Laing and Wilder. A love story. SPOILERS
Journey with me, my friends on a tale of rape, equality, and redemption?
There is two main leads in this story. One, our lead, Tom Hiddleston's Laing. And the other Luke Evan's Wilder. These men certainly do not present as each other's friends, nor the leads of our story. But after two hours it's highly clear they both envy each other and respect one one another and think they are each the one who has everything figured out. And there is a begrudging and unwelcome respect between them. It's truly the gem of the whole feature.
They are yin and yang. One is the good boy, Laing, who does what he is told and knows his place and falls in line and so largely is left alone while society unravels. The other is Wilder, true to his hame, a rebel, who seeks to use his investigative skills to usurp his rulers and bring everybody down to his level. There is an incredible scene where a drunken Wilder, not at an orgy, simply wants to bring a child birthday party to a pool. He lose's his mind and it's left very dubious whether or not he came unhinged and drowned a prize dog.
Wilder latches on to Laing because he is also not of the system, not recognizing that he doesn't attach to the game at all. As he descends into the rabbit hole, he mistakenly thinks of Laing as a sympathetic heart. But it turns out that Laing may be just so as he confronts the madness that is moving up in society. In essence, Wilder becomes Laing's unwanted but appointed "pub friend from the projects" while he begins having squash games with the power rulers of society.
Wilder is eventually forced back into what made him a prominent man in the first place, "front lines documentaryian". His wife makes a cutting joke about him returning to making prison documentaries, a movie-joke about their actual lives. He gets to work and gets miserable fast. He is quickly beaten and forced back into a forgotten life of being a savage soul.
Eventually, Wilder worms his way back into the near lair of a rich debutante who he always had ambitions of laying and she was a whore for the right customer. She still wants nothing to do with him. Wilder uses his new found Will and free abandon to rape and beat her into submission. She becomes a clumsy wife, serving him scraps of wine and dog food, all that is left of riches in the world. And he finds this pleasing.
In the story, Wilder is not actually a man, but representative of a whole sect of people. Thus the notion of whether or not to kill him or incapacitate him becomes a great deal of debate. Ultimately, Wilder, thus named, is the uncontrollable element of a populace you want to put under your thumb. A rebel armed with a camera who speaks to the people. A man who has personally beat the living shit out of your best guards. A very dangerous fellow.
They try to coerce Laing into lobotomizing him. And here we're getting into some Fauci pandemic shit, make of that what you will. But this Laing has ethics and he's having nothing of it. But here, finally, Laing and Wilder have a meeting and we learn they each envy the other and think the other has everything figured out right. They envy each other. But pass like ships in the night.
Wilder, rebel, warrior, conqueror, fulfills his destiny and destroys the big bad of the world, only to be quickly brought down by other rising powers. There is no hero's farewell in this tale. Laing, last man standing, inherits the kingdom, but it's not really one of his control. He is a slave to it as much as any other.
It is unbelievably grim. And so beautiful.