Cross, fire, sky and other Easter eggs of the thriller Meander (2020). Plot Analysis & Meaning Of The Film, Explanation Of The Ending
Country: France
Genre: Fantasy, thriller, horror
Year of production: 2019
Directed by: Mathieu Turi
Actors: Gaia Weiss, Peter Frantzen, Roman Lieber, Frederic Franchiti
Meander (originally titled Méandre) is a new thriller from young director Mathieu Turi. Despite the fact that the French are not leaders in the field of action-packed thrillers, the picture turned out to be quite atmospheric. The director and screenwriter tried to endow his project with some secret meaning and philosophical overtones. If the meaning of the film Meander remained incomprehensible to you, let’s try to figure it out together.
What is the movie about
Let’s start our analysis with the main thing – the plot of the movie Meander. The thriller is low-budget, so the events unfold in almost one location. This is an intricate tunnel, a real paradise for claustrophobes. The director very accurately managed to recreate the oppressive atmosphere of a closed space.
Gaia Weiss starring as Lisa. Frame from the film.
The general idea is as follows. Lisa is a waitress who has recently experienced a serious mental trauma. Her little daughter died. It is difficult for the girl to come to terms with this loss, so one day after work she just lies down in the middle of a deserted highway, probably in the hope that a truck will run over her and she will finally be able to meet her girl.
However, only a large black jeep stops nearby. The driver offers to give the girl a lift to the city. She agrees and gets into the car with a stranger. The driver introduces himself as Adam and has a casual conversation with his passenger. There is a radio in the car, which informs about the search for a maniac suspected of several murders of girls. The police reports one of the signs of the criminal – a tattoo in the form of a cross on his arm. Lisa notices this tattoo on a stranger, the driver slams on the brakes, the girl hits her head on the dashboard, and she is consumed by darkness.
Our heroine comes to herself already in a strange place. She is wearing an unusual costume, on her arm there is a kind of device that performs the function of a timer and a flashlight. Not having time to adapt in a room closed on all sides, the girl sees an opened door, behind which a labyrinth begins. She crawls into it, after which the door closes behind her. Now you can only move forward.
At the same time, you can only move here by crawling, overcoming sections of the path in a strictly defined time. When the timer goes to zero, a section of the labyrinth is blocked and burned out in flames. As she progresses through the labyrinth, Lisa stumbles upon the bodies of those who were already here, but they were not lucky enough to get out alive.
At one of the sites, she meets a man. The stranger is very similar to Adam, to whom she got into the car. The timer finishes counting down, and the only place in the wall of the tunnel opens up where you can hide after waiting out the flames. Lisa and Adam rush to this saving island, in a fleeting fight, the girl manages to leave her opponent behind glass, which cuts off the maniac’s hand. The killer is consumed by flames.
Peter Franzen played the role of Adam. Frame from the film.
Having overcome all obstacles, the heroine suddenly finds herself in the same room where she started her journey. She wants nothing more, and even pushes away the strange skull that is trying to cure her. Suddenly, Lisa notices symbols in the form of crosses on the wall, exactly the same as on Adam’s severed hand. She understands that this is a clue – a map with turns. With new strength, the heroine begins to re-pass the labyrinth.
However, she is now being pursued by a charred monster that was once Adam. On the way, the heroine meets her dead daughter. However, the girl leads her into another corridor of the labyrinth. Lisa makes a difficult decision, leaves the girl and moves towards the exit. She manages to get to the exit from the labyrinth, but the sky she longed for is behind glass. The way back is cut off, and there is no hope of salvation.
However, an unknown force lifts Lisa up. She finds herself in a rather picturesque place, next to her daughter. The girl tells her mother that she also died, and now they can be together.
Frame from the film.
This is the unexpected ending of the film Meander. Is there a hidden meaning here? You will be surprised, but there really is a sense in this chaotic interweaving of events, and the explanation of the plot here is quite simple.
Ending explanation
Unlike many movies with an open ending, Meander ending is pretty straightforward. There can be only one interpretation here – the main character died. It was the only way she could meet her daughter. However, the girl herself also quite unequivocally stated that now they are no longer alive.
However, the content of the film simply shines through with various fantastic elements. A labyrinth filled with various obstacles, a monster chasing Lisa, once a maniac Adam, a skull that heals the heroine. Here the main question is, was it really? You can find a clue if you pay attention to the details that the director included in the content of the film.
It is these Easter eggs that explain not only the plot, but also the ending of this intricate story. So, let’s try to find the meaning of the ending of the film Meander.
The meaning of the film
To find an explanation for the ending, you need to close your eyes to all this alien-fantastic tinsel. At first glance, the plot of the film is banal. Some visitors from distant corners of the galaxy kidnapped the heroine and placed her in a labyrinth. The fact that such a structure was built by some cunning maniac, to whom Lisa got into the car, can be discarded. Firstly, Adam himself turns out to be a hostage of the labyrinth, and secondly, the technologies shown here are clearly unearthly.
However, a logical question arises here – why? What exactly did those aliens achieve by putting people in a maze. The answer is simple – nothing! This is just a pointless passage of a looped route with a single exit. At the same time, participants are treated, niches are thrown up where you can hide and wait out the flames. Therefore, in my opinion, maniacs and aliens can be excluded.
What’s left? And here is the most interesting. There are not so many characters in this story, so the labyrinth is the work of Lisa. More precisely, her subconscious.
Let’s go through the plot points that reveal the meaning of the film.
Start
Here we first see Lisa, who is lying on the road. She is very worried about the death of her daughter, because, apparently, the girl fell out the window because her mother left her unattended. Here she meets with Adam, who turns out to be a maniac. Further darkness and a labyrinth. However, already in the labyrinth, Lisa, with the help of the assistant doctor’s skull, remembers how she fought with Adam. She even remembers the light from heaven. However, apparently, the girl just became another victim of the killer, and that light in the sky is a reference to the luminous corridor, which is remembered by many people who survived clinical death.
Frame from the film.
Adam
Why didn’t he die in the fire? Because the consciousness of the main character did not allow this. For her, Adam is the embodiment of evil, which is why the scorched monster is chasing her in the labyrinth.
Other dead
Lisa heard about Adam’s victims on the radio. It was these victims that her imagination completed, moving into the labyrinth of the subconscious.
Hints
By a fatal coincidence, the clues that helped the girl find the right path are very similar to the tattoo of her killer.
Daughter
Lisa blames herself for her death, so she cannot let go of her daughter’s soul, fearing that, having come to terms with her death, she will lose her forever. The labyrinth is looped, and Lisa passes it, only turning away from her daughter. This is the key moment of the entire film. After all, the heroine finds herself in a kind of trap: having died, she loses the girl and her memories of her. However, there is a way out. Having let go of the child’s soul and purifying her own, Lisa enters Paradise.
Frame from the film.
From these moments, the explanation of the end of the film Meander is formed. All encroachments in a confined space can be attributed to the nooks and crannies of the memory of the main character. She dies at the hands of Adam, and these images flash in her mind. However, she can’t just leave. She must first let go of her daughter’s soul. And she does it by choosing a different path. Here, falling knives are very appropriate, which seem to cut off the entire earthly existence of the main character. You can also pay attention to the white room, where Lisa sees frames from her life. After all, there is an opinion that before the death of a person, his whole life flashes before his eyes.
Having released her daughter, Lisa leaves the labyrinth of her memory and moves to freedom. This place can be called paradise. Yes, there are no angels and other paradisal attributes here. But there is a daughter with whom the main character can now always be together.
