The Chalk Line, Ending Explained

Publicado el por Carlos Mario Castro

The Chalk Line – one of the 2022 Halloween Season additions to Netflix’ library – is surprisingly a very refreshing film. Mixing terror and some psychological suspense in a very unexplored way for today’s standards, it truly keeps the viewer on the edge. Now if you really want to explore what was behind all the crimes that are knitted in this movie, don’t worry, we we’ll explain this movie and its ending in really good detail starting right now.

What is Paula injecting herself in the bathroom? Why doesn’t she want Simón to know?

Paula (Elena Anaya) injects herself with a hormonal treatment to be able to get pregnant. Paula does not want Simón (Pablo Molinero) to know that she is following this treatment, because for years they both underwent strong rounds of treatment to be able to conceive a child together, however, the stress and anxiety for the treatment to work caused strong conflicts in the couple, who finally decided to take a break before deciding whether or not they would try again.

Paula did not want to wait for the deadline to decide, and she took the risk of continuing with the treatment on her own, hiding from Simón, so as not to generate an additional conflict for not meeting the deadline.

Who are Clara’s parents? Did Eduardo kidnap her?

The plot of the film begins when Paula and her husband Simón find Clara (Eva Tennear). Clara is the daughter of Ingrid Morand and Eduardo Olivares (Carlos Santos), the neighbor and friend of Paula and Simón. And no, Eduardo did not kidnap Clara. Eduardo kidnapped Clara’s mother, Ingrid.

Who is Ingrid Morand?

Ingrid Morand was a teenager who spent vacations with her parents Klara and Christian Morand in Spain, in June 2011. There, in an oversight of her parents, she was kidnapped by Eduardo Olivares, who transported her to the outskirts of Madrid, where he not only kept her captive , but subjected her to cruel torture, sexual abuse, hunger and thirst. What Eduardo did not count on was that Ingrid was going to get pregnant, Eduardo allowed Ingrid to have her daughter, and to accompany her, not out of pity for her, but as one more way to control her.

However, shortly before the events with which the film begins, Ingrid dies in Eduardo’s basement, as a result of the terrible mistreatment to which he subjected her, and to a failure of her organs, specifically her kidneys. Clara remained alone in the basement.

Where did Eduardo leave Ingrid’s corpse?

Eduardo left Ingrid’s body in Bayonne, in France, so he had to have crossed the border with the body. Probably to prevent the local police from intervening, and to keep himself safe.

What was Eduardo doing in the basement?

With Ingrid, we already know that Eduardo subjected her to cruel treatment, including torture and sexual abuse. As for Clara, it is evident that she had a different approach. Basically, with Clara, he maintained a strict relationship of control, which when it failed, triggered strong physical punishment. According to the medical opinion, Clara indeed has serious physical problems, but she was not sexually abused.

Why can’t Clara get out of the chalk? How was she able to run away from the house?

Burrhus Frederick Skinner carried out experiments that proved that humans can also be operantly conditioned, in the same way that dogs sit or stand if they are given a kibble, and hear a whistle, or a code word. Eduardo surely did experiments to reach those results with Clara. The conditioning was simple, if she stayed inside the chalk she received rewards, if she got out,she suffered monstrous punishments.

Now, Eduardo knew very well how to get her out from the chalk without driving her mad, he would simply cover her eyes, thus mantaining the conditioning and taking her out without any problems. Paula herself did something similar when he took her to her house, using a blanket so she wouldn’t see.

Why did Clara have kidney problems?

As happened with her mother, the subjection to cruel treatment (blows, burns, and mechanical suffocation) takes the body to a critical limit that triggers a drop in blood pressure, which eventually triggers organ failure, where kidneys are the first to fail.

In Clara’s case, being so young and being exposed to Eduardo’s torture for so long, her body began to develop those problems. However, apparently, Clara’s problems were not irreversible, because shortly after she stayed with Paula and Simón, she began to improve remarkably.

Why did Eduardo leave Clara on the highway?

