I think a lot of people that watched the movie think it's Alex. Mostly bc of their intense connection and bc they ship them.
But when I watched the movie a second time, I noticed that after Alex killed Nigel's father, Nigel said he had found his Maraclea. (the scene in the photo) And that was only a few minutes after Alex found out that Nigel had been having an affair with his own mother. Do you think his mother was his Maraclea? I'm not sure, but maybe it was her at the beginning, but over the time it became Alex. Moreover, his behavior and beliefs must have existed long before Nigel and Alex met. At that time he may have been on his way to find his Maraclea and chose his mother, maybe just as a "prototyp" for his plan. But when he met Alex he found sb to make his Plan complete. One thing that speaks against Alex being Nigel's Maraclea is that Nigel keeps telling Alex that Alex's Maraclea is Susan. Why would he support that and even convince Alex to believe it if he himself wants Alex?
how am i gonna be capable of naming a kid like i wanna name them something cool. my husband in 10 years wondering why in hell i named our daughter maraclea and having no idea where the name came from (im glad) but like can u imagine going to school and for role call, someone calls out maraclea. its such a pretty name omg
If anyone is like me (anyone??) and has been obsessed with finding a deck of cards matching what they used in the movie, you'll know that the specific card design is either incredibly obscure, doesn't exist anymore, or never existed in the first place. However, while searching randomly through card backings for the design we see in the movie, I hit the jackpot...to an extent. Below is the exact design from the cards, though rendered in black rather than pale green. The bad news is that a reverse Google image search only brings up pins on Pinterest dating back to about 6 years ago, none of which lead to any source. Basically, someone uploaded the image themselves and didn't credit or link back to where it came from. The other bad news is this is the largest version of the image Google is able to find.
But...anyone who wants to play with it for art purposes or try to improve the quality with Photoshop, here's your chance. I'm still not 100% convinced they didn't use a found image to fabricate their own cards for the movie, since that green is either very intentionally created to fit their palette or just a realllllly lucky find.
If anyone out there has found a free font that is anywhere close to the one Nigel uses here, please let me know. That search has also yielded little fruit.
Edited to add: 15 minutes of fucking around in GIMP, I have this. I'm sure others with more skill could do better.
La enigmática imagen de la calavera y las tibias cruzadas está profundamente arraigada en la mente de millones de personas alrededor del mundo como el símbolo de la piratería, la muerte e incluso veneno. Era una imagen que se ha mantenido apareciendo en las investigaciones, templarias, o incluso como el símbolo que los Jesuitas usaban en su iniciación, como los Templarios. Cada vez que vemos un…
When I was assembling my tarot posts and saw these two cards next to each other, I was struck by something. The angles of Nigel's body echo the crossed bones.
the choice, intentional or not, to twist the maraclea legend in like minds to make a lady of maraclea become the lady maraclea is so fascinating to me. been thinking a lot about kristeva’s concept of abjection as the place where meaning collapses in on itself, the way a supernova implodes into a black hole. it contributes to this larger use of gestalt not as a way of understanding the events that happen in the film but rather as this constant and continual process of deconstructing/stripping all meaning. maraclea is taken and bastardized to pure signifier without sign. a meaning utterly detached from the context which formed it. “that thing that no longer matches and therefore no longer signifies anything”
Breakdown and Comparison of the Books in Like Minds
So a careful viewer will notice that Nigel's bible and Alex's bible are clearly two completely different books. As @currentlyonstandbi also pointed out to me, the movie soundtrack underlines this by having two separate tracks titled "Nigel's Bible" and "Alex's Bible". The difference between the two is obvious in the two photos below.
We get glimpses of a few pages inside each of these books, and a side by side comparison will show that while they are different books, there are certain shared images that are suggestive of a few conclusions.
The first commonality is the use of the map insert seen above. Both maps appear to be exactly the same image, depicting the Mediterranean and the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades when the Templars were active. The map in Nigel's book is clearly larger and from the color of the paper seems to be somewhat older. Alex's map seems to be pulled from a different, newer source.
Both books also contain the same image of a man: Thomas Becket. It is hard to tell if this is merely the effect of the difference in lighting in each scene, but Nigel's version again appears somewhat yellowed, as if it was cut from an older book, while Alex's version seems more like a photocopy. Included below is the original of that image, as well as the art added in Alex's version, depicting the murder of Becket.
When Alex returns from his thwarted date with Susan, he throws Nigel's book across the room. It opens to this page, with an original pencil or charcoal drawing of a modern girl, and artwork depicting a skull inside a chalice or grail.
Alex's book also contains the same skull and cup image, but no copy of the sketch. This stands to reason, given that it appears to be an original drawing rather than an image pulled from an existing text. The same difference in paper color between the two versions is noticeable.
When we look at the images of the cover of Nigel's book (as seen in the Maraclea image above) we can see that the spine is smaller and that the pages seem to be full or nearly full. Alex's book seems to have a wider spine, and is clearly only partially filled, with many more blank pages remaining.
Conclusions and Analysis:
There are a couple different lines of thought one can pursue with this information. First: what happened to Nigel's book? We know that Alex can't have gone back to his room after Nigel died and therefore had no opportunity to hide it. We also don't actually know if he returned it to Nigel after reading it. One imagines that it would have been in either his room or Nigel's secret room, but we know from his conversations with Sally that it was found in neither location. It is possible that Alex is correct in his assertion that the Order removed it before the police could find it, or that the police chief (who was a member of the Order) had it removed from evidence.
The other possibility is that Alex was the true mastermind behind the events of the film, and that Nigel's book was an invention/exaggeration based on his OWN book to serve his depiction of Nigel. This seems less likely for one important reason: where was his book when the police investigated? Surely it would have been found, unless he had previously hidden it in some secret location never mentioned in the film.
The simplest explanation is that Nigel's book existed and was removed by the Order to preserve their secret lore, and Alex used the 9 months after Nigel's death to recreate his book from memory. We know from his conversation with Sally that he was completely engrossed by Nigel's book (though he tries to back pedal immediately after that). Obviously, he wouldn't have been able to recall or track down every piece of ephemera used, particularly not the metal badge or coin or the snippets of original documents or rare texts.
He also couldn't include the original drawing of the girl, probably done by Nigel himself and clearly placed next to the skull image as a reference to the Maraclea legend. Was this drawing meant to be Susan herself? Given that the moment this image is shown is almost certainly concurrent with the murder of Susan, it seems clear that a parallel is being drawn by the filmmaker. But unlike Susan in the movie, the hair is braided with bangs (Susan has no bangs and never appears with a braid), and the girl has an open collar showing a necklace with a cross pendant (also not in line with how Susan dresses in the film). We must also consider that this page is closer to the front of Nigel's book, implying that it has been there for a while. It's possible the drawing could have been pasted in later over whatever was on that page previously, or it could have entirely predated his interactions with Susan and Alex.
The end of the film highlights the fact that Alex believes in the Maraclea legend and obviously implies that Susan was his Maraclea. Nigel's 2 page Maraclea spread would have stood out in Alex's memory given the circumstances under which he first saw it and then the events which later transpired. While he couldn't have recreated the same drawing for his book, it is notable that he didn't attempt to create a similar spread with the skull/chalice image using another drawing or picture of a girl, including one of Susan herself.
Why didn't he?
The movie will never answer this question, but I'm firmly convinced it is because Nigel is his true Maraclea.
