the thing about Vivarium (2019) is that it wasnt like the main couple particularly disliked kids. to the contrary, the both loved kids. gemma works as a grade school teacher and tom is a gardener who works for the school. tom is even sensitive enough that he buries two dead baby birds that fell from their nest at the start of the movie. these are two very caring and nuturing people who would have made excellent parents, they just didnt have kids *yet*. the tragedy of the story is that this couple that would have made excellent parents is given a child that they didnt plan for and didnt want. they werent ready to be parents yet and were forced into it without their consent. it is ultimately a story about people who are forced and pressured into living a life that they never would have chosen. theyre given everything they could ever need or want by cisheteronormative societal standards but they had no agency in it. they didnt chose it. its a story about how unwanted/unplanned children can drain the life out of people despite societys perception of them as "blessings". gemma and tom were very nurturing people yet when given a baby against their will it destroyed them; tom worked himself to death to escape and reject the child abandoning gemma to raise him alone, but raising him was just a job to her. gemma rejected motherhood til her dying breath. they abused the child, tom even tried to kill him, and gemma regrets not letting him do it when the child gets older. raising the child gave them nothing but suffering, they could only find peace sitting in their car (much like how for life in the suburbs your car is a lifeline - its nearly impossible to do anything without one). the movie was about the hidden suffering that lies just beneath the idyllic surface of suburbia; the voyeuristic, isolating, paranoid, depressive reality that afflicts families who never wanted life to be this way but were trapped into it. is it any wonder why this movie made people feel deeply uncomfortable?
2087
titsay
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
