The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the ending tip toward one side of the thematic dilemma without entirely resolving it?

Your theme should take the form of an irresolvable dilemma, so you should give both sides equal weight for as long as possible until the climax. The trick is to come up with a finale that addresses the conflict and makes a concrete statement about it, without definitively declaring one side right and the other wrong. 

Each of the first three seasons of Lost has a powerful overarching theme:

• Season one: our future is dictated by our past versus our future is a blank slate 
• Season two: faith versus skepticism 
• Season three: strict, safe order (the Others) versus chaotic, unsafe freedom (the crash survivors) 

At the end of each season, the characters advocating one side of the debate are proven “right.”

• Season one: The characters find ways to move on from the past, and even sing “Redemption Song” together on a boat. 
• Season two: We find out Locke was right to have faith in the button, and Jack was wrong when he said it did nothing. 
• Season three: The chaotic makeshift community of the crash survivors proves to be more sustainable than the cultlike Others. 

But in each case, the victory is ironic and ambiguous. A statement is made about the dilemma, but it’s not permanently settled.

You have something to say, but you don’t have something definitive to say. You have a point, but your point is untidy. You’re leaving room open for uncertainty and ambiguity, because that multiplies the meaning.

Let’s return to the stories we looked at before. Each has an irreconcilable thematic dilemma, and five of them tip toward one side in the end, but not definitively:

• Casablanca: Patriotism is better than love, but it’s a painful decision. 
• Beloved: Sethe will never know whether enslavement was better than death for her daughter, but she warily accepts that self-forgiveness is better than self-accountability. 
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Justice is better than peace, but it comes with dark consequences. (Harry not only kills Quirrell, but he condemns Dumbledore’s friend Nicholas Flamel to death by destroying the stone.) 
• Iron Man: Yes, societal responsibility is ultimately somewhat more important than individual achievement, but Tony still wants to be a badass all the time, not a do-gooder. 
• An Education: Yes, living up to one’s responsibilities is somewhat better than a life of excitement, but we sense she doesn’t really regret her dalliance and still longs to be more sophisticated than her parents. 

But the other three have interesting variations:

• In Groundhog Day, one of the contrasting values in the thematic dilemma is clearly superior to the others. Phil concludes that acceptance is almost entirely better than ambition. 
• Silence of the Lambs ends with its moral dilemma still totally unsettled. Neither Clarice nor the audience can decide at the end whether it was worth it to work with one monster to stop another. 
• Sideways pits Jack’s boundless optimism versus Miles’s clear-eyed cynicism, but each man achieves his own goal by reverting to type at the end and fails to influence the other. Jack’s outrageous, optimistic lies pay off for him, and Miles’s cynical honesty pays off for him. The conclusion looks askance at both of their philosophies but refuses to privilege either one over the other. 

So this rule isn’t universal: You can resolve the dilemma definitively, tip to one side without resolving it, or leave it totally unresolved, but the middle option is the most common and usually the best bet. You have something to say, so say it, but you don’t want to take away from the fundamental power of the irreconcilable dilemma.

Rulebook Casefile: The Irresolvable Thematic Dilemma in Rushmore

When I was trying to identify Max’s false statement of philosophy in Rushmore, I settled on this exchange: “What are you going to do?” “The only thing I can do: try to pull some strings with the administration.” For this corrected statement of philosophy later, I chose “I’m just a barber’s son.” But what about the movie’s most prominent statement of philosophy?

Max’s obsession with Miss Cross begins when he’s reading a book on diving and he finds that she has jotted down a Cousteau quote in the margins: “When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.” Is that statement proven to be false or true?

This brings us to another rule: the ending should tip towards one side of the thematic dilemma without resolving it entirely. The central thematic dilemma in this movie is ambition vs. acceptance, and ultimately it tips towards acceptance, but that’s a hard choice.

Anti-ambition movies are few and far between. America worships ambition and our movies do the same. It’s hard not to root for Max’s wild schemes. It’s painful to watch him pour so much energy and optimism into things and then admit that his work is too ambitious and ultimately not very good. We want and expect to see those qualities rewarded.

