Amanda starts the movie as someone that feels nothing, and moves to the woman that feels everything. It communicates, pretty accurately with what the move really is all about at least directionally. Having said that, I do think there is some kind of beauty in the way it was shot. Well, funny you should ask. Which, I would have bet you five bucks was the ending of the movie. Interview with The Devil All the Time Scribe Paulo Campos!! ‘Cause I think I just nailed the zeitgeist match game. Tim obviously knew about the plan to kill Mark, and he obviously knew that Mark was dead. No? And I get that I don’t work for most people. The Thoroughbred Charities of America Essay contest invites anyone 18 years old and younger to write about their experience as a volunteer, supporter, or … Maybe she is being paid to help her with her school work? THOROUGHBREDS CHAPTER 2 Explained. I was reading your wonderful assessment and just wanted to point out one thing. This movie is haunting, I had to go back and watch it again. Paul has a gift of picking the winning horse in horse races. And then they write down the closest movie match (or funniest movie match) and they tell their picks. But there are TWO main actors in this movie, which one is the solips?! His insights are wonderful. But Amanda has a horse’s head and the only thing that comes out when she tries to speak is a winnie. ), and slowly shows less and less ‘normal’ traits we can identify with. This is my opinion: I think you are taking this movie too far. At other times, he seems to want us to see them as symptoms of a larger malady, which doubtless accounts for the scene in which a wealthy woman idles in a tanning bed that looks like a coffin. It’s about Lily looking goodness in the face and wondering. Katelyn Read, 17, of Los Gatos, Calif., has been named the winner of … Amanda talks her out of it due to her current emotional state, but promises to stand around the corner with a knife at the ready in case her step-father becomes abusive. very unprofessional review withe lots of unnecessary jiber jaber about how great the movie is and how deep and smart and not teenish characters are. Honeymooner is the name of the horse. And I like how the dreams were left to the audience’s interpretation and how they were understandably related yet not totally clear, giving us something to think about. One has some sort of emotional disorder that isn’t even classifiable and the other is the epitome of unhappy. So basically I don’t think Lily was turned, but rather revealed, challenging preconceived notions (or rather, intentionally valid notions) along the way. Finley was speaking to the fundamental transactional heartbeat of this country. We have no idea why she feels comfortable enough to climb up and mess around with the samarai sword on the wall. You can sense their personality traits starting to combine to the point where their shared consciousness becomes capable of carrying it out. All the Pretty Horses Introduction. They were once friends and soon ease into a new, unpersuasive intimacy (they watch Shirley Temple on TV), largely so the writer-director Cory Finley can make them combust. But what did the letter say? But there is little of Amanda tainting her mind or coercing her. Your email address will not be published. If you are not a fan of ambiguous or illusory sorts of movies? As chapter 2 starts, we start to learn more about Lily’s family life – or lack there of. Photograph: Renee Morris Animal Collection //Alamy Photograph: Renee Morris … But what is the movie Thoroughbreds? This interpretation extends to the point that Amanda actually did have feelings for others (despite suppressing them), as she wanted to do her horse a favor and put it out of misery. Maybe Amanda is getting tutored by Lily? Everything about it. But unlike Amanda, never revealed herself to be so. Directed by Alfred E. Green. Take a second to support Taylor Holmes on Patreon! When Tim arrives to kill Mark, the lights are motion detecting, and it completely freaked Tim out, and he decided not to go through with it. Just all kinds of wobbly-mind-jobness happening here. Not even a little bit. I also like the combination and reversal ideas proposed as well. Amanda seemed to pick up on this, commenting on Lily’s lack of empathy and use of ‘the technique’ when Lily maintains her tears are authentic, even though they were generated after the step-fathers unexpectedly spot on ASPD-supported analysis of her. Enter the drug dealer, Tim (played by Anton Yelchin, which is his last role after getting crushed by his own jeep of all things), who is there just to get twisted up in these two gals downward spiraling lives. I didn’t think of Heathers, but I can see that now. Brilliant. And as our society collapses ever-inwards in its selfish pursuit of ever more egotistical validation this is where the next logical step of our philosophical reasoning would take us. Which tells us that while her world from the outside looks all kinds of inviting, it actually is a horrific existence all the way around. She