Meaning of the movie “Tale of Tales” and ending explained

Meaning of the movie “Tale of Tales” and ending explained Films

Director Matteo Garrone, with his film Penny Dreadful, loosely adapts three fantastic stories from a collection of fairy tales by the 18th-century Italian writer Giambattista Basil.

As a result, Garrone, in his usual manner, made an ironic and, at the same time, terribly nightmarish scenario, and a high-class international cast, including Spaniard Salma Hayek, Frenchman Vincent Cassel and Briton Toby Jones, was invited to make it a reality.

Thanks to this organic combination, the author achieves a stunning combination of earthiness and otherworldliness. Real-life locations, including frozen lava gorges and hollows, are organically combined with extravagant staged scenery. All of them create ideal conditions for outlandish activities, from a battle with an ogre on a rocky mountain pass to an orgy in the royal chambers.

What is the movie about

So, as already noted, there are three main stories in Penny Dreadful.

1. The story of Elias.

The Queen of Longtrellis desperately wants to have a baby. A necromancer appears and says that one has to pay for a specially summoned life, but the royal person immediately declares: any price is worth it to give birth.

The sinister visitor declares that the queen will become pregnant if the sea monster is killed and its heart cooked by a virgin and eaten by the queen. The king, indulging every desire of his beloved wife, personally hunts an underwater monster, but soon dies from his wounds.

Then the heart, as it should be, is prepared by a virgin working in the kitchen. Only now she decides to try the cooked dish, not knowing about its true purpose. As a result, both Longtrellis and the innocent girl both become pregnant and give birth on the same day.

From early childhood, the prince Elias and the commoner Iona form a deep bond between themselves, considering each other brothers, because they look almost identical. But the jealousy of the queen for her son makes Jonah flee.

Elias goes looking for him, but also gets lost in the wilderness. The queen summons the necromancer again. He again speaks of the need for sacrifice. The inconsolable mother immediately agrees.

Meanwhile, Elias finds Jonah in a cave. Just then, a giant bat attacks the fugitive and tries to kill him, but hesitates when Elias intercedes for him. Using this hitch, he mortally wounds the creature.

Upon arrival at the castle, Elias learns about the missing mother. And here the truth is revealed to the audience: the necromancer turned the queen into that very creature in the cave, and she fell victim at the hands of her own son.

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2. Violet’s story.

Hahill is an absent-minded king and father. His daughter Violet has already grown into a young woman and, carried away by tales of passionate love, demands that her father let her marry. But he ignores his daughter’s pleas as he is too busy spending time with the giant magic flea he secretly raised.

When the flea dies, the distraught king skins it and announces that any man who can guess who it is can have his daughter’s hand and heart. Many fans try unsuccessfully to guess whose skin it is, and the king ignores all of Violet’s pleas to stop this contest. And here the Cannibal appears and immediately determines the flea affiliation.

Violet angrily obeys her father’s will, and the monster takes her to a lair located on the side of a cliff. Having actually imprisoned, the ugly monster forces the girl to perform his perverted sex whims.

One day, she sees an acrobat picking flowers near a cave and begs for salvation. The circus troupe pulls on a rope and carries Violet across the ravine. The ogre tracks down the fugitives, brutally kills them all, and demands that Violet return to him. Pretending to agree to his demands, the girl decapitates the Ogre with a large knife.
An exhausted Violet returns to the castle to find that her father has been terminally ill since she left. In anger, she throws away the severed head and condemns the king for forcing her to marry this beast. In response, he publicly bursts into tears and apologizes for his callousness. She accepts his apology and is allowed to take his throne.

3. Dora’s story.

King Strongcliff is a real sex maniac who exhausted all his courtesans with his unbridled desire. One morning he hears beautiful singing and follows the singer to her house.

Believing that such a beautiful voice could only come from a pretty girl, he insists that the singer sleep with him. She is actually an unattractive older woman named Dora who lives with her equally ugly sister, Imma.

