The feelings of grief, guilt, and entrapment subtly gloom over the characters throughout the movie. Intergenerational trauma and collective remembrance of poverty, depravity, and disease lurk behind every corner. But this movie is not just about feelings. It's more of a story about the stories. Particularly stories we tell ourselves to make sense of circumstances, both present and past.

Narratives have existed as long as humankind, and they have helped us gain control over trauma, confusion, and loss. Whether we seek them in religion, science, or art, their power persists through time and across cultures. They can heal or make us sick; they can put us in a (mental) cage or set us free. And after everything is said and done, they will persevere even long after we're gone.

Past is not just about what has happened, but about what we believe has happened. This movie is an artistic study of both psychological and anthropological effects of belief in the narrative. And it nurtures this self-awareness; at the beginning, we are reminded that we are about to witness a story. Nothing more, nothing less. Can narratives destroy lives? How about saving them?

That being said, I will explore a few of the main characters and the symbolism attached to each one of them.

SPOILERS BELOW:

Anna is a victim of false narratives. First, her brother creates a story to justify the unjustifiable and to persuade her to participate in the incestuous relationship. After he dies, the family falls victim to another dogmatic narrative; this one rooted in the misinterpretation of faith. Anna's parents are both abusers and victims. They've been taught that their children can find salvation only in the afterlife and that they're forced to suffer in this life. While they believe they do the best thing for Anna, their actions are actively pushing her to her untimely death. All because of a story.

Lib Wright represents the switch in the paradigm. Unlike Anna's family and the village community that blindly follows the preexisting narrative of religion, Lib is writing her own story. Her story is based on her observations and conclusions, as it is pointed out during one of her interactions with Kitty. During that same conversation, we are once again reminded that it is all about the different stories created through different perspectives. Lib is there to set Anna free from her cage, both literally and metaphorically. Even the nickname they settle with - "Lib" as opposed to the much more common "Lizzie" or "Betty" - is associated with liberation and liberty. Liberation is finally achieved as she creates a new narrative that helps Anna break free from the imposed guilt.

Will Byrne is, perhaps, the most straightforward character since, as a journalist, he creates the narratives - thousands of them, as we learn from one of his first interactions with Lib. And he seems to be the most aware of the power of narratives, as he continually reminds Lib that she's not to believe everything she's told. In one scene, he brings a gift to Anna - a toy that, when spun, creates an optical illusion of a bird being in and out of a cage. It is again symbolic of Anna's imprisonment in the cage of a narrative created through collective trauma. When she asks whether the bird is free or caged, Will replies it's up to her to decide, further hinting that taking control of the narrative is a necessary step toward liberation.

And finally, there is Kitty, whose voiceover we hear in the opening scene and who breaks the fourth wall a couple of more times throughout the movie. She's both a witness to changing paradigms and a storyteller that passes the narrative through generations and finally to the audience of the movie. When we first meet her, she's illiterate and as ill-informed as the rest of the rural community which encourages Anna's starvation. Throughout the movie, she gradually learns to read and to create her perspective on matters. The story we hear is neither Anna's nor Lib's, but Kitty's, as she's the bridge between the narrative stuck in time and the progressive view that Lib introduces to the community. In the final scene, she stares at the camera and asks: "In? Out?" It is both a question for the audience, as well as her reflection on what has truly happened. Anna died IN one narrative, which was necessary for her to get OUT of it, and explore other narratives.

Wow, people really can make themselves believe anything, can't they?

Florence Pugh gives a characteristically prickly performance as an English nurse who's sent to a small Irish village to observe the phenomena of a girl who has survived for four months without food and report her findings back to the town council. The girl's family and many townsfolk believe it's divine intervention. Others, Pugh's character among them, are skeptical and think they're being hosed. It's a classic confrontation between science and faith, and the movie asks whether it's possible for both to exist at the same time.

I really dug this movie's tone and mood. It plays almost like a horror film at times, and when the secret behind the girl's condition emerges, it certainly is horrible enough.

Grade: A-

It's a well-rehearsed truism to say that the act of observing a thing changes the object of the object being observed. That's just one of the weighty questions at the heart of this meditative historical drama, one that's also concerned with the interaction of science and faith, free will, when or if to stage an intervention with people bent on self-destructive paths, and the sometimes overwhelming power of guilt - both false guilt and that which has more reason.

To call it patient - despite its under 2-hour running time - is an understatement, but it's never dull thanks in large part to the haunting score and soundscape, and Florence Pugh's truly remarkable central performance (she seems to be packing a few of those into her still young career). A strange and potentially alienating device opens the film, drawing attention to its artificiality, but in doing so it highlights that question of observation changing the observed and encouraging us to do what we're told the characters are doing - believing their own stories as we experience them.

There's a thesis to be written here on the film's theological allusions, one I won't attempt to start here. But it has caused me to reflect on my own experience of over twenty years as an ordained Anglican (i.e. Episcopal) priest. I've seen many people do a wide variety of things in that time, things done in the name of their faith, for reasons of guilt or redemption, that are destructive to themselves or those around them. I've even, sadly, met and listened to people who have been forced to experience precisely the horrific thing, the hidden secret of the past on which the plot turns. If it seems too awful to be true, I can assure you it isn't - for all this film's deliberate artifice, it's a deeply truthful one.

Dealing with almost as many fundamental questions as you might care to bring to it, this is a weighty, serious, but still moving film that's carried by Pugh's brilliance and the production's patient tone. You will likely think on it for days.