could someone please explain the ending to me? - Hadewijch (2010) Discussion

[–] tomasvdw 14 years ago

I think the scenes after the explosion actually happen earlier in the film, just after she is sent away and just before the guy goes to jail.

This seems weird cause the rest of the film is chronologically intact but it makes much more sense for the story.

Actually I think that "after" the movie the guy rapes her in some way or another. This is why he has to go to jail (why else would they show that?), and why she gets in conflict with her faith.

Chronologically the film ends when she commits suicide with a bomb.

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[–] jtaboada 14 years ago

I don't think so because:

We see the guy being released from jail, and later saying to his mother that he's going back to work next monday.

Also, when he goes to jail he said his cellmates that they've given him three months, which certainly wouldn't be the time for rape. They even mention that he was on probation, but didn't go to sign.

So, she didn't commit suicide, she just planted the bomb, which doesn't make much sense to me at all, but that's the story Dumont is telling

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[–] tomasvdw 14 years ago

The going twice to jail part is a bit confusing, but I still think it makes more sense if the second time he goes to jail is after the scene at the end. As you say, her just planting a bomb doesn't make any sense at all and would make the whole story line of the mason going to jail rather pointless..

I think the scene with the mason and his mother is to (try to) clarify that he went back to work in the monastery after he came back from jail the first time.

The rape doesn't have to be literally rape as the details are clearly left open.

The point is that he acts as a Christ figure in her life. He is a mason, (similar to a carpenter), he saves her (from drowning), and then he shows her what love is (the details left open), the people punish him for it (by sending him back to jail from probation).

In support, note the scene just before the ending scene, she's running and crying in the rain in the woods. This is the same as in the beginning, after she is sent away.

Also note the strange scene just before that one (and just "after" the bomb), when she is sheltering in a green house or something like that. The nun that appears, acts weird as if she should be there. If I recall correctly Celine then explains that she is sheltering. It seems as if this also shows that this actually occurs just after she is sent away.

The people I went to see the film with didn't all agree with each other about the chronology. It is not made clear very well, which is unfortunate because it makes it confusing and has no added value.

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[–] rossmcelwain 14 years ago

Have a look at Stewart Home's piece on it:

http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=2745

"If this were a realist film, then the explosion would be the end of the movie, but Dumont’s speciality is a Baudrillardian simulation of realism, and there is a loose thread to tie-up in the form of a character called David (David Dewaele). The series of events that take place after the explosion clearly confused much of the audience and became a focus for questions to the director during his Q & A session. I wasn’t feeling engaged enough to point out that the failed drowning rather too self-consciously invokes the climax of Bresson’s Mouchette. Nonetheless, a director like Dumont becomes significant when you see how many of the people attending his screenings don’t understand that film as a medium need not be restricted to utterly flat realist narratives; and is, in any case, better understood as ‘poetic’ images."

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[–] slaytonbourdon 13 years ago

I *think* that she just planted the bomb and that she returned to the monastery afterwards. In any case the beginning and the end are NOT taking place simultaneously - the beginning scenes take place in the winter (the trees are bare) and the final scenes clearly take place in the spring. I believe her "confession" at the shrine has to do with the fact that she feels, despite having taken her zealotry to such extents, dissatisfied with the spiritual response she got from her actions, and feeling no closer to God she tries to kill herself. Saved by David, we are left with the possibility that perhaps she will try to find love and a 'home' in more human terms. That's my reading anyway.

Personally I quite liked the ending.

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[–] GerFalcon 13 years ago

I completely agree with you about the recap that is about turning your love to humanity instead of some abstract idea as a god.
A huge plot hole is the idea of how someone of presumed christian religion can just hop over to islam and then hop back to christianity, but that serves the purpose of symbolism for they may both be about a god but in quite different perceptions.
The gendarmes that came to take her away made her decide to commit suicide after which she ran away all being observed by David.
But the story that would fit on an A4-sheet is all about symbolism and that was portrayed beautifully.