Eduardo left Clara on the highway because Clara was showing the same signs of kidney failure that took the life of her mother, Ingrid. Eduardo, knowing how much control he had over Clara, considered it convenient for the girl to receive medical help, without him being suspicious, so he organized everything about so someone would find her on the road. Surely Eduardo knew that Paula and Simón were crossing that point at that time and he tried to get someone he knew to find her to keep informed of her and eventually get the girl back. For her peace of mind, not only did she obtain information about Clara’s whereabouts, but Paula and Simón took her to live with him.

Did Maite betray Eduardo? Why didn’t she give him up when he was in the basement?

Maité betrayed Eduardo because basically it was the only way to get rid of his control and mistreatment, but even more so to protect her own children from their father’s cruelty. Now, the reason why Maite simply did not allow Eduardo to stay in the basement until the police arrived is that there had to be sufficient proof, through Eduardo, that he committed the crimes, and that the prosecution would be overwhelming.

What happened to Paula and Clara at the end?

At the end of the film we see that after Clara and Paula were rescued, Clara was taken with her grandmother Klara to Hamburg, Germany, where she was finally able to lead a normal life, physically healed and now clearly far from the trauma of her birth, and especially the chalk. Paula, despite having received a horrible wound to her collarbone, did not have fatal consequences to the point that she was finally able to get pregnant and start a new life in Madrid together with Simón.

Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.

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I Came By ^ Ending Explained

Publicado el por Carlos Mario Castro

What would you do if the most important people in your life, your mom, your best friend, your son, one day just simply disappear? What would you do? Would you let the authorities handle it? Or would you go by yourself after all the clues until you find the truth?

British-Iranian director Babak Anvari uses these questions and all their possible answers to shape his Netflix thriller I Came By. So, if in the midst of the kidnappings, the USB flash drives, the raids, and the messages of racism and discrimination you have been left with doubts or questions about this film, don’t worry. Now, and without further ado, we begin the Analysis and Explanation of this movie, I Came By.

1 ^Who is the murderer in I Came By?

If there is something that the film makes clear, it is who the murderer is. The murderer is nothing more and nothing less than the former British Judge Sir Hector Blake (Hugh Bonneville), who is known as Saint Hector, for being a champion of minority causes, such as immigrants, the LGTBI population, women , Muslims and even people with disabilities.

The point is that Sir Hector Blake has a dark secret – in the basement of his residence on Pitt Street, he keeps a prisoner in subhuman conditions. Now, two questions arise. Why does a man of the stature of Sir Hector Blake keep a prisoner in his house? And better yet, who is Sir Hector Blake’s prisoner?

2 ^ Why did Sir Hector Blake keep a prisoner in his house?

As Blake told Omid (Yazdan Qafouri), the ex-Judge harbors uncontrollable bitterness and resentment against Ravi. But who is Ravi? Ravi was his father’s Indo-Parsee lover. If we are to believe the Judge, who in view of the circumstances we can say was quite trustworthy, Blake’s father accepted Ravi into his home, initially to help the young man have a livelihood, and also to help in the domestic chores.

The thing is that over time, Blake’s father, the same one we see in the gigantic painting in the living room, began a romantic-sexual relationship with the young man, and not only that, he decided to make it visible to his wife and son, to the point that Ravi was sleeping in the same bed with him, while his wife was exiled to another bedroom. Of course, Blake didn’t go public with the matter, as he had a reputation to uphold, but he did force his family to accept the fact, and from what we know, Blake Sr. was quite violent, so we can assume coercion as well. included physical violence.

Unable to bear the humiliation that her husband was a closeted gay, living in concubinage with another man, inside her own house, and in front of her own son, Blake’s mother cut her wrists, and Hector himself witnessed the event. It is this rage that drives him to use his house to hold hostages.

3 ^ The prisoner Hector Blake keeps in his basement is Ravi?