And indeed the movie only barely tips towards acceptance. He accepts public school, and gives up on Miss Cross, and admits to everyone that his dad’s a barber, but he’s still making overly ambitious plays and collecting acolytes. So is that quote false or true? Max is not as extraordinary as he thought he was, but he’s certainly unique. How will his life change for better or for worse if he learns to keep that to himself, as least some of the time?

Most movies sell us the wish fulfillment message that there’s always something more waiting for us if we’re willing to be bigger and bolder. This is one of the few that raises the possibility that we may be happier and healthier if we learn to accept a life that’s smaller. It’s a painful realization, and that pain gives this movie its emotional punch.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. Respect for women and need for sex remain equally important, self-sufficiency is not as good as co-dependent love.
Alien	NO. this movie resolves its moral dilemma far more definitively than most movies: corporations are completely evil, quarantine is totally sacrosanct, self-preservation is entirely better than protecting new life-forms. Personal safety is entirely better than job loyalty. This is fine: horror movies are less ambiguous than most genres.
An Education	YES.  Responsibility is ultimately better than the glamour. (But given that everything turned out okay, you suspect that she doesn’t really have any regrets)
The Babadook	YES. Very much so.  Grief must be nurtured but controlled.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Solidarity is better than individualism, but Bart is still too discontent to be part of the community he created. Winning people over is better than standing up to them,  but both must be combined.  Anger is better than subservience, but must be controlled.
Blue Velvet	NO. Not really, we still can’t decide which is worse: naivete or cynicism. Jeffrey has decided to restore his life to a level of naive idealistic artifice, but it is merely a mask for his yawning chasm of dark cynicism, and we sense that he’s still utterly torn between these two unpleasant choices.
The Bourne Identity	NO. It tips fairly definitively: conscience is proven to be clearly better than duty. They could have attempted to make this more ambiguous by pointing to important missions that won’t get fulfilled due to Bourne’s crisis of conscience, but this is one case in which ambiguity would feel like the weaker choice: We see that the “vital CIA mission” Bourne was accomplishing was the execution of a deposed dictator and former CIA asset who was going to write a tell-all memoir. In this case, the need to show an irresolvable dilemma is trumped by the need to show the way the world works. We know that the CIA always claims that their dirty tricks are justified by their vital missions, and we also know that that always turns out to be bullshit. Indeed, the hapless reboot The Bourne Legacy does have a “but what about the vital missions?” scene, and it feels cheap and phony.
Bridesmaids	YES. It’s ultimately probably better to prioritize finding a romantic life partner over holding onto a long-distance friendship.
Casablanca	YES. it comes down strongly on the side of country, but love is clearly more appealing.
Chinatown	YES. It is better to honor the past than shoddily and unjustly build the future.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  Family loyalties are ultimately more important than work loyalties.  He chooses to go back to being a cop, a husband, and a father, but he still feels like a gangster inside and he can’t forgive himself for getting Lefty killed.
Do the Right Thing	YES. It’s still split pretty much evenly at the end, as evidenced by the conflicting quotes from Martin and Malcolm
The Farewell	YES. Happy lie is seemingly better, but we’re not sure of that.
The Fighter	YES. Family and independence must be kept in balance.
Frozen	YES. Family is better than independence, but both are important.
The Fugitive	YES. justice is better than law, but the solution is to forcibly bend the law back toward justice, rather than abandon law altogether.
Get Out	NO. it tips definitively: Vigilance is entirely great, cooperation is fatally naive.
Groundhog Day	NO. It’s pretty definitive. Phil concludes that acceptance of one’s circumstances is pretty much entirely better than personal ambition.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Justice is ultimately more important than loyalty to family, but it’s an impossible choice so the two must be reconciled. The other dilemma is split: They’re able to make peace with most, but have to kill the one who won’t make peace.
In a Lonely Place	YES. self protection is better than sacrificing for love, but it’s a painful choice.
Iron Man	YES. Societal responsibility is clearly better, but Individual achievement is still pretty cool.
Lady Bird	YES. She chooses ambition but realizes she also needs to accept that she should have been more loving towards her mom and her town.
Raising Arizona	YES. Settling for a meager legal life is better, though disappointing.
Rushmore	YES. Acceptance is better than ambition, but ambition still looks pretty great.
Selma	YES. Moderation works, this time, but we sense that DuVernay thinks other methods might have worked, too, and maybe we still have severe problems today because the movement was too moderate.
The Shining	NO. As in many horror movies, it tips overwhelmingly: Family is better than masculinity, mother is better than father, self-protection is better than loyalty to parents, moving on is better than making it work, trusting yourself is better than trusting your parents.
Sideways	YES. It looks askance at both of our heroes’ philosophies (Jack’s boundless optimism vs. Miles’s clear-eyed cynicism), but refuses to privilege either one over the other. Ironically, each man achieves his own goal by reverting to type at the end and fails to influence the other one: Jack’s outrageous positive-thinking lies pays off for him, and Miles’s cynical honesty pays off for him.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. It’s implied that it was probably worth it, (maybe it would have felt very different if we ended on Lecter killing an innocent family, for instance)
Star Wars	YES. Spirituality is better than technology, but even more dangerous in the wrong hands.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. dignity is somewhat better than success.