is quick to lie in multiple scenarios (including the plagiarism), has suicidal tendencies (pool), irritated by small things (pencil sharpener, the rowing machine), manipulates (is saying Amanda does not have a life worth living not just planting the seed to make Amanda decide for herself? This is something else entirely. (again, these two have a lot in common with the only MAJOR difference that borderline personalities feel great emotions [plus many other minor differences of course]). Not American Beauty??! Basically it’s two college students, Amanda (played by Olivia Cooke, of Ready Player One fame and The Signal fame) and Lily (played by Anya Taylor-Joy of the Morgan, and Split fame) that are in some sort of prearranged time to study together for some reason. She has chosen to turn off that switch in her brain which actually makes her more dangerous than Amanda. The first dream could be about Amanda perhaps feeling guilt for her horse, despite her lack of remorse in the surface. After Lily commits the murder and begins to frame Amanda, we can see her emotions and this seems as though it would contradict the actions of someone with ASPD but in fact new research shows sociopaths as being capable of feeling regret, just incapable of using that potential regret to influence decisions. We are left to realize our initial interpretations of the characters were in fact incorrect from the start (if you interpreted them how I did, that is). Besides, “no humans around” is the deep desire of a typical schizoid personality. (I swear, I am not making this up. Well, most of it should be fairly obvious. None of that really matters. (want a deeper dive just into the color meanings of the different characters? Maybe a local sheriff with a gun-toting posse, who drives some cattle rustlers out of town and wins the local sweetheart in the process. And with that, the movie ends, and leaves millions of movie viewers gobsmacked. His essays are some of the most meaningful work I have ever read about horses. But if you don’t mind working for your entertainment, maybe you’ll dig it? That was fine for a little while, but I wanted to get out completely, and twenty miles away wasn't far enough. Everything. I cannot believe you didn’t get that. Most others would hate this game. But there has to be a reason here somewhere. But we don’t know anything other than that at the opening. We see that her mother is tanning because her husband “likes it when I have a little color.” We learn that Lily’s parents want her to go to Brookemore – which is a college for girls with behavioral problems. Thoroughbred Charities of America is pleased to announce the winner of the Fifth Annual TCA Youth Essay Contest. What?) Amanda only makes it easier for Lily to do what she has been determined to do all along. Oh, and also don’t read any further, because from here on out, HERE BE DRAGONS. Sure it’s outside the box, but you can only get so far thinking like everyone else thinks.” And as the first chapter comes to a close, and that is, that Amanda feels nothing. And sorry if you didn’t dig it. According to recent government figures, the total number of horses and ponies slaughtered for meat in England, Scotland and Wales rose to … A staggering 130,000 American horses were slaughtered in Mexico and Canada in 2015, yet the rodeo, racing, and show industries—along with other irresponsible breeders—continue to churn out hundreds of thousands of horses annually.. Amanda is bemoaning the state of affairs in the culture and throughout the suburbs of America. Amanda with her multiple diagnoses and her dead-pan behaviour and her supposed cruelty to animals, we likely see her as a sociopath (or at least what most viewers would be familiar with from a ‘Hollywood’ education in psychology). And time is speeding up and I see whole generations coming and going and building bigger houses, and then eventually, people start spending more and more of their time staring at their smart phones. Insert jump cut, and we see Lily stumbling upon Tim, a valet car parker, as she parks at a restaurant in town. But this movie has been at the top of my MUST SEE list for over half a year now. All And when Amanda meets Lily’s step father, Mark (played by Paul Sparks, of The Greatest Showman and Midnight Special fame), we see just how much Lily loathes him when she says, “Have you considered killing him? What happens next is pretty much what you would expect from peewee nihilists (“Heathers”) adrift in a bourgeois hellscape of quiet dinners and symmetrical visuals (“American Beauty”). Heathers, one of the movies that is most referenced when talking about this movie, has a number of theories along this line. Video by Laurel Mitton. Or she knows but she knows that her friend will not care or understand, the way a horse owner would not care that much about her horse’s reasons. His mother, Hester, in contrary, has no luck and even though she is outwardly successful, she is troubled by a feeling of failure. That’s fair. Or its the inverse – a Solipsistic view where everyone else