No, the prisoner Sir Hector Blake keeps in his cellar is not Ravi. First of all, Ravi, if he were still alive, should be about the same age as Blake and the prisoner he’s keeping there is much younger, and likewise, Blake wouldn’t be hunting down other guys to put in his basement like he told Omid.

The question that now arises is, did Sir Hector Blake murder Ravi? Here the answer is probably yes. Ravi had to outlive Blake Senior, and it is highly unlikely that Blake Sr. legally left anything to his Parsi lover. So once Blake Sr. died, it would not be illogical to think that Hector kidnapped Ravi and made him his first prisoner, keeping him in his basement in subhuman conditions. And the photos Toby found in Blake’s basement prove it. Now, in these conditions Ravi could not have survived long and since Hector continued to feel this monstrous resentment, he decided to hunt down young men with the same profile as Ravi: immigrants that no one would miss, like Omid.

And since these subjects, due to starvation, the terrible sanitary conditions and confinement do not last long, every so often they have to go out and look for replacements.

4 ^ How did Toby and Jay end up in all of this?

Toby (George MacKay, 1917) and Jay (Parcelle Ascott) had been raised practically like brothers by Liz (Kelly Macdonald). Jay had been kicked out of his house, and Toby as his friend offered him his house. Jay and Toby decided to create the movement I Came By with which they marked rich, influential people, who had a discourse of social justice, and in favor of the marginalized, but who in reality lived as powerful tycoons whom they he cared little or nothing about the people in his speeches.

And that’s where former Crown Judge Sir Hector Blake comes in. At the beginning of the film, Toby and Jay recognize that the man is a hypocrite, who despite his speeches, actually lives as the best of the British nobility, in Pitt Street. Pitt Street is a street in the exclusive section of Kensington, halfway between Holland Park and Kensington Palace. Jay, who worked in network installations, identified Blake and passed the modem number to Toby in order to break into the house together, but Jay backed down when he learned that his girlfriend Naz was pregnant.

Toby raided the house, and found the prisoner in the basement.

5 ^ Did Blake kill Toby and Liz? How many people did he kill?

Since the beginning of the film, Sir Hector Blake murders a total of 3 people, although the murders always occur off camera.

Toby Nealey: He was killed after anonymously reporting to the police that Blake had a prisoner in his basement. When after the investigation, the policemen did not search thoroughly, and left the house, Toby decided to enter on his own and rescue the prisoner. Everything was going well until Blake appeared at the house, and when Toby was ready to attack him, he slipped on the prisoner’s urine and Blake reduced him to later kill him, cut him up, cremate him and put his ashes in the toilet.

Omid: Omid was to be the replacement for the prisoner Blake was keeping in his basement. He had the profile: an immigrant, with legal problems, with no one in the country who cared about him. The plan was simple, Blake was going to alter Omid’s drink to drug him, subdue him and put him in his house. However, Omid managed to escape, with the help of Liz – who was following the judge. Why did Omid fall back into Sir Blake’s hands? Omid believed that what Blake wanted was just sex, so when the judge appeared again, after the incident, and told him that he could help him with his asylum application, he assumed that the worst that could happen was that he ended up sleeping with him. He didn’t expect that he was going to kill him.

Liz Nealey : Looking for her son, Liz entered the judge’s house, using the key hidden outside her house, and was found there by the ex-Judge, and after cremating Omid, he murdered her.

6 ^ Why did Jay decide to finally face Sir Hector Blake?

Jay’s great dilemma was to protect his family, his girlfriend Naz and their son, or to do the right thing, to honor the memory, first of Toby and then of Liz. But then he realized that by trying to hide from his past self, he was destroying his life and his family. Naz knew something was bothering him and it bothered her that Jay didn’t tell her, and she wasn’t about to start a family with him after that. Partly because of that, and partly because Naz could be in danger near such a subject, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Finally, after subduing Blake and tying him up, and paying tribute to his friend and his mother with I Came By graffiti , he released the prisoner and called the police. Finally, he had done the right thing and now he could live his way, free from past guilt.