She eventually succumbs to the king’s tenacity on the condition that they only have sex in the dark. After copulation, the king breaks his promise. Seeing that Dora is an elderly woman, he orders the guards to throw her out of the window.

Dora miraculously survives a fall from a tower, and a witch living in the forest literally nurses her back to health. The witch also makes Dora young and beautiful. While hunting, Strongcliff stumbles upon a transformed Dora and immediately falls in love with her. After that, they play a wedding.

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Imma is invited to the wedding, where Dora secretly reveals her true identity to her. The old woman asks to live again with her beloved sister, but now in a luxurious palace. Not wanting to lose her status or wealth, Dora tries to appease Imma with jewelry.

When she still refuses to leave, Dora blatantly lies that she regained her youth after being flayed. Believing this lie, Imma takes the treasure given to her by Dora and pays the man to do to her the same thing they supposedly did to her sister. Naturally, she dies in agony from her wounds.

The meaning of the film

The theme of all three stories is that misfortune awaits those who indulge their selfish desires. The director connects the characters only by showing them attending Longtrellis’ husband’s funeral at the beginning and Violet’s coronation at the end. In between, he intuitively jumps from story to story.

In Penny Dreadful, which could be called surrealism, Garrone considers several strands of magical thought as realities that need to be mastered. This film makes you believe in sorcerers, witches and trolls, although it undermines the belief that the heroes and heroines live happily after that.

Without a colossal special effects budget, the film’s morality feels magical, whether it’s using the wonders of an octagonal castle, creating real creatures for a sea monster and a lamb-sized flea, or staging human metamorphosis with stunning simplicity. As a result, the meaning makes the viewers feel as if they have entered a world where the gods play with the fates of different men and women.

Movie ending explanation

The film is set in a land unknown, where a witch can turn an old hag into a seductive beauty, and a giant cannibal beast can marry a sheltered fairytale princess. It turns out a very strange and attractive effect of the perception of morality, embedded in the original fairy tales.

1. In the first story, the king is desperately trying to dispel the despondency of his wife, who is eager to give birth to a child. He follows the necromancer’s three-step program: kill the sea monster, cut out its heart, and find a virgin to cook for the queen. The curiosity of the cook leads to the birth of identical albino boys, who become inseparable after meeting each other.

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After that, the plot gets wilder and more bizarre. A guy of non-aristocratic origin, who is afraid of the queen, decides to go to the province. What’s even more creepy and original to the film is how brutally the queen’s already twisted maternal instinct turns into black magic and hysterically fights the boys’ brotherly love. The necromancer turns out to be right: for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and its consequences cannot be predicted.

2. In the next part, the egocentric king feels admiration for the vile flea much more than for his sweet and for the time being obedient daughter Violet. After the death of a giant insect, the monarch hangs his skin in one of his halls and announces that he will marry his daughter to anyone, he will marry his daughter to anyone who guesses her identity.

When the ogre takes one huge breath and guesses correctly at the climax, the princess rises for the first time. Such an episode shows her resilience and his amazing ferocity. It is both an attack on a faltering, narcissistic patriarchy and a salute to a young girl clinging with both hands to independence in choosing how her own life should be. In the end, it is tenacity and determination that makes an innocent person a persistent and strong woman, capable of ruling the whole kingdom.

3. In the last story, one of the heroines was the least fortunate. Fascinated by Dora’s singing and convinced that her voice must be that of a great beauty, the over-anxious King Strongcliff begins courting.

Dora experiences humiliation, transformation, and fame that leaves her sister, Imma, embarrassed and envious. After that, she is determined to change her skin in the worst possible way. In the end, her terrifying final appearance in a perfectly beautiful dress and striking jewelry illustrates the heroine’s belief that she, who wants to appear beautiful, must suffer.

The next time the king and Dora can be seen at Violet’s coronation. Watching the ascent of a young beauty to the throne, a woman, glancing at her fingers that have become ossified, understands that her youthful appearance is fading and a disgusting appearance is returning to her. She flees the ceremony, leaving Strongcliff to live out the rest of his years in solitude.

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