 

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Are one or more objects representing larger ideas that grow in meaning each time they’re exchanged throughout the story?

Independent filmmakers Ted Hope and James Schamus had a great list of “No-Budget Commandments” when they ran their own production company. One was “Invest meaning in everyday commonplace things—make an orange a totemic object John Ford would be proud of.” 

You can’t rely on character interactions to reveal all the emotions. When characters talk with each other, they have three different factors influencing them:

1. their current mood 
2. what they want the other characters to do 
3. how they feel about the other characters deep down 

But when you establish their relationship to an object, they can express their true emotions, unfiltered by other baggage.

In The Color of Money, Paul Newman trains a naïve young pool phenomenon played by Tom Cruise. Together with Cruise’s shady girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), they tool around the Northeast, hustling in dingy joints on their way to a big tournament in Atlantic City.

Sure enough, all of the characters have their own totem objects:

• First, Newman gives Cruise a fancy pool cue, on the condition he never use it because it would ruin the hustle. It becomes the object of all of Cruise’s frustrations as he tries to learn the business. 
• Mastrantonio wears a necklace she stole from Cruise’s mother. She chuckles as she explains to Newman, “He says his mom had one just like it.” As they compete to see who will get to exploit Cruise’s talent, Newman keeps an eye on the necklace to remind himself of whom he’s dealing with. 
• Newman doesn’t get his totem object until the end of the second act. It’s what Joseph Campbell would call “the special weapon he finds in the cave.” Newman finally admits he needs prescription glasses and uses them to compete with his former protégé. 

Count how many glances and comments each one of these objects earns, and how they change meaning over the course of the movie—when they get taken out, put away, or change hands. The cagey characters can’t say what they feel, but their interactions with these objects reveal all.

As Ted Hope points out, this is the sort of thing that creates easy value. Too many stories can be summed up as “people stand around in rooms and talk,” but a story starts to come alive when the audience knows certain objects are fraught with meaning.

The acclaimed BBC series Sherlock updates the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories to modern day, with lots of texting and blogging added in, but show runner Stephen Moffat knows the art of adaptation is about more than technology. Even if his version had been set in 1887, Moffat is smart enough to know that some things must be changed simply because of the transition from prose to television.

The first episode adapts the novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson: A Study in Scarlet. In the novel, our narrator, Watson, has survived a massacre in Afghanistan without injury, but he’s plagued by depression (which modern readers recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder, though it was still unnamed at the time). Because this is first-person prose, Watson can tell the reader about his depression in the text. As he recounts his adventure with Sherlock Holmes, he explains how it gradually helps him break free of his malaise. This is what first-person prose does best: It allows us to directly commune with the thoughts and feelings of a person as he is changed by an experience.

But television’s moving images are nowhere near as intimate as first-person prose. Sure, you can use a lot of narration or therapy scenes, but television is a visual medium, so the best way to convey a character’s psychology is through his physical interactions. But a condition like PTSD is problematic because no one can see it. How do you show it? You externalize it.