fades away and it is only you. were awarded honorable mentions. And I rise out of my body, and I stare down at our whole suburb. They weigh at least 1,000 pounds, have legs that are supported by ankles the size of a human’s, and are forced to run around dirt tracks at speeds of more than 30 miles per hour while carrying people on their backs. Lots and lots and lots of spoilers. This is no fault of Ms. Cooke, an appealing performer (she was the girl in “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”). You learn in short order that the horse is a goner, and it isn’t long into this slick, shallow movie that you wish the girl, Amanda (Olivia Cooke), was, too. It’s actually a hobby. And not much more. Aaron Foley, 10, of San Bruno, California, has been named the winner of the contest. So Lily tells Tim that Amanda did send her a letter from prison. And is she tutoring herself through this period and just trying to grapple with the chaos of this reality, as she begins to fiddle with this idea of killing her stepfather? And that is especially true of the opening. This does make a difference in one’s understanding of the first dream as well as the latter part of the film. Replies to my comments Your piece here is insightful, thoughtful, fun, and much appreciated! The narcissistic one transformed into an antisocial personality disorder (narcissistic and antisocial personalities already share a lot of traits in common, so it is not impossible for a person to be both). There is not a honeymooner. Maybe becoming a horse means becoming innocent and good to Amanda. What is a dying honeymoon? If this isn’t your thing, then I’d highly recommend this Ebert review: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thoroughbreds-2018 (which coincidentally gave it a 3.5 out of 4). Mark lays into his step-daughter after he catches her smoking in the kitchen. I’m here, dying on my honeymoon. Just move along.) But then we get to know Lily and things are slowly revealed, but perhaps not at a clear enough pace to make us overthrow our decisions about Amanda and put Lily in the more ‘troubled mind’ seat. The Ego being the mediator between the Id and the Superego. You announce the movie title out to the others playing the game. And that is my point, could it be that Lily and Amanda are just two halves of a whole? Using information from the articles and the video, describe the roles that both the horses and humans play in the horses’ survival. (Oooh, did I just invent an interwebs parlor game? Thoroughbreds is a movie that is bemoaning the collapse of our collective suprasubliminalpsychoparalysis. Other films—most notably the 2005 Oscar-nominated Palestinian drama Paradise Now—have explored similar territory, but Horses Of God looks deeper into the root cause, observing its anti-heroes over the course of nearly a decade. She’s just flipping random pages from the DSM-5 and throwing medications at me… doesn’t make me a bad person, just means I have to work a little harder to be good.”. “Thoroughbreds” opens on an ominous, murkily lit scene — a girl, a horse and a worryingly sharp knife — that telegraphs just how ugly things are going to get in this movie. The family’s expenditure exceeds its income and creates unspoken tension and this affects the relationships in the family. No no no! Why don’t we finish walking through exactly what happened, and then double back, and see what we have at the end? Some are likening it to Heathers meets American Psycho… which I don’t think quite captures it. Perhaps she was actually a borderline personality who tried to play an antisocial. And this the really beautiful part, the horses take over. Planning. Two uptown gals that manage to kill a disgusting dude. Zeitgeist Movie Match Game? I think the feel is more similar to Welcome the Stranger, in the most ways possible. Like heart attack level good. So no offense, but yeah, I loved this movie. I think I would have preferred if lily didn’t essentially morph into Amanda, but I still enjoyed it’s original dialogue and fantastic ending sequence. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. The dream is about us, and our search for understanding about Amanda and her choice in the end. The lonelyness is present almost all the time, and you feel the misery of richness pretty well. No other minds, just your own. Paul and his two sisters recognize this tension and Paul even alleges that he can hear the house whispering… Thoroughbred Charities of America is pleased to announce the winner of the Fourth Annual TCA Youth Essay Contest. The Details You Missed in the Thoroughbreds Movie Explained - or how his American Psycho, Heathers, American Beauty, equivalent discusses ennui of being an American, a human, today. Two other essays, authored by Arielle Lacob, 17, of Encinitas, Calif. and Hadley Macey, 10, of Noblesville, Ind. This section will give an introductory overview of the stages required to create a video essay. The movie consists of Two main actors, both dancing around each other verbally and mentally. Somehow similar to