Ellie and 'feminine rage'
There's something so beautiful about how angry Ellie is around David and his group of men.
As a contrast to the community in Jackson, this group is not only more menacing, but patriarchal in every sense of the word. The men are the providers; they go out to hunt, the women stay inside; they are expected to be calm, quiet and not question their leader (a man). The consequence of going against that is shown in an instant when the young girl who lost her father expresses rage. David walks up to her and smacks her for daring to interrupt him, while her mother can't do anything but quietly sit back down. "You will always have a father. And you will show him respect when he's speaking", he tells her. This line of dialogue does not only exemplify David's twisted sense of fatherhood, but the way he views what men's and women's roles in society are. And how they're expected to behave. A father is a man. He speaks. The women listen and respect him. They are not allowed to be angry.
But Ellie's not like that. She carries a hunting rifle, speaks loudly and angrily, sees right through the bullshit and doesn't listen to him or his men. And in David's twisted mind he not only sees somebody that he thinks he can relate to, but transform into who he wants. So he lets her be angry. And when Ellie quiets down, he's sure that he has her where he wants her. Until she breaks his finger and screams in his face. And she doesn't relent even when she's by all accounts going to die.
And then she's allowed to take it all out in a long, violent rage. And it made me think of this quote by Anya Taylor-Joy about her character in the film The Menu:
âI have a thing about feminine rage⊠I get a lot of men doing really terrible things and women sitting silently while one tear slowly falls. And, Iâm like, âOh, no, no no. We get mad and angry.â I remember pulling Mark (The Menu director) aside and saying, âIâm really sorry. But, the only way to play this truthfully is for me to attack him.ââ
Like Craig says: âEllie has a violent heart, but [more importantly] â she has an empathetic heart.â She feels deeply. And sometimes that's expressed through love (for Riley, then Joel), sometimes pure, unstoppable rage. Because she's not portrayed as somebody who sits silently with one tear slowly falling down her cheek while a man does terrible things to her.
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