Moffat does this very simply: He manifests Watson’s PTSD as a psychosomatic limp. Watson walks with a cane, but as soon as he meets Holmes, Holmes instantly perceives he doesn’t really need it, which both offends and intrigues Watson. Sure enough, after Watson has gotten thoroughly engrossed in Holmes’s adventures, they find themselves caught up in a sudden chase. Only after the chase is over does Watson realize he’s left his crutch behind, literally and figuratively.

Let’s look at how nicely Iron Man showed the exchange of an object representing larger values: Tony’s heart device.

• He, too, is ambushed in Afghanistan, and his heart is injured when a bomb sold by his own company pierces the armor provided by the army. 
• Tony finds out the shrapnel is lodged in his chest, slowly making its way toward his heart, and can’t be removed. He can only hold it back with magnets. The man explaining this to Tony understands because he’s witnessed Tony’s bombs kill children in his village the same way. (Tony is being literally and figuratively stabbed in the heart.) 
• Tony and his new third-world friend devise a glowing device to keep his heart alive—and to fill a literal and figurative hole in his chest. 
• His friend dies and tells Tony not to waste what he’s given him: a heart. 
• Tony gets home and invents a sleeker device using his superior technology. He doesn’t trust doctors, so he gets his executive assistant, Pepper, to take out the old heart and put the new one in. She does so by reaching deep into his chest cavity and touching the heart. She asks about the old one, but he forcefully waves it away and says, “Destroy it. Incinerate it. I’ve been called many things, but never a sentimentalist.” Nevertheless, she takes it with her. 
• What do you get for the man who has everything? Pepper gives him back the device encased in glass, set in a metal ring that says “Proof that Tony Stark Has a Heart” (even if it is one he lost interest in). 
• Stane, Tony’s treacherous partner, builds his own armor, but he can’t figure out how to build the heart of it, in more ways than one. 
• So Stane ambushes Tony and rips the sleek new heart device out of his chest, leaving him to die. 
• Tony crawls down to his lab and busts the glass on Pepper’s gift at the last second. He gave his heart to the right person! 
• The final battle can be seen as Pepper’s heart versus Stane’s heart, or as the authentic, third-world heart versus the stolen, first-world heart. 

A lot of this sounds heavy-handed when I spell it out, but that’s the beauty of it. The movie doesn’t have to spell it out. We would reject these messages if we heard them, but we’re simply feeling them instead.

Think of all the dialogue this object’s exchange has replaced. Tony doesn’t have to discuss at length how he feels about his weapons killing innocents, his feelings for Pepper, her feelings for him, how it feels to be betrayed, etc. It allows Tony to remain the happy-go-lucky guy we want him to be, because we have this object to tell us a lot of the things he doesn’t want to say.

Rulebook Casefile: Exchange of an Object in The Shining

I’ve updated the Checklist road test for The Shining and you can check it out here. Now let’s look at one of the answers in more depth:

Let’s take a closer look at the scene we examined:

At the beginning of this sequence Jack is mildly surprised to find a huge party going on in the ballroom, and orders a drink from the bartender. The bartender serves him and then says that his money is no good there. Jack looks confused, but doesn’t this make sense? Isn’t he the caretaker, and should therefore drink for free? You can see a moment of confusion flit across Jack’s face: he’s not sure what role he’s playing in this little fantasy scenario. At first, Jack says, “I’m the kind of man who wants to know who’s buying his drinks,” The is the first time that he’s shown some interest in probing the ghosts for some time, but he quickly loses interest

This sets up the next beat, when Jack takes his drink and tries to join the party, only to have a waiter accidentally spill an Advocaat cocktail on him, and insist that they go to the bathroom to take care of it. In the bathroom, Jack realizes that waiter is actually Dexter Grady, the former winter caretaker who chopped up his wife and daughters with an ax. Jack asks Grady about his family, and Grady says yes, his family is there with him. So Jack asks, “Where are they now?” Grady responds, “Oh, they’re somewhere around, I’m not quite sure at this moment,” while dabbing at Jack’s jacket.

