'He's liberated.'
The film slowly builds to a key moment for the father-daughter pair, after Charlie spends most of the movie defending Ellie's sporadic outbursts and prickly, wounded disposition — particularly to his longtime caregiver and friend, Liz . Charlie maintains that Ellie, like most people, has an innate capacity for empathy, and regularly heralds one of her blunt, years-old school essays criticizing the classic novel. He see it as a signifier of her purity, honesty, and unbridled passion.
That scene, Fraser says, is key to understanding the film's conclusion, which brings Ellie and Charlie together for a genuine connection, as she reads the essay aloud. Again, Charlie attempts to rise up and walk toward her.
"It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet," Fraser says. "For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it.
As for whether Hunter feels Charlie is actually walking in the final shot, he says it's open for interpretation. "I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it," he says. "In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way."
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