That ending...

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2018)

Twins, who have just recently lost their mother, travel to Middle-East to search for their father, who they've believed dead, and their brother, who they didn't even now existed. At the same time we follow their mother in her youth in the middle of a bloody, religious civil war.
I don't particularly care for Denis Villeneuve as a director. His scifi films, Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival, have both been decent, with the former edging into being downright good, but his more realistic drama films have always left me feeling unclean. Too much grittiness, too nasty a tone, too much needless misery, bleakness and depression. In Villeneuve's hands the world shows itself as a grey place, where even the most decent people hide monsters within and the only justification for existing is sheer lack of choices. Not something I want to subject myself to, if given a choice.
That being said, this film works pretty well. Perhaps it's the background of war, but somehow Villeneuve's usual tricks didn't bother me as much. It's perhaps a bit weird that war is the justifier for all these horrible things, but the fact still remains that while it was still horrible, it didn't feel over-excessive.
Except for that ending. I saw it coming. I saw it coming a long way ahead. How, you may ask. I simply imagined to most nasty turn the film could take. The one that would make me gag. And there it was.
The worst part is that it doesn't even make sense within the film. The story has to bend over backwards for these events to take place and it completely shatters the suspension of disbelief. And for what? Did Villeneuve really want for his audience to throw up that badly?
Then again, the film is very well done. The first half is told phenomenally well. The characters are interesting and the horrors of war are given their just due. It's just that ending...
I think I'm done with this guy. Please, no more.