I really liked it. At first I thought that the woman seems cold, harsh and non-motherly, so I thought she must be an impostor and I was feeling bad for the boys.
Around the second half of the movie, or by the end, for that matter I've realized that the situation is completely different, much deeper and more complicated than that. I wasn't disappointed.
As it turns out, the woman is their real mother, but she acts the way she does as result of grief and/or trauma. And Lucas isn't real at all. It's just something that Elias made up in his mind so he could live with himself after he accidentally killed his brother with a gun.
I was already feeling sorry for the poor boy all along, but after that I was feeling pretty sad and wanting to hug him and convince him it would be ok.
But then things got even worse. When his mother tells him what happened and tries to help him heal and face reality, in a moment of being upset he pushes her and she falls and the barn catches fire and she dies.
So, now the poor thing has to deal with one more tragedy that he inadvertently provoked.
Both his mom and his brother show up as he escapes the barn and tell him that it's ok, that he hasn't done anything wrong.
Eliot already developed a reality where his brother was still alive because he couldn't deal with the guilt, the pain, the grief and so on by acknowledging reality. He or his mind were already prone to protecting his fragile psyche by creating alternate realities for him. So, after what happened with his mother he developed a reality where she was alive too and everything was just fine.
I feel very bad for him because both times it was just an accident. It wasn't his fault in any way because he was awfully young, didn't mean to cause any harm and didn't know exactly what he was doing. First time because he was just a kid, playing and not knowing that the gun was loaded and maybe not even knowing that a gun could kill someone. Second time, he was so overwhelmed by emotion that he had a perfectly normal emotional reaction by trying to push it away (even if it was physically) cause facing reality was causing him too much pain. Still, the poor thing killed both his brother and his mother. He didn't mean it at any point, both times it was an accident. He still ended up losing two people he loved more than anyone else in the world and obviously couldn't live with the fact that it's somehow his own doing. I don't blame the boy at all and I understand. Poor baby. I just feel like it's so unfair. Who knows whether he would ever have the strength to accept reality and own what happened and move on with his life. That's the burning question in my mind. Nothing else. Cause he's a sweetheart who deserves better than to live traumatized or dissociated for the rest of his life.
Around the second half of the movie, or by the end, for that matter I've realized that the situation is completely different, much deeper and more complicated than that. I wasn't disappointed.
As it turns out, the woman is their real mother, but she acts the way she does as result of grief and/or trauma. And Lucas isn't real at all. It's just something that Elias made up in his mind so he could live with himself after he accidentally killed his brother with a gun.
I was already feeling sorry for the poor boy all along, but after that I was feeling pretty sad and wanting to hug him and convince him it would be ok.
But then things got even worse. When his mother tells him what happened and tries to help him heal and face reality, in a moment of being upset he pushes her and she falls and the barn catches fire and she dies.
So, now the poor thing has to deal with one more tragedy that he inadvertently provoked.
Both his mom and his brother show up as he escapes the barn and tell him that it's ok, that he hasn't done anything wrong.
Eliot already developed a reality where his brother was still alive because he couldn't deal with the guilt, the pain, the grief and so on by acknowledging reality. He or his mind were already prone to protecting his fragile psyche by creating alternate realities for him. So, after what happened with his mother he developed a reality where she was alive too and everything was just fine.
I feel very bad for him because both times it was just an accident. It wasn't his fault in any way because he was awfully young, didn't mean to cause any harm and didn't know exactly what he was doing. First time because he was just a kid, playing and not knowing that the gun was loaded and maybe not even knowing that a gun could kill someone. Second time, he was so overwhelmed by emotion that he had a perfectly normal emotional reaction by trying to push it away (even if it was physically) cause facing reality was causing him too much pain. Still, the poor thing killed both his brother and his mother. He didn't mean it at any point, both times it was an accident. He still ended up losing two people he loved more than anyone else in the world and obviously couldn't live with the fact that it's somehow his own doing. I don't blame the boy at all and I understand. Poor baby. I just feel like it's so unfair. Who knows whether he would ever have the strength to accept reality and own what happened and move on with his life. That's the burning question in my mind. Nothing else. Cause he's a sweetheart who deserves better than to live traumatized or dissociated for the rest of his life.