everyone is beautiful and no one is poor
A treatise on the clothes, the class system, the plot, and the eyelash extensions of Blake Lively's new movie "It Ends With Us," which I was forced to watch at the Boston Common AMC last Saturday.
In the pre-modern world, “state distancing” (putting physical or social space between oneself and the ruling state) was far more common than today. The development of sedentary farming practices created state distancing — the production of surplus could go towards a state presence imposing itself upon a subject. Other forms of taxation developed too, all requiring a deep commitment by the state to extract resources from its population. Around 1400, the Ming state pioneered a per-capita “poll tax,” for which the government created a census. In turn, the Ming’s subjects engaged in state distancing. With advance warning, the adult males of a household could literally “run for the hills” (areas not used for sedentary farming, and therefore isolated) when census-takers arrived to levy the poll tax. State distancing caused an under-count of at least ten million people in the Ming’s census.
The dynasty innovated in the production of rice, a subsistence crop, and later powers (especially colonial empires) developed “cash crops” like tobacco, rubber, and spices. From these developments, the industrial revolution began, leading to greater and greater imposition of state power, as well as heavier taxes and ever-shrinking possibilities to engage in state distancing. Under the new conditions of the industrial world, Karl Marx developed his theories of massified production, in which more goods previously produced in the home, outside the money economy, were now produced in the factory and required money to purchase. Marx also, most famously, produced a theory of class based on one’s relationship to systems of production — the capitalists and the workers.
In a Marxist read of “It Ends With Us,” the new adaptation of the hit Colleen Hoover novel by the same name, we might analyze the use-value and labor-value of the characters’ fantastical outfits. Blake Lively’s eyelash extensions batted, ginormously, at me from the screen even in the most inopportune moments — when her character asks her abusive husband for a divorce; celebrating the opening of her flower shop in a $1,500 outfit with Jenny Slate.
All is to say — when my friends invited me to see the film last Saturday, I should have run for the hills.
No one is allowed to be ‘poor’ in the It Ends With Us universe — least of all, Blake Lively.
“It Ends With Us” is the story of Lily Blossom Bloom (seriously), estranged from her bizarrely wealthy parents doing unnamed things in an unmentioned place in New England. Her abusive father Andrew Bloom, newly deceased, was the popular mayor of Plethora, Maine — which, a brief shot of a plaque establishes, was founded by an all-female crew of explorers? — and her mother was a homemaker. Lily returns for her father’s funeral in an oversized black leather blazer(?), immediately walks out of the funeral, then moves to Boston in her beat-up old car.
The outfits get no less outlandish as the film progresses. Lily flounces through several years’ worth of autumns and springs in Boston, layering expensive quilted jacket over expensive quilted jacket. Her collections of purses and patterned boxer briefs are enormous. Her wedding outfit involves pearl-encrusted opera gloves. But what struck me is that the clothes exist in a codependent relationship with the nonsensical class dynamics which hold back the story from any real message about abuse.
I’ll restrain from spending too much time discussing the film’s portrayal of domestic violence; smarter people have already written better think-pieces. In short: after fulfilling her lifelong dream of opening a flower shop, Lily falls in love with a charismatic brain surgeon, Ryle Kincaid (yes, “Ryle,” an unstated combination of “Ryan” and “Kyle”). But when Ryle begins to physically abuse Lily, she leaves him and rekindles her relationship with her high school boyfriend Atlas. After the birth of her daughter Emerson, Lily begins a new life as a single mother, promising Emerson that she will break the cycle of domestic violence that has plagued her maternal line’s relationships with men.
-At least, in theory. “It Ends With Us” never brings itself to whole-ass a portrayal of domestic violence. The film goes out of its way to establish that Andrew never abused Lily, only her mother Jenny — which denies the story a thru-line about Lily’s skewed understanding of abuse as a childhood survivor. Intimate partner violence, the film apears to say, is always directly targeted at a single subject. The perpetrator never lashes out at his own children. When Lily gives Ryle her new address so that he can help her assemble the baby’s crib? That’s totally fine and has no repercussions. Abusers should definitely know where their victims live.
Most notably, the film tiptoes around the social and financial reasons that often trap real women in abusive relationships. Lily is never shown struggling: not when she opens her flower shop (she attends a party in YSL rhinestone-encrusted mesh heeled boots costing $3.3k); when she marries Ryle, wealthy in his own right, she never benefits from his money — because she already has inexplicable independent wealth! Once Lily leaves Ryle, she promptly moves into a large house of her own downtown, and encounters no trouble stocking her baby’s nursery. When Lily confronts Jenny about leaving Andrew, Jenny pleads that she couldn’t bring herself emotionally to divorce Andrew — not that, say, it would have socially and financially ruined her and Lily. There is no suffering; no debt; no overcrowded and underfunded women’s shelters. Because no one is allowed to be poor in the It Ends With Us universe — least of all, Blake Lively.