7 ^ Did Jay save Toby and Liz?

No, Toby and Liz were murdered by Sir Hector Blake, what Jay managed to do was connect the evidence of their murders to the former Judge and make him pay for all his crimes.

8 ^ What is the message of the film?

The message of the film is clear: no matter how well you hide what you do, or how good is the mask you wear, there will always, always be someone who will find out your secrets one way or another, and you will be forced to confront them. Hector Blake and Jay had to deal with this in different ways, Blake having his perfect life consumed by his murders, and Jay having to sacrifice his physical integrity to do the right thing after the death of his friend and the woman he was like. his mother.

I would also say that it is a warning to all those who believe in those personalities – politicians?- who claim to fight for the rights of other people. As is clear in this movie, most of them are just fake people who want to take advantage of people’s anger to achieve their own goals.

And finally a message to families: Liz confronted her son about the money his father left her and because she thought she had a better idea of ​​how to live his life. In the end, when Toby disappeared, all of that was left behind. Perhaps the message for Liz and for all parents is that there comes a point where you can advise your children, but in the end they must make their own mistakes and go their own way. Not giving them that freedom could ultimately lead to a far worse fate than their parents might foresee.

Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.

Echoes (Netflix Original), Ending Explained

Publicado el por Carlos Mario Castro

What would you do if you had a twin brother, someone identical to you? How would you take advantage of the fact that another person, exactly like you, exists out there even with your very same DNA? Although these are not exactly the most innovative questions someone has asked when telling a story, are the ones Australian writer Vanessa Gazy used as the basis for her new Netflix production, Echoes.

Now, if in the midst of the twin sisters, betrayals, dead bodies, secrets of the past, psychopaths, and even lost pregnancies, you have been left with a certain degree of confusion, don’t worry, because now and without further ado, we begin the Analysis and Explanation of Echoes, of course including the ending.

1 ^ Who was the evil twin? Leni or Gina?

Although that term «evil» is certainly relative, in Echoes the evil twin is Leni. And not without reason. As a child, Leni suffered a severe emotional trauma that left her with certain traits of psychopathy, which in the end created a hole into which all the people around her fell. Starting with her twin sister Gina.

2 ^ What does Leni see in the bathtub? How did the mother of the twins die?

Maria (Tyner Rushing), the mother of Gina, Leni and Claudia, was suffering from terminal cancer that had a huge negative impact on the McClearies. Since her illness was no longer treatable and she did not want to continue being a burden to her husband and her daughters, Maria asked her husband Victor (Michael O’Neill) to drown her in the bathtub, a kind of quick euthanasia at home. What they did not count on was that Leni would witness the event, generating a trauma that would last her a lifetime.

In fact, every time Leni is near a bathtub, or a container of water, she remembers again the event in which she saw her father drowning her mother, of course, without having the very necessary clarification that it was her own wish. Her mother wanted to die there at home, in her bathtub, with apple petals around her.

3 ^ What happened to Claudia?

After Maria’s death, Leni began to develop manipulative and violent behavior, in which her twin sister, Gina, supported her. In the first dark episode, while still children, Gina and Leni find themselves fighting over a doll that is clearly not marked, because they had made a pact to share everything, Claudia tries to stop the fight, remarking that they must mark their belongings, after which Leni pushes her. Claudia falls from a considerable height, which injures her back, leaving her paraplegic.

The thing is that Leni manages to convince Gina that they would accuse her, and therefore she should change places. Leni posing as Gina (Leni/Gina, from now on) blames herself, for which Gina’s name is forever linked to Claudia’s tragedy.

4 ^ Did Leni really want to protect Gina?

No, Leni’s plan was in fact quite simple: taking advantage of the fact that she had a twin, she would create two different personas, a good one, holy and pure, which would obviously be her, and another, rebellious, violent and manipulative, which she assigned to her twin sister. This way Leni could do whatever she wanted and she would always put the blame on Gina.

Gina never really understood Leni’s plan, because she always believed that her sister did everything to protect her, like in the case of the fire.

