by Mark Brinkerhoff
Happy post-Oscar nominations week! Despite a fair amount of rubbish (*cough* Bohemian Rhapsody), the Academy has blessed The Favourite with a deservedly (co-)leading 10 nominations. Bravo! Well done. On that note, it’s high time we talk about the film’s—shall we say—polarizing ending. Are you ready? Let’s go… (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Those of you who’ve been able—and fortunate enough—to see The Favourite can attest to its gallows humor and high-wire theatrics. From scene to scene, you may find yourself guffawing at the (back)biting wit, scratching your head at director Yorgos Lanthimos’ trademark absurdities, or squirming in your seat while shedding a tear during a heartbreaking reveal. It’s all there for us, and we're here for it. Queen Anne demands it. Yet even I was personally ill-prepared for a closing scene that is as uncomfortably bleak as it is entirely fitting given the myriad scheming, plotting and palace intrigue that precede it.
Though The Favourite famously was not written by Lanthimos, you wouldn’t know it watching the film’s long, unbroken, almost-dreamlike final shot. In fact, this scene seems handwritten by him. Featuring a crazed Anne (Olivia Colman), mercilessly clutching the hair while pushing on the head of a cowering, wincing Abigail (Emma Stone), the queen’s devious lady-in-waiting who has been forced to massage her gout-ridden feet, the scene plays out like a candle-lit royal nightmare—a be-careful-what-you-wish-for cautionary tale for the upwardly-mobile aristocrats of 18th century English court society. It finally concludes with a deeply uncomfortable fade-out that, somewhat discordant with the rest of the film, nevertheless feels *pure* Lanthimos.
I’ve heard several people comment that this scene nearly “ruined” the film for them, so extended and disorienting the coda. I get it—it can be an agonizingly brutal sit after such a weird, wild ride through the darkly, dryly funny court of Queen Anne, circa 1708. But, like a painter who signs his (or her) work upon completion, this ending reads like the director’s signature, his unmistakable imprimatur throwing many a viewer for a loop while remaining in keeping with The Favourite’s pitch-black comic tone. It’s a marvel of the discomfiting (for Stone’s character) and discomfort (for the audience).
You can quite easily imagine this as simply the end of a chapter/verse, vs. an actual finale. This isn’t an ending in any conventional way but rather the beginning of the rest of duplicitous Abigail’s life …of de-facto servitude to Anne’s whims, so long as the queen remains among the living—and Abigail stays in the queen’s good graces. God have mercy on her soul?
The Favourite is playing now nationwide. If it's your favourite vote for it on the various Oscar chart polls