Integritus Prime

A colleague who is currently taking my self-love class emailed me with an article about the film, It Ends with Us. I hadn’t heard of the film, or, as it turns out, the book. While the article speaks of the differences between the book and film, I want to share the breakthrough moments for me when I watched the film. It is so well made. By that, I mean it illustrates domestic violence so well.

Spoilers start here. Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) meets the gorgeous neurosurgeon, Ryle Kinkaid (played by a smolderingly chiseled Justin Baldoni, who also directs the movie well) and their first encounter is cut short when Ryle has to rush to the operating room. They meet again through Ryle’s sister, Allysa (played by Jenny Slate), who helps Lily set up her flower shop, and although Ryan is apparently a typical playboy, he seems smitten with Lily and they begin to date.

Meanwhile, we learn about Lily’s teen romance with Atlas, a boy she supports when she notices him staying in an empty building. They bond and become romantically involved. Lily is already seeing Ryle when she meets Atlas again in a restaurant. While it appears that Atlas might be a waiter, later we learn he is actually the owner of a restaurant called Root.

Much later in the story, we learn that this restaurant is named after an important lesson Atlas learned from Lily: the most important part of a plant is the root – if you tend it well and give it nutrients, the plant will reward you with flowers or fruit.

In what seems like a series of accidents, both Lily and Ryle are injured. Later, we learn that Ryle was deliberate in harming Lily due to his unpredictable anger. This anger is also seen, coupled with jealousy and insecurity when Ryle meets Atlas and they get into a fight. Atlas suspects domestic violence when he sees the bruise on Lily’s face, and while the viewer still believes it to be due to an accident…

As the domestic violence plot unveils more and more, we learn that Lily’s father physically assaulted her mother repeatedly, and beat up Atlas after catching him in bed with Lily.

As Lily sits in a hospital bed contemplating her future, after almost being raped by Ryle, with Atlas sitting in a chair next to her, she learns she is pregnant.

Atlas is a pillar of platonic support for Lily as she expresses her doubts about being able to mother a child. He reveals what she means to him, by sharing that when she discovered him in the abandoned building, he wasn’t just hiding out from his mother’s abusive boyfriends, he was about to commit suicide. After he saw her, he could not bring himself to do it. Lily brought him food and a sleeping bag and nurtured him, and he tells her that she saved him. He tells her she will be the best mom ever, and that her baby, if she chooses to keep her or him, will be the luckiest child. In this tender moment, we realize two things: Atlas loves Lily deeply and irrevocably, and Atlas and Lily are each other’s safe loves, because they both come from violent homes and do not want to repeat that violence.

Two profound lessons take shape from the film, both voiced as boundaries by Allysa, then her brother Ryle:

1. When Lily shares with Allysa about the attempted rape, Allysa says that as a sister she hopes Lily would forgive her brother, but as a friend, she will never speak to Lily if Lily goes back to Ryle. This is a profound moment where one woman supports another woman to leave an abusive situation. Allysa’s boundary and ultimatum is that if Lily chooses to stay in this abusive relationship, she will lose Allysa as a friend.
2. When Lily places her newborn girl, Emmie (named after Ryle’s older brother, Emerson, who Ryle shot while playing unwittingly with a real gun at age 6 – a likely cause of his trauma and rage) into Ryle’s arms, she asks him for a divorce. When he begins to protest, she asks him what he would say to Emmie if, one day, Emmie came to him saying that her boyfriend beat her. Ryle’s response is that he would advise Emmie to leave her boyfriend and never, ever take him back. As a result, Ryan agrees to the divorce. Lily holds Emmie close after Ryle walks out and repeatedly says to her: it ends with us.

It is well documented that abuse victims have a hard time leaving the relationship; indeed, 75% of victims are murdered after leaving the abusive relationship. This is exemplified by Lily’s mother, who tells Lily she stayed in the relationship because she loved her husband.

The film has a clear message: leave abusive situations, and never ever go back. If only it was that easy, and yet, Lily’s character gives us hope. A few years after her divorce, when Emmie is a little girl, Lily runs into Atlas. The film leaves us hanging as to whether they get together – but your guess is the same as mine, I think 🙂

Two more thoughts – we can leave abusive situations, but the abuser will probably choose another victim. The best way to put an end to abuse is to seek help if we are the perpetrator, and to raise our children well, so we can put an end to this scourge.

The same goes for emotional and psychological abuse, which is just as harmful, if not more so, than physical violence. Having grown up in an environment where gaslighting, manipulation, and rage was common, I have come to understand the importance of saying no to abuse, and standing one’s ground.