Parents, Stop Apologizing (In Movies)
There is a trend in films as of late that is making everyone my age, and a few years older, cry incessantly. And it’s as simple as the act of parents saying they’re sorry. And before I even noticed it once, it was everywhere. And it’s easy to see how we got here. Millennials are making movies, and more importantly, having kids of their own or at least reaching that age. Therefore there seems to be two kinds of movies these days: those that aim to recapture childhood nostalgia, and those that wish to overcome childhood trauma.
Let’s look at our main subject: the sci-fi/martial arts smorgasbord Everything Everywhere All At Once. The movie begins with its protagonist Evelyn as the worst possible version of herself. Her business is about to be shut down by the IRS, her father is moving in following the death of his wife, her husband is about to ask for a divorce, and she is neglecting her daughter who’s looking for acceptance of her relationship with another girl. The film is all about Evelyn realizing her true potential and making the most of the life she has, mending her relationships with her family (and even the IRS). The big thing with Everything Everywhere is the relationship between Evelyn and her daughter Joy, and how they come to accept one another as they are. But the film chooses not to dwell on how an alternate Evelyn pushed Joy so far that she turned her daughter into a living god of nihilism, hopping between multiverses with the intent on destroying everything and making herself as alone as she already sees herself to be. In fact we never see this Evelyn, the one that the all-powerful Jobu Tapaki was born from. It creates a disconnect as Evelyn apologizes for actions that simultaneously were and were not hers, the audience expected to take this one moment as penance for years — and universes — of mistakes. It is a moment that centers its protagonist and her journey to a better place… because what will the audience think if Joy’s answer is a simple “no?”
This is where a lot of my resistance to this trend comes from: these apologies have to be accepted to make a larger point. There is no room for the children of these fictional parents to continue to hold messy and unquantifiable feelings about that other person. It is a binary, an input and output, a plot device, a cliché in the making. In order for everything to be wrapped up in a nice little bow, all transgressions must be forgiven before the credits roll, the story ends, and the audience can go home.
I want to contrast this trend with a scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. One that is not an apology from a parent, but a moment of a neglected boy finally making himself heard. Throughout the film Cameron has been dragged around by the enigmatic and scheming Ferris, including taking his father’s prized Ferrari for a joyride around Chicago. As the day off comes to a close and the fatal flaws in their plan have come to light, Cameron unloads his grief on Ferris and his girlfriend. Cameron’s father is both overbearing and entirely absent, more proud of his car than his son. And as he kicks the car until it speeds out of the garage and falls into the forest below, the audience gets a true idea of what growing up with shitty parents looks like. It is a cycle of resentment, both of yourself and of the parent.
I come from an abusive household, and for the sake of privacy I will keep details of that scant. But I relate much, much, much more to Cameron’s struggles than the glut of recent parent-apologizing fare. Because the reality is, the apology doesn’t undo what happened to you. An apology is not what I want. I don’t deserve an apology for what happened to me throughout my life, I deserved to not have that happen to me. Because in my worst moments of self-doubt, absolution is the easiest answer. It’s easy to want forgiveness, to see the person who tormented you truly feel regret for what they did. But I had that moment too. The only time I ever saw regret in that relationship and what had happened in it was when it looked like I was too far gone, like what had been happening to me for years could not shape me into what this person wanted me to be.
So, no, I don’t want an apology. I want to see the kids grow up and be alright. I want to see the messy process that is becoming an adult and reckoning with the life you were given. But we’re not going to get that for a while. Because as long as Millennials and parents-to-be keep making movies, the parents will always be absolved and things will always end there. And that’s fine, let them have their moment where they’re allowed to believe that all can be forgiven and all can be repaired. But that just isn’t gonna work for me. I’m too far gone for it to be that simple.