5 ^ What happened in the church fire?

Leni and Gina continued exchanging identities until their adolescence, Leni took advantage of being Gina to do whatever she wanted and Gina received, from time to time, the advantages of being the good daughter.

But when Leni started dating Jack, and even to pursue a serious relationship with him, Gina began to understand that she needed a life of her own, and even when Leni was willing to share Jack, Gina could not take that idea out from her mind. So when Dylan James showed up at Mount Echo, Gina started a relationship with him.

Leni, seeing that she couldn’t control Gina anymore, and that she might lose her alternate identity, decided it was time to eliminate Dylan, and she did so by setting the church on fire, in which an innocent person died in the flames.

Although Dylan and Gina survived, Leni convinced Dylan that he and Gina would be sent to jail and that it was best for him to run away, to protect Gina, moving all suspicion onto him. Of course, Leni later convinced Gina that Dylan was indeed guilty and that’s why he had run away.

6 ^ Where is Mount Echo? Where was the Echoes series filmed?

Mount Echo is an unincorporated town near Bethlehem, in West Virginia, in the United States. But the Mount Echo of the series is not the same, because it is in Virginia, not in West Virginia, so we can assume that it is a fictional town.

The series, indeed, was filmed in the town of Wilmington, North Carolina, south of Virginia.

7 ^ Why did Gina go to Los Angeles?

Tired of always being under Leni’s control, Gina (Michelle Monaghan) applied for a scholarship at UCLA, and after being approved moved to the West Coast, where she was finally able to confront her frustrations in his relationship with Leni. There, in her second year of college, Charlie (Daniel Sunjata) took her case and finally opened Gina’s mind so she was able to write a book, which was a bestseller.

Gina was happy, and had her life under control, until she lost her first pregnancy.

8 ^ Since when were Gina and Leni changing places?

We already know that Gina and Leni swapped each other until their teens, until Gina left for L.A. But as adults, they exchanged again after Gina lost her baby and Leni had postpartum depression, in a kind of win-win. And from that moment on, every year they switched on their birthday, on their exotic exclusive trips as twins. But Gina soon understood that Leni wanted to control her again, like a child, until she saw Dylan James (Jonathan Tucker) again.

9 ^ What was Gina’s plan to get rid of Leni?

Once Gina approached Dylan again, and confessed that she assumed the identity of Leni from time to time, it was clear that she did not want to continue being tied to her sister’s game, much less when she became pregnant.

The idea was to fake a robbery, and his disappearance, to entertain Leni, while she withdraws money from her accounts and escapes with Dylan. But Leni was much quicker and she managed to withhold the money transfer, while she confiscated the passports and tickets.

10 ^ Who killed Dylan James?

Leni killed Dylan, once it became clear that Gina wouldn’t stop until she ran off with him, not caring about Jack or Mattie. Once she was with him in the cabin she stabbed him. Gina found him dying, but James simply asked him to get rid of her sister, before he bled to death.

Gina orchestrated a plan with Georgia (Celia Weston), Dylan’s grandmother, to frame Leni, but Floss (Karen Robinson) couldn’t keep her in jail, due to lack of evidence, and couldn’t keep Gina for the same reason about the church fire.

11 ^ What does the final scene of Echoes mean? Gina died?

After being released, and Victor’s death, Gina confesses to Leni that her mother’s death was planned and not a violent act of her father, even so Leni insists that they have to be together, after which Gina simply jumps off a waterfall, without Leni seeing her come out.

To the question of whether Gina is dead, the answer is no. First of all let’s remember that Gina took diving lessons with Dylan, so she could perfectly swim underwater without anyone seeing her. And secondly, let’s also remember that the airport employee informed Leni that she had seen someone identical to her, headed for Kansas.

Now, at the end we see that Charlie wrote a book and a woman asks him what happened to Gina’s body, Charlie says that they never found it, and then we see that one of the twins is living with Charlie, but he is not sure who he is living with.

