1. What is the likely reason that Milja chose to poison her mother rather than the MC? Was it for the survival of her baby, herself or just her blosomming love for the MC?

2. Do you guys think that Milja did not abort the baby because she cared about it or other reason?

3. What do you guys think about the MC sacrifice at the end? Seems inconsistence to me cause what he did with her brothe y’know

Let’s discuss!

Great comment. That is all. That is the comment. “Great comment”.

I loved how the forced intimacy played out, when Milja shaved off the wildlings beard while he was clinging on to his shotgun for comfort. Such a silly level of theatricality, and yet still conveying very real emotions, and even believable in the movies own little setting. This was the moment where the movie was walking very close to the edge of the stage for me, and almost fell off, but ended up making it look like an incredible stunt instead.

Stealing the shotgun shells was the dick move where the movie really showed me what kind of depressing theater of cruelty this was gonna be – I must admit, seeing that pretty Irish forest I had hoped for sometime more upbeat, what a dream life they had for 3½ minutes there – but of course the only thing artists ever have to say about life is it sucks…

At first, I was confused about whenever the whole assault was something they had planned – why did they steal those shells? But I just came to the conclusion they just wanted to take control away from the survivalist. Maybe even try to take him out of the picture? The older woman sure seems to hold that shovel a little tight… I didn’t enjoy the whole “will they kill him subplot here, but I did like the control loss leading to his emasculating: Sitting there with no beard, wounded and hurt, the women carrying the gun and tending to his crops. Talking about whenever or not they have the capacity to keep feeding the weak man – lying there broken – a lovely refreshing switch on the survival trope of throwing out the weak.

There is definitely something interesting going on between the story of the man being a beast. Kathryne knows and fears the male beast, and tries to coerce it and control it, and ultimately kill it. But Mijla finds another way, a sentimental way, with love and compassion, and she manages to tame the beast instead, and make it work for her.

I think there something very delibert with The Survivalist not having a name – the only man who gets a name – Augustus – named the same as the first roman emperor who is know for bringing peace and prosperity back to Rome – was killed dirty by The Survivalist, his own brother, before the events of the movie. The empires of men have fallen, and men are now only beasts – Women are the only ones worthy of names in this world.

I mean, oh course is not that simple, we are shown a world larger than this, with male characters that probably have names. But in the script, we only ever get to know the names of two living women and one dead man, and I think that says a little about this movies world.

I’ve heard many anthropologist and evolutionary thinkers argue that in pre-civilization anarchistic society, the primary pillar and bearers of culture, language, jokes, basic education were women, simply out of necessity. They are the ones that are there with the children of the next generation, where as daddy is probably long off, try to get down with a new lady or getting into at fight with a deadly animal. Anyways – a bit of a tangent here – but I think this movie have a little bit of that feel to it… The men are just beast, the women are the furture.

That’s also a bit of the feel I get from the last scene – that girl with 2 half arms, she still have a baby. That 2 mounts and 4 really crappy arms, but they’re on the inside, because they are the furture. As opposed to mister “Look at my cool hairstyle and paranoid shotgun wielding”

Honestly, he did mange to open up a bit in the end, and he had som good in him, but the best thing that could ever happen to him, was probably still being turned to shishkebab.

I think I really liked it. I’m a sucker for forest living, so enjoyed the intense cinamatopgraphy and beeing a place I wanted to be, evne if the character was jumpy, I was very relaxed.

Overall – Great Flick – I enjoyed it. Could have played its cards a little closer to the chest maybe, no reason to make it so easy that even the old greybear to peek and get the
thinc he can get it… but maybe I just missed the whole point and I am just talking nonsense, and then we back to the good old days!

But, the true survivalist was Milja, learning the craft at her mother’s knee, so to speak. When she said the Survivalist was useful she wasn’t being sentimental as her mother claimed. Once she realized she was pregnant and couldn’t get rid of her dangerous condition she bet on the Survivalist for her continued survival. Her mother had threatened his death many times, so she had to go.

The pictures that the Survivalist burned, including the woman’s picture, were taken from the bear trap intruder. The Survivalist was not only lonely, he was horny. Therefore ripe for the picking by two female survivalists. They knew they had the right coin for this trade.

The females were probably looking for the compound before stumbling across his truck patch. Everyone would have been aware of the rumors of a compound like that and how to approach it. Otherwise, I didn’t get any sense that Milja or Kathryn had been part of the compound. If they had been there would have been no reason to leave on a “quest”. Women don’t do that when there is a safer place to stay. Seriously, we don’t. If they had been sent anywhere on a quest it would have been with a lot better preparation and more weapons than they had. They were just random survivors doing a fairly good job when they stumbled upon the little farm in the woods. And the rest was an interesting tale of the cunning and ingenuity of humans when it comes to survival. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in a nutsell. I sensed absolutely no hatred. It was bare bones survival with no questions asked. I enjoyed it!

Anyway, two things that I came away with:

*** 1 ***

There seems to me to be a lot of symbolism/references to the first modern Holocaust throughout the film and I’m surprised it’s not discussed more.

For me it was most striking when Milja opens the only book we see in the film, which appears to bear witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust with it’s passage “witness man’s inhumanity to man” alongside shockingly candid photos of WW2 skeletal concentration or death camp victims discarded in shallow open graves.

This theme seems to me to reverberate later on, through the lingering scene where Kathryn’s emaciated corpse is dragged and buried unceremoniously in her own shallow grave in the dirt.

The ‘camp’ at the end also had a striking resemblance to the photos widely seen of concentration/death camps from WW2. I’m sure this must have been intentional.

The horrific experience of the victims of these camps and yet their drive to somehow still survive feels very relevant to the experience of the inhabitants of the film’s post-apocalyptic world.

*** 2 ***

I don’t think that “The Survivalist” refers to any person in particular, but rather the more abstract nature of human survival and the meaning of life itself… and as such, all of us.

All three main characters survive in most basic and important sense of existence… i.e. as human beings we have only one biological purpose and that is to keep our DNA (or genetic makeup if you like) continuing (or “surviving”?).

Kathryn “survives” through Milja (her daughter), the leading man “survives” through his unborn child (still alive at the ed of the film) and of course Milja “survives” (still alive at the end of the film).

This is a fundamental truth of all of human existence and something not only relevant to the post-apolcalyptic world of the film, or the horrific world of the Holocaust, but also to the world we live in right now.

***

Anyway, maybe that’s all total BS, but it’s rare that I come away thinking about a film like this and I’d be interested to hear any further thoughts people might have.

Cheers!