- Hello, I'm Todd Haynes
and I'm gonna be answering
all of your burning questions
about the ending of "May December".
- [Speaker] To the class of 2015.
Go Sharks!
- This scene is a face-off.
This is a coda for the film that comes
before the final coda of the film.
And in the script described
that the two women would be in white against the red gowns
on the green of the football field.
So a sense of these strong primary colors
and how much the two women would be
singled out in their clothes.
But really it's this face-off of power
between the two women that follows
what we just witnessed,
which was Elizabeth sleeping with Joe.
- Disgusting.
I don't know what he is doing telling you these things.
- He told you?
- Georgie, the son from the first marriage,
who drops this hint about the origins
of Gracie's transgressions
with Joe coming out of incest.
- Her older brothers.
- [Georgie] What? - Yeah.
Started when she was 12.
- It's a late-breaking bit of insight
into how we understand Gracie
that Elizabeth can add to her collection of knowledge,
experience, intelligence-gathering.
But here even that is retreated,
marked by Gracie as something she's aware of
and that she's absolutely on top of.
- Insecure people are very dangerous, aren't they?
I'm secure.
- I'm naive.
I always have been, which is what she says.
In many ways it's been a gift.
These examples that show
how resolute the unself-examining person is
and how much strength is derived accordingly.
And when one thinks that the searching
for truth suggests a sort of access to power
because you're going through the deceptions
and tearing them down,
this scene suggests that it's the reverse.
- Make sure you put that in there.
- It's the denial that occupies a position of greater power.
And then the very last moments
that you're left with Elizabeth,
you sort of see that quiver of uncertainty.
These women are predators.
These women succeed in achieving what they need at any cost.
And so we're left to question what those costs are.
Now, all of that said,
the very fact that somebody is seeking the truth
and trying to tell a story about somebody else
and putting the sort of goal of representation,
first and foremost,
this is what gives Joe the possibility in his life
for the first time to look at himself.
- What if I wasn't ready
to be making those kinds of decisions?
- And so he does look into the mirror.
- [Speaker] Joshua Wyatt Atkins.
(audience cheering and clapping)
- We feel like the only character who is maybe capable
of change is Joe.
And none of that would've happened without this process.
(bell rings)
- [Producer] Action.
- Are you scared?
- No.
- It's okay to be scared.
- I'm not.
- She doesn't bite.
- That final scene was part of Sammy's original script.
The repetition is very important,
that search for truth is impossible and unending,
and the desire for the product is really ineffable in a way
and somewhat absurd,
this being the final product
of what Elizabeth has been trying to do as an artist.
But it kind of looks like that TV movie.
It also repeats in a funny way, all of these additions,
these multiples of Joes in the film,
that sort of parade of versions of truth.
Who's the real Joe?
Where does he live?
Which is the right Joe,
which is the actual origin of Joe?
All of these are also sort of circulating in this scene.
So you're left with ambiguous and conflicted feelings
about all kinds of behavior,
and yet it's also what makes
the film ultimately Joe's story.
- [Producer] Beautiful.
I think we got it.
- Wait, can we do it again, please?
Please, just for me?
- [Producer] Lizzie.
Please, it's getting more real.
- [Producer] Going again.
- Thanks for watching
and I hope you enjoyed the ending of "May December".