12 ^ What twin is living with Charlie in the end?

Everything indicates that it is Leni, since she was the only one who saw Charlie as a lifeline, now that her relationship with Jack and Mattie was already a thing of the past. Although the fact that Charlie knew about the exchanges and that she could distinguish the twins by their scent is still relevant. So why can’t he do that now?

13 ^ Was Gina the blonde woman at the press conference?

To answer this question I have two theories, in the comments you can tell me which of the two seems more plausible:

Theory 1 : Indeed, the blonde woman is Gina and simply happened to watch Charlie from afar to avoid being identified, and perhaps gloating a bit that she successfully faked her death.

Theory 2 : This is the darkest theory. After Leni went through security at the airport, headed to Australia, and was told by the clerk that her sister had gone to Kansas, Leni skipped the flight and went on the hunt for her sister. She at some point found her in Kansas and eventually took her down.

The blonde woman at the press conference was indeed Leni, who was doing it to add a touch of mystery to Charlie, who was always attracted to the mystery and the puzzle that the two sisters represented.

Theory 2 makes more sense to me, since Gina had no intention of returning to any of the lives she had before seeing Dylan James again, so it was not logical that she would appear in disguise to see Charlie.

14 ^ Will there be a second season of Echoes?

Echoes is labeled as Limited Series which indicates that it should not have a second season, but that rule already seems to be a thing of the past since Big Little Lies decided to make a second season. So, you never know. I will keep you posted.

Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.

Look Both Ways, Explained

Publicado el por Carlos Mario Castro

Have you ever thought what has been the most important moment of your life, that definitive moment in which you were never again the person you used to be? Was it a breakup, a graduation, a job, a move, buying a house, a trip? Which was? And have you ever thought what would have happened to you, if at that moment you had made a totally different decision?

For Natalie Bennett (Lili Reinhart) the answer to those questions has always been clear: the most important moment of her life was the night of her college graduation, the same night she took a pregnancy test, and for the rest of the film we see what would have happened to her, both in the event that it would have come out positive, and in the event that it would have come out negative.

1 ^ Is Natalie imagining everything? Which story is real in Look Both Ways?

The theory that some seem to be spinning regarding Look Both Ways is that everything happens in Natalie’s head during the two minutes of waiting to verify the result of her pregnancy test, two eternal minutes in which that Natalie imagines her life if the test comes out positive, and at the same time if it comes out negative. And that – in the end – we will never know the answer.

But Natalie isn’t imagining everything. Both stories are real, it is just they take place in parallel universes where the result of the pregnancy test was different.

2 ^ What is the message of the film Look Both Ways?

Some of the criticism I have read about this film, insist this is an anti-feminist film, or even worse, plainly misogynistic cinema, because in one of the stories it shows us Natalie sacrificing her planned life and her dreams, for a pregnancy that is clearly not desired, when – in the opinion of these articles – it was much easier to have an abortion.

But the message of the film goes much further than that. In the film we see Natalie in two opposite situations, in the first she abandons her roots to pursue a dream, and in the second she is tied by circumstances to those roots. In both circumstances, Natalie understood that the best version of herself is not the one fighting for her dreams putting her past self aside, or the one who put all his dreams aside, just to punish herself for not being careful enough.

The Natalie who never got pregnant, had to go back to her parents, see Gabe again and understand what would have happened to her if the test had come out positive, to find herself. The Natalie who became pregnant and had a daughter, had to learn again to fight for her dreams, and to take advantage of her experience as her mother make them strong.

The message of this film is that, no matter how hard and complicated the experiences we go through, we can always learn from them to achieve our dreams, as long as we do not lose our essence and remember at all times what we wanted them for.

3 ^ What does the end of My Two Lives mean?

In this Multiverse, we see that both versions (variants?) of Natalie find happiness when they manage to balance their experiences with their dreams, thus achieving, each in their own way what she had always longed for.