Suddenly, Jack grabs the towel away and says, “Mr. Grady, you were the caretaker here. You chopped them up to bits, and then you blew your brains out.” Grady only smiles mildly and says, “I’m sorry to differ with you sir, but you are the caretaker, you’ve always been the caretaker. I should know sir, I’ve always been here.” Someone, after all, has to remove a lot of stains in this place.

This is a classic example of a seemingly-innocuous exchange of an object that actually encapsulates the meaning of the scene. Jack thinks he’ll get a rise out of Grady by grabbing the towel away, but Grady only smiles: the towel has been passed on to his successor, in every sense.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	Just a little bit: the action figures, the box of porn, though I don’t know if they grow in meaning
Alien	NO. Not really. The “mother” computer “changes hands”, I guess, but it can’t actually be placed from hand to hand.
An Education	YES. The C.S. Lewis book, the map, the engagement ring, the letters, etc. The cello represents the burden of her education, David’s able to admire it and offer his car to it when he meets Jenny, making him seem less lecherous, etc.)
The Babadook	YES. The book, the crossbow, the suits, the photos, the phone, many others.
Blazing Saddles	NO. Not really.
Blue Velvet	YES. the ears, the strip of blue velvet, the party hat, etc.
The Bourne Identity	Sort of. The laser projector under his skin, the passports, the guns.
Bridesmaids	YES. Bill Cosby’s card, the baked goods, the shower gifts, the nice dress.
Casablanca	YES. the letters of transit, the song (if that counts)
Chinatown	YES. The reading glasses, the property ledger sheet, the watch, the obituary column.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  the greeting card, the surveillance photos, the boat, the tape recorder and the tapes, the oranges, the article about the boat.
Do the Right Thing	YES. The bat, the boom box, etc.
The Farewell	YES. When she chooses to join the lie, it’s in the form of an object she has to forge with difficulty.
The Fighter	YES. Charlene’s number on a bar napkin.  The “pride of Lowell” cake.
Frozen	NO. Interestingly, not really. There is no amulet reprsenting the powers, for instance, and no wilting flower representing the out-of-control cold.  The closest thing is Anna’s hair, but that doesn’t really count.
The Fugitive	YES. The ID changes hands from the janitor to Kimble to Gerard, who rips off Kimble’s face to find the janitor underneath, which subtly calls back to Kimble saying that when he wears a tux he’ll look like a waiter.
Get Out	YES. The teacup, the cell phone, the items in the rec room.
Groundhog Day	YES. Just slight: the pencil, the clock, the groundhog in one scene. The note he gives her about what Larry is going to say.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. The mom’s helmet, the prosthesis, etc.
In a Lonely Place	NO. not really. The book, maybe. Briefly with the grapefruit knife, and the phone.
Iron Man	YES. The exchange of the heart devices tell the whole story.
Lady Bird	YES. Maybe the cast?  The math grade book.  First Kyle’s reading “The People’s History of the United States” then she’s reading it.  Writing boys’ names on her wall then painting over it.
Raising Arizona	YES. The Dr. Spock book, the baby himself, the guns.
Rushmore	YES. Max’s medals, the swiss army knife, the fish, the bent bike, etc.
Selma	YES. Well, the tape is exchanged, but just once. Words are passed along: “We shall overcome”
The Shining	YES. the ball, the bat, etc.
Sideways	YES. The bottle of wine, the condoms, etc. Yes, the manuscript, the wine bottle, etc.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. The death’s head moth, the dog, the pen, the survey, the drawings, etc.
Star Wars	Somewhat. The plans of the Death Star, the lightsabers.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. his car, her car, her manuscript, the pool, the gun, the spotlights.

 

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Do many small details throughout subtly and/or ironically tie into the thematic dilemma?

As you write your first draft, you can’t worry very much about your theme. You have to simply assume that if the thematic question is linked to the dramatic question, and everything is sufficiently ironic, then meaning will accrue. However, when it’s time to tackle later drafts, you may find your theme is so indistinct that it’s barely detectable. 

But wait, you say, isn’t it good the theme is hard to spot? After all, you want your theme to resonate in the audience’s bones, not rattle around in their skulls, so shouldn’t you pitch it just below the frequency of human hearing? Yes, but like any good subaudible hum, it has to be persistent.

