seems to be competing on who will make the most acessible and short movie review in history. Even our darling Letterboxd created a habit for us to fit our movie impressions into a one-sentence joke and 5 stars rating scale.

Roland Barthes argues that once a work exists, the author's intended meaning loses authority. The reader - not the creator - produces meaning. And ‘Mother Mary’ is a good real-life illustration of Barthes' idea. If Barthes went to watch it in his local cinema he would later argue that no single interpretation is privileged simply because Lowery intended it.

Finally, after watching ‘Mother Mary’ I rushed to read what people think about it on Substack. It was beatiful to discover that each writer found something special and personal in this story and interpreted it accordingly. Personally, I sentimentaled myself into the vision of the twin-flame dynamics in relationship and people being influenced by experiences and trauma of one another regardless timing or distance.

Maybe the problem isn’t that ‘Mother Mary’ is too abstract and messy. Maybe we have all grown uncomfortable with films that refuse to tell us exactly what they mean as a byproduct of being spoiled by easy access to anything.

We don’t dislike decoding movies. We just have simply forgotten that the best ones can never, and should never, be decoded completely. At least that’s what Barthes would say.

…or maybe not.

We don’t tolerate mysteries anymore. In movies as well.

Every film ending demands an explanation and every unanswered question in the plot immediately becomes content for a YouTube\TikTok breakdown promising to reveal what the director ‘really meant,’ as if they talked to the director themselves. Whenever we see the new movie been released, Google and movie blogs are getting flooded with ‘*the movie title*: ending explained.’

And here comes long-awaited Steven Spielberg's ‘Disclosure Day’! But…with a very uncertain ending and very little questions answered.

Spielberg’s films influenced many of us here. So when the new movie was announced in 2024, nobody had the feeling that it will be just another studio project. It is Steven Spielberg, goddamn! Everyone expected the grand return of a director whose work is the definition of science fiction. And, of course, no one expected just another sci-fi movie about aliens. Yes, the concept of humanity uniting against a threat is quite a common topic, so it is really a challenge to make a true standout using such a narrative. But, again, it is Steven Spielberg. The one who gave us ‘Extra-Terrestrial‘, ‘Jurassic Park‘, and more.

So, what went wrong?

‘Disclosure Day’ opens with a punch. Literally. For some reason we are thrown into the POV of a boxer having a brutal hit to the face. Already seeing this makes it hard to predict how things will unroll further, isn’t it? Then we notice Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), sitting on the side, handcuffed and about to be escorted by a group of sinister men in black. Daniel is a former employee of the shadowy organization ‘Wordex’ who has stolen classified evidence proving the existence of extraterrestrial life - and exposing the inhumane experiments of the government conducted on it. His escape results in a chase led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), a government official drawn with almost old-fashioned cartoonish villainy.

On the background of a Snowden-esque chase, another story line centers on Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and something that clearly does not belong to the modern progress-driven world: the character develops an uncanny ability to read people’s stories and thoughts through a simple exchange of glances. Even more: she suddenly starts to speak different languages. So iinstead of giving a weather forecast on TV, for some reason she begins to pronounce weird sounds that remind of an alien language. And, apparently, Daniel understands it too.

Remembering ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘The Extra-Terrestrial’, or ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, we got to learn one distinguishing thing that Spielberg always gives to his movies: imagination and outstanding visual work. And ‘Disclosure Day’ seems to be very different from what Spielberg did before. Where’s the extraordinary superhuman spectacle? Where are these fantastical creatures? You mean, these archetypal-looking extraterrestrials are the aliens in THE Spielberg movie? (While watching I couldn’t stop thinking that they just took the classic alien look from the first Google image result).

Well, this is not the point in the movie - I guess Spielberg made the first alien film which focuses on humans.

Alien films always seem to ask the same questions: are we friends or enemies to those beyond Earth, are we destined for contact or colonisation, are we just some temporary occupants in a universe that does not belong to us? ‘Disclosure Day’ instead focuses on a simplier thing: what happens to us when uncertainty is replaced by certainty that we are not alone? How good are we at handling and surviving the truth?

While watching the movie, where the screenplay occasionally relies on very, very convenient coincidences - yeah, just on time the right person showing up at the right place and time, down to the very second! - I could not understand: why does the possibility that we might not be the only living, intelligent beings in the entire UNIVERSE seem so fantastical and so unreal? Because if Spielberg uses this fact as the primary driver for the plot (if not the amazing effects and outstanding creativity about depicting aliens), there must has been solid reason for doing so. And this brings us to another philosophical element of the film: the institution of religion. After all, if God created us, would He have stopped there?

If uncertainty is the emotional engine of ‘Disclosure Day’, then religion becomes one of the ways people attempt to live with it. A home-like Catholic shelter with a maternal figure of a nun appears to be a place to return to for the comfort and certainty, at least for one of the characters. Spielberg tries to deliver the idea of the faith not rejecting, but embracing and projecting its’ narrative of the existence of life as evidence of the existence of something greater - eventually, all conversations come down to having faith, not evidence.

The movie’s greatest achievement is not revealing the truth, or making a certain closure in the end, but building up even more of the mystery around it and embracing being not the smartest creatures that we think we are.

Knowledge does not eliminate uncertainty - and sometimes it seems to create even more of it.

You don’t need another wave of Instagram Reels explaining the ending in fragments and theories - just listen.