The scene in the bathroom, 4 years after the pregnancy test, in which the Natalies look in the mirror and tell themselves that they are going to be okay, is simply an exercise they do to be at peace with the path that they never took. The Natalie who went to Los Angeles, and who regretted having cut everything, for a frustrating life in which she was finally left with nothing, made peace with the possibility of staying there, perhaps fighting for her dreams without giving priority to others. The Natalie who became a mother, and who regretted not having made a decision that would allow her to continue with her life, finally made peace with that life that she could not have, but thanks to her talent, she may have another chance.

It all comes down to when we stop regretting the decisions we make and that we did not make, out of fear, or on a whim or immaturity, they still are part of our personal growth and in the end those are the experiences that make us the complex and vibrant human being that we are today.

Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.

Encanto | Ending Explained

Publicado el por Carlos Mario Castro

Have you ever felt excluded from your family? Maybe you haven’t felt as smart, or as good-looking, or as classy, or as successful as the people around you? If so, how did that make you feel? What did you do about it?

These were the questions directors Byron Howard ( Bolt, Tangled, Zootopia ) and Jared Bush ( Zootopia, Moana ) kept in mind to bring Encanto to the big screen. Encanto is Disney’s 60th animated film, and also Disney’s first animated film that takes place entirely in South America, in my beautiful country, Colombia.

Now, if in the middle of the wax palms, the arepas, the buñuelos, the nice coffee, the magic candles, the terrifying visions, and the secrets of the past, you have been left with doubts, or questions about the film, do not worry, because now, and without further ado, we’ll talk about Encanto in deep, and we will figure out what the ending means.

Let’s go for it!

1 | Where does Encanto’s magic come from?

Encanto’s magic stems from a miracle that occurred after Alma Madrigal (María Cecilia Botero) witnessed the murder of her husband Pedro, the father of her triplets. Alma was so deeply affected that she wished from the bottom of her heart, to separate herself and her children from such violence.

Her plea caused the surrounding mountains to close around the spot, preventing the passage to and from that place. The magic was channeled into a candle with the figure of a butterfly, which always remained lit, but the big question that remains is: who listened to Alma? Who caused the miracle? The answer is in the house.

When Mirabel first saw the cracks in the house, she was able to see faint symbols on the clay tiles that fell from the ceiling. Then we see these symbols again in the mysterious cave of Bruno. These symbols come from an indigenous culture, so it can be assumed that it is a local deity, which due to the geographical location of El Encanto, would necessarily have to be a Quimbaya deity, a pre-Columbian culture whose spirituality is associated with harmony and nature.

And although the candle that never goes out is the bridge between the deity and the Madrigal, the most interesting thing is not the candle, it is the house. La Casita.

2 | What really is the Casita in Encanto?

Disney usually animates things like teapots, candles, chairs, and even volcanoes, giving them life, giving little or no explanation about it. Or have you ever asked why the cups in Beauty and the Beast could speak?

However, in Encanto the matter of the house, la Casita, is very interesting. Although at first glance it seems to be simply an effect of the always-lit candle, what really seems to happen is that while the candle serves as a bridge, it is the house that is the origin of all magic and therefore, it is the physical manifestation of the spirit who heard Alma’s plea.

This spirit, to stay on this plane requires harmony.

3 | Why was the House cracking? Why was the Encanto dying out?

Whatever the source of the magic, it requires that there be harmony around it in order to manifest itself, however, as it became clear that the Madrigals were the only ones touched by this power, Abuela Alma began to assume that her responsibility, and that of his family was to maintain this magic, even at the cost of sacrificing the wishes and desires of each one of them.

Alma saw this guardianship as a privilege, a privilege that comes from the sacrifice of living exclusively to serve her community. But the truth is that magic, more than sacrifice, demanded harmony from them, which was destroyed by Abuela’s demands.

4 | Could the people in El Encanto get out of there?