Once your story and characters are set, you can go back and second-guess every minor choice you made and change many of them to subtly reinforce your theme. When we write, we inevitably make a lot of choices at random, just to keep writing: What job does the hero’s spouse have? Where are the heroes when they get the big news? Which blunt object is used for the killing? But now it’s time to go back and make all of those choices more meaningful.

Enemy of the State is a fun little thriller about a labor lawyer who receives damning evidence about the National Security Agency from an old friend, then has to go on the run for his life. The movie has the “good versus good” theme of security versus privacy. This thematic dilemma is floated early on by a series of open questions posed by the hero’s wife, who works for the American Civil Liberties Union, but it’s also reinforced throughout in subtler ways.

• In the beginning, the lawyer is trying to win a labor law case by using a secret videotape against some gangsters. It’s not admissible in court, but the gangsters don’t want it exposed. 
• Who got the lawyer the tape? A young woman he once had an affair with. The affair is over, but now he must hide the fact from his wife that he’s still working with her. 
• Where is he when he accidentally gets the item the NSA wants? A lingerie store, shopping for his wife, but because of his past affair, he’s afraid she will assume he’s buying for someone else. 
• Why is he there? It’s Christmastime, which means they’re hiding presents from their son, and he’s hiding the fact he’s raided their gift stash, which complicates things later on. 

All these things subtly make the point that we all do things we don’t want exposed to scrutiny, even if they’re perfectly legal.

I suspect that none of these details was in the first draft (since not one is essential to the story), and once the plot had been worked out, writer David Marconi went back and replaced whatever random choices he’d originally made with new details that tied into the theme. I’ve heard this referred to as making a “theme tree,” or yoking every detail together into a vast system of root and branch that all feeds into an organic whole. Every choice is a chance to multiply the meaning.

In the surprisingly charming romantic comedy Date Night, every scene does more than one thing, on more than one level. The cleverly structured story allows every scene to be a plot, character, and theme scene, so the movie rarely has to stop to change gears or shift in tone. To save their lives, this couple must unravel a mystery, but the only way to do that is to adopt new identities that break them out of their ennui and force them to inadvertently reveal long-held secrets to each other.

It’s no coincidence that they end up confronting a procession of bizarre couples mixed up in the mystery, with each representing an extreme example of what they wish they were or what they’re afraid they’ll become. These are parallel characters who act as cautionary tales and/or potential role models. Such characters not only help a story’s tone by providing foreshadowing, but they also enrich a story’s theme by ensuring every scene shows aspects of the central dilemma.

Rulebook Casefile: A Small Thematic Detail in “Lady Bird” 

In the opening moments of Lady Bird, Lady Bird and her mother are wrapping up their college visit trip around California, and they finish listening to the audiobook of “The Grapes of Wrath”.

The book, of course, is about a road trip from hell: The Joads are victims of the dust bowl in Oklahoma, but handbills lure them to California, promising a life of ease (“You can just reach out and pick fruit off the trees.”) They arrive to find that California is not nurturing after all, but rather brutally inhospitable. The daughter’s newborn baby dies, but she finds a man starving to death and offers him the only succor he’ll find in California: the grown man suckles her breast milk.

Just enough of the audiobook plays in the movie that, if you’ve read the book, you’ll be reminded of that ending, but if you haven’t you wouldn’t know what was going on. Any meaning the audience gets from that detail is dependent on the knowledge of the book we bring with us. But if you do know the book, the thematic meaning is rich.

Lady Bird is with her own un-nurturing mother, roaming California backroads looking for a place that will take them in, but she lacks high enough grades to impress them (She ain’t got the do-re-mi) and she concludes over the course of her road trip that California is not a state where she’ll feel nurtured. She wants to live through something. She is rejecting the breast violently when she jumps out of the car.

