Bugonia

This review may contain spoilers.

This is the second story in a week (see The Overstory) to dramatically tell me that humans are killing the planet and each other because they see only humans as valuable. And so,
I missed the classist divide in this movie (touched on by HootsMaguire and neditor). I don't deny that it's there, but that won't be what sticks with me.

I didn't see the conflict as happening between the elite and the poor, or the corporate perpetrator and the victim. I only saw the of humanity fighting itself, in selfish disintegration.

Bugonia is the ancient Greek practice/belief that bloodlessly killing an ox would cause a colony of bees to emerge from its corpse, thus restoring a beehive. I saw this movie as a critique of how people prefer simple (even if terrifying) solutions instead of confronting their actual, complex environment.

A thought I wrote down during the movie:

An individual's ideas were meant to go through more people before being accepted as truth. Human communication only works well when it's two-way, when people can question and challenge each other. Instant publishing is bad for human culture because it bypasses this process: it bypasses the filtering process of your human neighbors.

While Teddy thinks his mind is expanded by his galactic [conspiracy] theories, he is actually in denial, in dialogue with no one, listening to an echo chamber, unable to focus on any experience other than his own.

So, then, what of the ending reveal? Why would the story prove Teddy right?

The fact that some people will soften their opinion of Teddy in light of the ending is one of the problems with us that Lanthimos is trying to demonstrate. The fact of whether Michelle is or is not an alien is irrelevant: he is torturing another being. There is no justification for torturing another being, whether they're human or alien, whether it's "for the greater good" or not. Michelle speaks of the entire planet while and Teddy is only focused on himself (humanity). He ensures his own demise by constantly ignoring the world around him; he pushes himself through the door to death, seeing it as his salvation.