Explanation of the end of the anemone

This article contains Spoilers For “Anemone”.

The hype surrounding “Anemone” stems from Daniel Day-Lewis’ official return to acting since his voluntary retirement in 2017. His last film was “Phantom Thread” directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. By any other measure, getting another performance from the Oscar-winning stage actor is cause for celebration. In addition to starring in Anemone, Daniel also co-wrote the screenplay with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who makes his directorial debut here. Jeremy Mathai of Film praised Daniel’s performance in his review, as well as believing Anemone represents a promising first step in the right direction for Ronan as a director. First-time directors are always burdened with the weight of expectations in their editorial assignment, as they are often working within the limited resources they have. In Ronan’s case, he has a $35 million budget, studio backing, and one of our greatest living actors at the center, yet “Anemone” plays like an expensive student film.

Experimental in nature, Anemone wants to establish itself as a visual treatise on the melancholy surrounding a regretful man, yet it never feels as if it has escaped the conceptual stage. Even Daniel, who gives a fantastic performance, is unfortunately left floating in the wind in a film that feels undercooked at best. His metaphors about ruminating on the past are never abstract, with Bobby Krelik’s comically smug score neutralizing any potential nuance. I thrive on slow cinema, but Ronan struggles to create emotional heft through Ben Fordsman’s gorgeous cinematography. Woven within long monologues and sullen silences is ultimately a story about a man filled with shame, and the lengths to which he is bound.

Family relationships are at the forefront of “Anemone”, the most prominent of which is the presence of two brothers. Jim Stoker (Sean Bean) is moved by a sense of personal divine purpose and travels to the northern English countryside to reconcile with his estranged brother Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), whom he has not seen in over 20 years. The cabin Ray takes refuge in looks like something out of an “Evil Dead” movie, which makes sense considering it’s meant to depict the mossy decay of his exile. In some ways it reflects Daniel’s isolation from the acting world for nearly a decade. Jim’s arrival is met not so much with disdain or open arms as with indifference. Whether at the cabin, at the bar, or out in nature, the duo spends most of the film in silent company, with Jim acting as the present listener. / Film’s Bill Brea praised Bean’s vulnerable performance in particular as “Anemone’s” secret weapon.

It is revealed over the course of the film that Ray fathered a child named Brian (Samuel Bottomley) with 911 operator Nyssa (Samantha Morton), then left them to live alone in his secluded abode plagued by his own thoughts. Jim felt personally obligated to make up for his brother’s wrongs by marrying Nyssa and being Brian’s stepfather. Despite stepping up to bridge the family gap, Jim feels compelled to bring his brother home after so much time has passed because he feels Brian needs his father to guide him through a difficult time in his life. It becomes clear that defensive Ray carries a lot of emotions that he has kept bottled up for most of his life, as he avoids taking responsibility for abandoning his family. When the hermit is quiet He does When he speaks, he does so through a series of revealing monologues.

Ray breaks the uncomfortable silence with a vulnerable monologue about his reunion with the pedophile priest who molested him when he was a young boy. It turns out that Ray lured the priest to his place many years later, but he was not identified. He later gets his revenge by seducing him, then unleashing a powerful cocktail of curry, Guinness and a whole lot of laxatives on his face. It shows the extremes Ray is willing to go to to resolve his internal conflict instead of going to therapy for example. Daniel’s delivery strikes that balance between evoking sympathy and uncomfortable laughter. However, the most revealing insight into this character arrives at the end of the film, where he reveals the extent of his emotional turmoil.

Ray, formerly known as the Invisible Man, served in the British Army amid the turbulent conflict in Northern Ireland. One day, he witnessed an IRA bomb maker and his teenage apprentice being accidentally dismembered. While the trainee agonizes, Ray puts the kid out of his misery with a gunshot. But since he was alive and unarmed when the killing occurred, it was considered a war crime and led to his dishonorable discharge. Ray claims he doesn’t really know why he did it, but it tortures him nonetheless. We’re shown a long, childlike texture at the top of the film depicting explosions, flames, and bodies strewn everywhere. However, there is great irony in how “Anemone” visually depicts the impact of military violence on the human spirit when these characters don’t feel they have one.

After Ray reveals his shame about his military transgressions, he encounters a strange, shining figure near the water. It looks like a horse as if it was drawn by a small child. The closer Ray gets to him, the more he begins to grow extensions such as internal organs moving around his body, a distorted face, and genitals. In an interview with ScreenRantRonan talks about how the creature was something that was swirling around in his mind, and it’s open to all kinds of interpretations as to what it means. I tend to read it as a mixture of lost innocence reflected in Ray. He drowns himself in his sorrows to the point that he reflects on them through a watercolor doodle that Brian may have drawn as a child; So he sees himself in it partly as well. Cinematically, it speaks to the larger issue at the heart of “Anemone.”

Fordsman’s cinematography is bleak and moody, with an oppressive melancholy hanging over the entire film. It’s beautiful in the sense that it’s not filmed in a realistic way, so much as it’s filmed in a surreal way. The film’s many abstractions, such as a tattered mutant fish floating down a river, are such starkly clear depictions of Ray’s internal shame that they feel more tedious than poignant. “Anemone” becomes trapped in a repetitive pattern in which its images become tired and frankly boring. To make matters worse, Ronan ends his directorial debut with a sequence that feels like a rookie mistake.

As a disturbed Brian sits in his bedroom, a baseball-sized piece of hail falls onto his bed. What appears is a hailstorm of biblical proportions that appears out of nowhere. Each character stops what they are doing to witness the deadly rainfall in a state of shock and horror. Jim and Ray fight at the same time, prompting the latter to eventually ask for forgiveness and get back with Jim. It’s unfortunate that the hailstorm that prompts Ray to abandon his isolation is perhaps the worst sequence in the movie because it evokes a much better movie in the guise of PTA’s “Magnolia.”

In PTA, the frog storm is the only surreal decoration in the film that speaks to the lack of coincidences. It’s a violent and, more importantly, disorienting interruption, and it pulls every character in its sprawling ensemble out of a state of disarray. The crucial difference between “Anemone” and “Magnolia” is that PTA’s storm represents a shocking development, while Roman’s storm arrives just in time. It doesn’t come as much of a shock, considering that the film’s harsh score and gloomy clouds clearly lead to some kind of explosive development. All we’re left with at the end of Ronan’s film is a quiet moment between Ray and Brian on the doorstep. All that matters is getting Ray to rejoin his family, and it’s up to them whether his return is accepted or not.

Unfortunately, Ronan is as distant from his thoughts as Ray is from his son. I’m happy for something as experimental as “Anemone” to be released by a major studio, though it’s more about having Daniel at the forefront of a meandering and frighteningly boring debut.

“Anemone” is now in limited release, scheduled for national release on October 10, 2025.