{"id":136236,"date":"2020-12-18T05:16:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T02:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-ending-of-wild-mountain-thyme-explained-and-shamed\/"},"modified":"2020-12-18T05:16:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T02:16:25","slug":"the-ending-of-wild-mountain-thyme-explained-and-shamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-ending-of-wild-mountain-thyme-explained-and-shamed\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Ending of &#8216;Wild Mountain Thyme&#8217; Explained (and Shamed)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#The Ending of &#8216;Wild Mountain Thyme&#8217; Explained (and Shamed)<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p><!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 3.7.8--><em><strong>Ending Explained<\/strong><\/em><i> is a recurring <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> in which we explore the finales, secrets, and <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">theme<\/a>s of interesting movies and shows, both new and old. This time, we head to Ireland to make sense of a poorly written rom-com from a filmmaker who really should know better\u2026 it\u2019s time to explain Wild Mountain Thyme.<\/i><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Here\u2019s the thing. The vast, overwhelming majority of movies do not need to be explained. If the filmmakers do their job right, and if the viewer pays attention to what they\u2019re watching, all of the details and answers are right there on the screen. To be fair, sometimes those answers can be obtuse and actually benefit from an outside interpretation, but more often than not the onus is on the viewer to simply pay attention to what they\u2019re watching. Other times, though, a movie like <strong><em>Wild Mountain Thyme<\/em><\/strong> comes along that defies reason, logic, and the rules of good screenwriting to deliver less of a wild twist ending and more of a stupid one.<\/p>\n<p>Writer\/director <strong>John Patrick Shanley<\/strong> has enough experience with romantic comedies, both traditional (<em>Moonstruck<\/em>, 1987) and absurd (<em>Joe Versus the Volcano<\/em>, 1990) that one celebrating the quirk and pluck of Irish farmers should be an easy stab at success. He\u2019s adapting his own play here, but while \u201cOutside Mullingar\u201d may work on the stage, it\u2019s a head-scratcher of a movie that\u2019s at turns dull, silly, questionable with its accents, and ultimately unforgivable. The film leaves viewers with questions, from \u201cdid no one notice the lack of chemistry or laughs in this supposed rom-com?\u201d to \u201cdid she just slip into a Jamaican accent?\u201d to \u201cwho blackmailed <strong>Emily Blunt<\/strong> into starring in this?,\u201d but there are no answers coming.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone\u2019s a buzz, though, with chatter and furrowed brows about <em>Wild Mountain Thyme<\/em>\u2018s end reveal \u2014 I hesitate to call it a twist \u2014 but first, a quick recap of what brings our two hopeful lovers to that point.<\/p>\n<p>Rosemary (Blunt) has loved her neighbor Anthony (<strong>Jamie Dornan<\/strong>) since they were wee tykes, but he never showed the slightest reciprocation. Now single adults still living at home on their respective farms with their surviving parents, it\u2019s clear by the rules of rom-coms that the two are destined to be together. At least, they should be, but Anthony\u2019s hiding a secret that has kept them apart and threatens to do so going forward. His father (<strong>Christopher Walken<\/strong>, with his own choice Irish accent) thinks he\u2019s odd and incapable of running the farm in his absence, rumors swirl about him proposing to a donkey, and no woman can land him for marriage or even a night. Add in the threat of an American cousin (<strong>Jon Hamm<\/strong>) who swoops in with the intention of claiming both the land and the woman, and the situation becomes dire. What is Anthony\u2019s issue, and can love triumph over his pain?!<\/p>\n<p>From an early scene where we see him as a child asking Mother Nature \u201cWhy did you make me so?\u201d to later interactions as an adult where he whispers his secret to a bar floozy only to have her laugh aloud, it\u2019s clear he\u2019s hiding something his small Irish community just won\u2019t approve of \u2014 and if you think you know what it is, you\u2019re probably wrong. Gay? Asexual? From the future? Disinterested in farming? Sympathetic to Northern Protestants? Nope. Ready?<\/p>\n<p>He thinks he\u2019s a honey bee.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead, I\u2019ll give you a second to soak that in before I continue.<\/p>\n<p>To repeat, Anthony thinks he\u2019s a honey bee. I\u2019m guessing your two im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>te questions (that don\u2019t involve the letters WTF) boil down to this \u2014 is there literally any indication of this before it\u2019s revealed in the final ten minutes, and is there something, anything, relevant about him thinking he\u2019s a goddamn bee?<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re far from cogent hints, but <em>Wild Mountain Thyme<\/em> does tease the reveal in some obtuse ways early on starting with Anthony as a boy sniffing a flower so close that he ends up with pollen on his nose. Does he rush off after and \u201cpollinate\u201d some nearby crops? No, don\u2019t be silly. We see him capture a bee in his house and release it into the wild, but as he\u2019s also kind enough to the farm animals that it hardly stands out as a specific kindness towards bees. He\u2019s seen at one point at a distance \u201ctalking\u201d to the air and swatting at it with a boat\u2019s oar, but it\u2019s unclear if he\u2019s trying to murder his fellow bees? Some scenes also feature a very faint buzzing sound that could be anything from nearby flies to a whimsical clue offered up by a very drunk Shanley in the editing room.<\/p>\n<p>It goes without saying, but I\u2019m saying it all the same, that none of this is even remotely enough to suggest to viewers that our dude thinks he\u2019s a honey bee. That\u2019s especially the case as, hints or no hints, Anthony never in the slightest way acts like a honey bee either. He doesn\u2019t buzz or flap his arms, he\u2019s content being on his own rather than live in a high-energy hive, and at no point does he even don a s<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a>ed shirt.<\/p>\n<p>While Anthony\u2019s peculiar affliction is only revealed in the film\u2019s waning minutes \u2014 after ninety minutes of build-up \u2014 two other characters are more openly identified as animal-themed. Anthony\u2019s long-dead uncle apparently believed himself to be a fish before subsequently drowning one day, and Rosemary thinks, quite openly, that she\u2019s a white swan. The former is never explored, but the latter occurs when her father comforts her broken heart as a child. He tells her she\u2019s a white swan after she\u2019s spurned by young Anthony, and even as an adult she occasionally breaks into ballet moves from <em>Swan Lake<\/em>. That said, Rosemary doesn\u2019t *actually* think she\u2019s a swan.<\/p>\n<p>So, is there relevance to Anthony thinking he\u2019s a bee? Honey or otherwise? A connection, maybe, to Irish farmers who live in what appears to be the 50s but is actually modern-day? A metaphor, perhaps, for finding your own identity in a world of lookalikes? A reason, possibly, tying honey bees to a purple flower best known for being the main <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theecologist.org\/2020\/aug\/13\/endangered-large-blue-butterfly-reintroduced\">food source for the Large Blue Butterfly<\/a>? A thematic nod, hopefully, that explains why the film\u2019s final minutes see Anthony singing a song in a pub with the best seats occupied by all of the people who\u2019ve died throughout the film?<\/p>\n<p>There is not. And so the mystery of <em>Wild Mountain Thyme<\/em> lives on\u2026\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wild-mountain-thyme-ending-explained\/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=wild-mountain-thyme-ending-explained\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#The Ending of &#8216;Wild Mountain Thyme&#8217; Explained (and Shamed)&#8221; Ending Explained is a recurring series in which we explore the finales, secrets, and themes of interesting movies and shows, both new and old. This time, we head to Ireland to make sense of a poorly written rom-com from a filmmaker who really should know better\u2026&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/wild-mountain-thyme.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[11682,79509],"class_list":["post-136236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-ending-explained","tag-wild-mountain-thyme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}