The darkest thing about this story, and what is barely talked about in the film, is that – as Bruno said – once inside El Encanto it was impossible to leave. All the inhabitants of El Encanto are those who fled along with Pedro and Alma and their descendants. Very similar to the exodus of Jose Arcadio Buendía and Ursula Iguarán, which ended in the founding of Macondo, in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

However, one has to wonder if anyone was ever frustrated for that reason, and if that could be a cause for unsolvable conflict in the future. Would you feel good about living in Paradise, on the condition that you will never be able to leave?

5 | In what part of Colombia does Encanto take place?

Unquestionably in the Coffee Region. Or by extension, anywhere in the Colombian Central Mountain Range. Although there are many cultures and many ethnic groups in El Encanto, the type of vegetation, the climate and even the mountains are the same that can be seen in that area of ​​Colombia.

6 | And why are there people of all ethnicities in El Encanto?

If you have ever been in Colombia, you could notice there are Colombians from a wide range of ethnicities, thanks to the mix of the three main source groups: White (European), Black (African) and Native-American. So, it is easy to find within the same area people from these three ethnicities and everything in the mix. Also, every region in Colombia is unique in their cultural expressions. We can see not only different ethnicities in Encanto, but also different cultural expressions, like the culture of the Colombian Caribbean, or the Colombian Pacific, or the Colombian Andean Region. But why?

The Colombian coffee zone has always been full of people from all corners of Colombia, since the coffee harvesting process always requires a large number of employees. It would not be strange at all if among the people who fled the town under attack, there were people from all over Colombia, from the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, the Altiplano. It would then be like a Colombian microcosm where all the cultures of the country coexist, or at least those that were represented by the people who fled the town.

7 | Why wasn’t Mirabel gifted like the rest of the Madrigals?

Let’s speculate a little – the spirit that keeps El Encanto had to feel at some point that harmony was fading away, either because of the frustration of not being able to leave the town, or because of envy of the Madrigals, and that those negative feelings would eventually destroy everything. However, the isolation of the village was linked to the miracle of the candle – because that was Alma’s wish. The only way to avoid the total destruction of the town was to change the original miracle, and let a new one began to shine. For this, the harmony within the Madrigal had to be altered and what better way to alter a family than the appearance of someone different within them? That’s where Mirabel comes in.

By not giving gifts to Maribel, this spirit simply planted the seed that would lead to chaos, which Bruno managed to see in his visions.

8 | Why did Bruno hide from his family?

Because he wanted to protect Mirabel from her grandmother’s rigidity, especially from her obsession with preserving magic at the cost of the happiness of her family members. If Alma had known from the start that Mirabel was connected to the destruction of magic, she would probably have banished her from El Encanto, fracturing the family forever.

Bruno did not want to reveal how little he had seen in his vision of the future, so he simply left, although he did not get very far high in the mountains. And finally he hid in the hidden part of his own house.

9 | What is the message of the movie Encanto?

The most important message of Encanto is to recognize each member of our family as valuable; Many times we tend to minimize people close to us, because they are not so outgoing, or so smart, or so attractive, or so elegant, or so successful, or simply because they are the so-called Black Sheep. But not because something is different, it means that it has to be minimized, much less destroyed. It is definitely a call to be unconditional in the fact of loving our family.

Likewise, there is a hidden message in the film. Abuela Alma represents the past trauma of violence, and above all the fear of suffering such violence again. That trauma and that fear generated that the new generations had to pay with their happiness for the Abuela’s need to feel safe. What Mirabel represents is a new way of seeing the world, a new perspective on how to heal and maintain magic.

Perhaps, those of us who experience violence in Colombia or anywhere in the world are afraid of returning to that darkness that for so many years gripped our people, and that is why we tend to be rigid and strict, but perhaps it is good, perhaps not to change from one day to the next, but to give the opportunity for other perspectives, other points of view to appear and propose new ways of healing.

What better way to take advantage of the ideas and experience of others close to us, to begin to heal?

Questions? Annotations? More doubts? The comments section is open just below this post so feel free to use it. See you in the next installment of Ending Explained here at El Sabanero X.