chazz46-2 Review of Everybody Knows

Everybody Knows (2018)

Neither Integrity nor immorality can escape Retribution

[7/10 · 23 February 2019]

Chazz46 SPOILER ALERT The issue of cultural differences and family behavior, outgoing or stifled, should not be a major consideration when one evaluates Farhadi's Everybody Knows. In this movie, we saw extreme family closeness, hugging, kissing, and an extreme acceptance of all members of the family in this Spanish milieu . Instead, there could have been a stoical and colder family gathering in a different culture, say in Finland. This just gave the movie its basic tone in which to return to periodically. However, as the movie progresses, we get bits and pieces of family history that are hardly evident when the family is together for the wedding and in their basic convivial mode. Getting the "old man" out of town after his drunken bar scene where he complains how his land was stolen finally included some truth.....that he gambled some of it away. Finding out that Paco was the son of the family's maid gave insight as to the pressures put on Laura to dump Paco eventually. I gather the lengthy time this movie ran was due to the many scenes where uncomfortable facts had to be introduced outside of the realm of the wedding party festivities and family interactions which set things back to the original tone. For example, Laura tells Paco that her kidnapped daughter was actually his daughter and not her husband's. Followup scenes at family gatherings, of course, never demonstrated the slightest hint of this past impropriety. Seems like some troublemaker in most families exists everywhere to cause complications by bringing it up in one way or another. Many movies fail to maintain credibility when they fail to answer such questions posed in this movie.....like why did everyone in town know (or at least think) Paco was the father of Laura's first child and he did not have a clue? There is no doubt that he would have heard the story from one of his friends years earlier. And we eventually find out that Bea, Paco's wife, was hell bent to avoid ever becoming a mother which explained their childless marriage. I believe these telling events, all share the universal theme of tragedy and the never ending tangled web of human interactions. This movie has to raise the question of how depraved humanity can become to lower itself to kidnap a FAMILY member, no matter how distant in the family relationship..........especially coming from a family that demonstrates the stereotypical closeness that this one does. Although this predicament has little verisimilitude, the marital breakup of Paco and Bea seems to be more universal. In this predicament, Paco has demonstrated moral integrity to save the life of his recently divulged only daughter (who will not be living with him at any rate) and accepting his wife's condemnation of his choice by leaving him. Because of the foibles of human character, I have to believe that Paco had misgivings about his wife's refusal to have children and that their breakup was something he could handle. Nevertheless, his voluntary loss of his assets may have atoned for any guilt he may have had over buying the vineyard from the family at firesale pricing, he was now alone and with nothing to show for everything he had done, including fathering the child. Sounds a bit like a Polansky theme where one has to question the mistakes one makes in life (usually sexual) and then ultimately pay the piper with tragic consequences.