an antisocial personality disorder with traces of schizoid disorder! The opening begins with Amanda and her horse. Seahorses use their dorsal fins (back fins) to propel slowly forward. “I’m a skilled imitator…” answer’s Amanda as the drink begins to take effect. Chapter 2. The Video Essay Process. With that, Lily heads up to where her father is working out, and stabs him to death. Lily, by contrast, is normal. Enter theory number three. “Thoroughbreds” is classically Hitchcockian in its smoldering homicidal tendencies, yet bracingly current with the spot-on casting of Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke as childhood friends who reconnect and reveal the internal damage they’ve become skilled at suppressing. They don’t care what you look like or how you look on that particular day; all they see is you with all knowing clarity. I got you. Required fields are marked *. Oh, yes. Two things… The mom gives more dialogue than just from the tanning bed. Making his feature directing debut, Mr. Finley gives the movie a professional sheen and gets fine performances from his actors, including Anton Yelchin as a sad sack with a bull’s-eye where his brains should be, and Paul Sparks as Lily’s chilled-to-the-bone stepfather. My only point? It really was mercy killing. Smack, Dab, In the Middle, of Solipsism. We have a drug dealer, and murder accomplice, that fails miserably at both. And with a collective, exasperated cry, I hear an enormous swath of you saying… she WHAT? She is surprised and confused by Amanda’s lack of feelings, she tries to make up for saying or doing hurtful things, she is uncomfortable by Amanda’s talk of murder. The symbolism of ‘not reading the letter’ at the end was most important. I wish the director or writer could explain it. and also could perhaps be about Amanda’s deep hopes for disappearance of sophisticated form of life and return of a simpler form that only needs to run and mate. This is all we will say about this topic.) A cocky young jockey who gets mixed up with some crooked gamblers befriends an English lad with a fast horse and the niece of a woman who runs a boarding house for jockeys. Thoroughbred Charities of America Youth Essay Contest Winner. I believe the director has stated that the girls couldn’t complete the murder individually. Amanda walks into this amazing house and just wanders through it until Lily arrives. It hit me more as a psychological challenge. The second dream again showed Amanda as a victim (trying to correct the guilt Amanda feels?) Just regarding Anon Yelchin’s character, I’d say one of his thematic functions is to represent class divide, because the way the girls are able to hold power over him with zero social consequences is rather telling. This isn’t writing so much as you recording your own stream of consciousness. And our truly unreal realities we are currently living through. The only thing worse than being incompetent, or unkind, or evil, is being indecisive.” Is there something more here for the audience to glean from? This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. My friends? This a movie you’ll probably want to take a pass on. It isn’t 100% clear at first blush. Focus Features proudly presents writer/director Cory Finley's feature film debut Thoroughbreds The dark thriller which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival tells of two teenage girls [Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Cooke] in suburban Connecticut rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. Or the belief that absolutely nothing exists outside the self. And before it, was she free and full of hope and feelings, like the way the picture showed? Yeah. Use evidence from the articles and the video to support your answer. Fantastic little movie. Katelyn Read, 17, of Los Gatos, Calif., has been named the winner of the contest. Amanda from the start called her horse by its name which means she really did have affection for the horse. ESSAY PROMPT: Your class has been studying about the survival of the ponies on Assateague Island. You can also subscribe without commenting. (No, I don’t owe you five bucks… cool yer jets. And as the movie barrels through to its conclusion, Lily tells Amanda to stop drinking her drink because she slipped a roofie in it. Still, the answer is predictable: Martyrdom … The theories I threw together really don’t matter much. Could the movie Thoroughbreds be ground in any sort of reality at all. For example, Amanda doesn’t know why she did her friend that favor. Lily pursues the friendship, perhaps seeing the opportunity to manipulate a publicly troubled person into committing the crime (she certainly knew about the animal abuse allegations). meanwhile no one else is feeling that way and movie got a 6.8 in imdb. Regardless of the true meaning, it was a fun watch! And yet I haven’t written about it here? Then I had to look it up just to find more about it and found this delightful article here. Basically you play it like this: you pick up a card with the name THOROUGHBREDS on it.