The main role the audiobook plays in the film is just to indicate that they’ve been at peace for 21 hours of driving, enjoying something smart together, but tensions are just waiting to explode as soon as the pacifying agent is turned off. But Gerwig had a choice to make: Which book? Writing involves dozens of such choices (and directing involves hundreds of such choices), and each is a chance to pack the story with more meaning, even if it will only be meaningful for a subset of your audience. Make meaningful choices every time you get the opportunity.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. The action figures still in the boxes represent virginity, the bike represents immaturity, etc.
Alien	YES. every little decision on the ship speaks to the larger dilemma.  The metal-organic design of the ship on the planet and the alien itself speak to the melding of human and industrial consciousness.  Eggs are a recurring theme.  They try to call “Antarctica traffic control”: it’s a cold future.
An Education	YES. They’re reading Jane Eyre (in which Rochester is secretly married), playing Elgar music (who’s anti-Semitic), etc.
The Babadook	YES. Her resistance to celebrate her son’s birthday on the day, the neighbor accepts her own Parkinson’s, etc.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Playing chess (black vs. white).  The fact that Waco first sees him upside down, etc.
Blue Velvet	YES. everybody is eavesdropping on each other in different ways.
The Bourne Identity	YES. Marie’s opening scene is about being denied an ID, etc.
Bridesmaids	YES. Each woman’s problems speaks to each of the others.
Casablanca	YES. the song, the Vichy water, etc.
Chinatown	YES. Very much so: Water references and imagery are everywhere, as are references to eyes.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  Lions are a great running metaphor.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Raheem’s speech, Mother Sister’s advice, the interactions with the Koreans, etc.
The Farewell	YES. There are dozens of little lies that both Nai Nai and Billi tell that are counterpointed with the big lie that the other family members are telling Nai Nai.
The Fighter	YES. All of the talk about fighting styles parallels what’s going on out of the ring: “He takes a lot of punishment, I don’t know why he does it, he stays on the inside, I fight on the outside.” Etc.
Frozen	YES. There are lots of different types of families, including the merchant’s loving gay family, and Hans’s toxic relationship with his brothers. These are contrasted with orphan Kristoff and created-from-nothing Olaf.
The Fugitive	YES. law vs. justice is everywhere (the drug dealer gets off by turning in Kimble, etc.) as does public vs. private (The one-armed man turns out to be an ex-cop who lost his arm in the line of duty and now works private security, going from public servant to private servant The drug trial which was behind everything is supposedly a “public-private” partnership but the private has corrupted it.
Get Out	YES. Oh dear lord yes, as Peele makes clear in his DVD commentary.  Almost every thing we see or hear speaks to theme.
Groundhog Day	YES. The lyrics of “I Got You Babe”, the fact that Ned sells life insurance, the meaning of Groundhog Day itself, etc.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. He must make peace with each dragon, with Astrid, with his dad, etc…
In a Lonely Place	YES. the details of the book, etc.
Iron Man	YES. Relationship with reporter ties his treatment of the third world to his treatment of women.
Lady Bird	YES. Listening to the end “The Grapes of Wrath” at the beginning (in which California is un-nurturing, but a character is saved by breast-feeding.)  9/11 posters symbolize the danger of New York City.
Raising Arizona	YES. Very much so: when the brothers break out of jail, it looks like a birth, Smalls has baby shoes on his bike.  Ed sings song to baby about dad going to prison.
Rushmore	YES. Max’s plays, etc.
Selma	YES. Every character has to make a moderate vs. immoderate choice at some point.
The Shining	YES. See the documentary “Room 237” for many examples.
Sideways	YES. Facts about wines mirror Miles’ predicament (needing to be nurtured and protected, for instance), the quote from “A Separate Peace” at the end resonates, he prefers the dark wedding cake,  etc.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Moths representing transformation, etc.
Star Wars	Somewhat. Part of the appeal of the movie is that it’s filled with such utterly strange and seemingly random details that don’t really “made a point” but just made this feel like an endlessly strange and fascinating world, so it’s a plus that the details don’t all back up the theme.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. the fact that her screenplay is about Salome, who got John the Baptist’s head on a plate by doing the dance of the seven veils (note that Norma drops her veil on the floor while dancing with Joe.)  The fact that Joe and Betty pitch woo on a phony back lot.  His watch chain catches on the doorknob as he leaves, holding him back.