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[–] Tyler_Seymour_Wallach 13 years ago

Agree. I didn't like how the end was formulated - the flow was really weird and the music made Celine's melancholy melodramatic - but I do like the concept of it. Also the irony of having a bomber embrace her and help her to her realization. The irony being that I felt she felt God was further away from her than he had been before because of her actions as opposed to indifferent to them.

http://forizzer69.wordpress.com/ (The Company Men/Somewhere)

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[–] Stewed-Screwed-Tattooed 13 years ago

If the events shown after the bombing scene indeed take place before the bombing itself, as I first thought so myself, the two cops showing up to have a chat with her don't make sense at all.

As my girlfriend (a dramaturgy student at the Utrecht University) pointed out: the whole movie is chronologically shown and there are no cinematographic clues that the last scenes are any different. The transitions between and the style of the scenes are no different than the rest.

She points out that Stewart Home's explenation on this film being a Baudrillardian piece is plausible, if not for the two cops wanting to have a conversation with Hadewijch before she tries to drown herself.

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[–] kastorgas 13 years ago

Ok, this is the first time I write about a film here, but I was also very disturbed by the ending, specifically by the scenes after the bombing. I concur with the previous posts about the field of possibilities: (1) a flashback, or (2) Céline simply not detonated the bomb. But I think there is a third possible explanation, that makes sense in the religious context of the movie.

Céline is searching for a God that, she thinks, is evading her. She torments herself in the way a medieval saint would do. This search for God leads her to a radical way of finding Him: she offers herself as a sacrifice (or maybe, just offers her live). In death, she thinks, she could realize her fate and become nearer to God, be with Him. I think she really detonated the bomb...but she didn't die. By way of a miracle, God saves her. Céline reads this miracle as God's rejection of her. This is a very strange way of interpreting a miracle, but reflects Céline's deep confusion about the relevance of life: she rejects her body and her life, and, in a very twisted form, God rejects this conception of religion by way of making a miracle. This miracle is like a great "Miss, you're wrong". I don't think Céline really understands the message (maybe she wants to not understand), and attempts suicide in the last scene. David, the shirtless man, saves her. This is not a miracle. Is just an altruistic action performed by an ordinary man. But, for us, is like a second miracle; shows David like a divine agent or something like that. It divinizes the ordinary world. Maybe Céline can understand this "second miracle"; this could lead her, this time, to reevaluate her conception of religion and the way it relates to the world. God is here, not visible like "a God", but more like the humanity, or the world.

I'm an atheist, and all this is very strange for me, but I think is a possible explanation of that finale. A very surreal finale, indeed.

Thanks for reading, and sorry my english. I'm from Chile!

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[–] Stewed-Screwed-Tattooed 13 years ago

Quite an intereting approach to seeing the ending and definitely a possibility!

Nice one, Kastorgas.

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[–] vrcotner 12 years ago

Perhaps in the last scenes Celine is an angel (albeit a melancholy one) her purpose is the redemption or act of Godly love for David who saves her.
Otherwise am totally baffled.

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] PoppyTransfusion 10 years ago

The film is a meditation on spirituality by which is meant the relationship one has with the world and those in it according to and/or affected by religious and supernatural beliefs.

Early in the film one of the nuns, the Mother Abbess I believe, says that some people stray from God and return, some stray and never return and then there are others who appear to have strayed but have in fact never left. This trinity (deliberate word) is manifested in the man David, Nassir and Celine, respectively.

David has a criminal past, we know not what. He is on parole when first we see him on a building site. He has strayed and continues to do so, breaking his parole and returning to prison as a result. His action at the end of the film shows he has returned to the fold of humanity, or God, if one so believes. Nassir strays from God because he wishes to uses God and religion to justify and support political action that harms others in the name of avenging others that have been hurt. Whilst he maintains his philosophy of violence he remains estranged. Celine is close to God and closer than she knows. She thinks she loses God and her actions with Nassir suggests she might. But her remorse shows that she never went far and that her wandering was in quest of God. She had to learn, as one of the nuns says early on, by being in the world. This learning was more important than her early devotion.

I thought the film was simple, profound and beautiful. There were shots that resembled a painting by any of the Dutch masters; the best example was Celine with the novice nun who was her guardian, sitting at the breakfast table. So beautiful and the light and colours of clothing fell like paint. The scene with Nassir in the communal garden of the estate was second.

I give my respect to those who have earned it; to everyone else, I'm civil.

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