Authors’ Responsibilities to Book Themes
Why are people so upset with the movie It Ends With Us?
Over the weekend, I went to see the movie, It Ends With Us based on Colleen Hoover’s novel. It’s a story about domestic abuse, not a happy Friday night, unwind-from-the-week topic.
However, I found it to be beautifully done, mostly because it showed the story from the perspective of a woman who was deeply in love with the man who turns out to be abusive. No woman falls in love with a horrible, abusive jerk; they fall in love with a charming man who captures her heart and mind, and for a while, makes her feel good about herself. When the abuse begins, she can’t believe it’s happening, believes it was a mistake, or that she has misinterpreted what happened. When he apologizes, she believes that he’s sorry. He probably is sorry. But the abuse escalates, and before she knows it, she’s in a nightmare of a relationship.
The movie (and probably the novel as well; I didn’t read it) captures the abusive pattern I just described by showing the romance and love that attracts the main character, Lily to Ryle. Without the romance and scenes of them falling in love, the audience would not understand the difficult choice the main character must make about the relationship and her future.
