What are the implications of the movie’s final scenes—Lena’s dance/battle with the being that reflects her and her conversation with “Kane”? The slides address questions about destruction and transformation in the movie. The movie isn’t specific about Lena’s transformation in area X, but what do you see as one or two possible changes wrought by the experience? How is she a different character at the end of the film than at the beginning?
2 thoughts on “Annihilation–Group 2”
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In the moment watching the film, it was hard to figure out what exactly Lena was fighting during the climax in the lighthouse. I could tell it was a being that had manifested out of the orb using a drop of her blood, but I didn’t totally know whether she was dealing with aliens or an intelligent life or a virus or whatever else. It probably doesn’t matter, since the symbolic significance of the double was more easily understandable. To me, it seemed like Lena was fighting a physical representation of her destructive impulses, namely how she pushes people away from her. Throughout the film, we see that Lena struggles to form functional relationships. She is cagey, untrusting and militant (literally and figuratively). This could stem from her labels of prestige; she is a war veteran and a professor at a renowned university, which may fuel a sense of entitlement. After having an affair with a colleague (he was married and she in a way was not), she dismisses him coldly; when interacting with her platoonmates, their conversations are tense while she withholds her purpose for joining the team; when after discovering Cass’ mutilated corpse, she communicates her fate with a blunt “she’s dead”. Towards the end of the film, I didn’t really care about Lena at all, I just wanted answers as to what the source of the Shimmer was. Her fight with the Double made me a bit more sympathetic towards her, as it seemed she may have come to a personal reckoning with her flaws–this could be her transformation. I’m ambivalent about whether the story is meant to be about Lena’s journey as a person or provide a figurative broader narrative about the dangers of climate change or otherwise. It could be both, but I’m not too sure!
When I watched the final scene, seeing Lena battle with her reflection, I thought that she had defeated the reflection and made it explode all of the world. Then, I was very confused with her conversation at the end of the movie with Kane. It is established that Kane was defeated by his reflection, and that the reflection is what is currently living in Area X. Then, when those two began talking, Lena asks Kane whether or not it is him, and it is clear that the reflection defeated Kane. These events made me think that Lena was talking to Kane’s reflection. Then, when they hugged, we got a shot of both of their eyes, which both shifted in a weird way that is too similar for me not to believe that Lena’s double is indeed what escaped the shimmer, and not Lena.
We see the perspective of Lena shift throughout the film, and I believe this is a product of being in the Shimmer and also having her body taken over by the Shimmer. At the beginning, Lena is pressing her husband Kane and asking many questions, trying to get to the bottom of what happened to him. She is relentless. By the end of the film, we see Lena be much more empty, hollow, and not answering much of the questions that the interrogators are asking her. She has transformed from a human to something less than a human, and her actions throughout the film show how she lost control of her life and became something other than human.