On a surface level, the film just makes no damn sense — not helped by the fact that the final cut is (allegedly) a rush job that Lively commissioned after a rumored falling-out with director Justin Baldoni. I don’t pretend to have much experience in the industry, but even I could tell that “It Ends With Us” could have benefited from a script doctor:
Lily hires(?) the Birkin-toting, stay-at-home wife of her eventual husband’s brother, played by the iconic Jenny Slate. Lily doesn’t appear to pay Slate, who dances around the under-construction store in black leather jumpsuits and heeled boots, and is amazing because she is Jenny Slate. It is never made clear why Slate is looking for volunteer(?) work at for-profit businesses while carrying her bright orange Hermes purse. Was she planning to apply to the Newbury Street Glossier next?
As they prepare to open Lily’s flower shop, a shot shows the pair experimenting with putting red dye in the water of a white peony blossom — without any payoff. We never see the red flower.
Ryle emphasizes that he lives next door to his brother and Jenny Slate. (The trio lives in ginormous penthouse apartments somewhere in downtown Boston.) The relevance and necessity of this arrangement are never discussed again, since separate elevators open directly onto each respective apartment.
Several key scenes depend on the premise that customers of the group’s favorite bar can get discounts on beer if they wear animal onesies to watch Bruins games — so Ryle and his family always wear onesies. But why would the ultra-rich Kincaids care so much about getting a few dollars off their beers?
Also — going back to the start of the movie, because I just remembered and it made me mad — Andrew Bloom’s memorial service takes place at the town hall, but the podium has the county seal, and state troopers provide an honor guard? Maybe the set designer just hated the concept of a feminist Maine town named ‘Plethora’ as much as I do.
Atlas enlists in the Marine Corps straight out of high school, spends ten years as an enlisted soldier, and leaves with no discernible personality or ideological changes except for that he is hot now.
Atlas was named “Atlas,” somehow, upon his birth in the mid-1990s.
Atlas then goes to culinary school and opens a smash-hit, high-end restaurant called “Root,” in which he inexplicably waits a handful of tables every night while doubling as both head chef and owner. This entire nonsensical premise allows the movie to have its farm-to-table cake and eat it too: Lily meets Atlas again while eating at Root with Ryle; while on a second, accidental(?) dinner at Root, Atlas is taking their order and notice Lily’s black eye; but when the restaurant wins an award, Atlas is able to give a cryptic interview about a high school girlfriend that Ryle reads in a magazine.
Multiple characters insist that “all tattoos have [a deep and important] meaning,” to emphasize the big reveal that Lily’s stick-and-poke of a heart is based on a wood carving that Atlas once gave her. Atlas also randomly has a large tattoo of the Marines seal that is never discussed, and is never relevant except for emphasizing that he is hot now.
But let’s face it. You’re here for the clothes. Blake Lively allegedly contributed not only her own wardrobe to the film, but also outfits from her friend, supermodel Gigi Hadid. This creates — to say the least — a dissonance between the story and every single still frame.
It is important to me that you understand: Blake Lively is the only person dressing like this.
Lily (and, to a lesser extent, Jenny Slate) are not dressing for a world in which everyone is wearing the — in the words of the film’s costume designer — “iconic and legendary” clothes lifted from Gigi Hadid’s house. Lily just dresses in a $1,500+ (by my estimate) outfit for the opening of her flower shop, complete with exposed blue patchwork designer boxers, because Blake Lively didn’t want to look like One Of The Poors!
My most favorite accessory is Lily’s patterned tote bag, which we’re supposed to assume is filled with her massive ‘vision book’ for the flower shop, or whatever. Come to find out, the damn bag is from Valentino and costs nearly three thousand dollars. (I’m not saying anything about the second consecutive appearance of blue patterned boxers, because if I think about it too hard, the boxers send me into a fit of apoplectic rage.)
Later, Lily attends Jenny Slate’s birthday party in an outfit meant to emphasize that, contrary to the suggestion of her earlier frumpy(?) boho(?) fashion, She Is Also Blake Lively And Super Hot. It’s a good thing she’s not paying Jenny Slate for her labor, because Lily’s outfit costs upwards of four thousand American dollars.
I couldn’t get a good screenshot of it, but in the tenth-ish consecutive montage set to mid-2010s pop music, there’s a close-up shot of Lily wearing (what is very clearly) the YSL logo heels — $1,350 plus tax.
It is important to me that you understand: Blake Lively is the only person dressing like this. A fantastical universe — maybe a rom-com, or something — in which everyone wears thousand-dollar blouses under distressed Carhartt overalls would at least make coherent sense. But no. Blake Lively’s sartorial generosity extends exactly as far as Lily Bloom, making her a bizarre manic-pixie dream girl of domestic violence survivorship.
I did not like “It Ends With Us.” Having previously understood ‘acting’ as a profession which required physical transformation, I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Blake Lively approached Lily Blossom Bloom with the ambition to play dress-up in her expansive closet — to say nothing of advertising her hair and drink products along the way. That her chosen vehicle was “the domestic violence movie” is simply an unfortunate side effect. Because have you heard?! One can attend the “Betty Blooms” pop-up in New York for “fresh flowers & fizzy refreshments” — or at home, one may produce movie-themed cocktails featuring liquor from Blake Lively’s and her husband Ryan Reynolds’s respective brands!!!
Against the best efforts of Harvard’s merry band of Voting Influencers, I have found a solution: state distancing. Run for the hills. Remove oneself from any inclination to get anywhere near Boston Common AMC 19 — or even any proximity to a flower shop.