10 Recent Movie Scenes Everyone Misunderstood
4. Leda Is Alive At The End - The Lost Daughter
Maggie Gyllenhaal's superb psychological drama The Lost Daughter ends with troubled protagonist Leda (Olivia Colman) being stabbed by young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson), driving her car off the road, and then heading down to the beach where she takes a phone call from her daughters.
It's a seemingly ambiguous ending that has prompted audience members to debate whether Leda was in fact alive at the end or not.
Those who believe she died from the stab wound cite the fact that her daughters even mention her being dead on the phone, and the film ends with Leda miraculously discovering an orange in her hands, which she then peels in a snake-like motif as she did for her children in their youth.
While Elena Ferrante's source novel also plays Leda's fate as ambiguous, in this adaptation she is 100% alive, as was confirmed by director Gyllenhaal in an interview with The Washington Post earlier this year. She said:
"If [Leda] dies, we're punishing her. It's not a punitive movie. It's really not what we're doing. To me, this is a woman who is a hero, even though she is someone who has caused probably irreparable damage to both herself and her children."
That's a pretty definitive statement. Surreal though the ending might be, it's not intended to be Leda's dying dream: she's still very much in the land of the living when the closing credits roll.