Peter in What Still Remains
Ok I finally have time to flail about my problematic disaster son.
One of my favourite things about him is that he’s a subversion of the trope of his character. In most cases I can imagine a character, especially a male one, in a situation like this, he’s gonna get redeemed because he’s speshul *cough*self-insert*cough* and “win the girl” *cough*trophy*cough*. But Peter doesn’t get any of that, for a simple but important reason; the film isn’t about his story, it’s about Anna’s.
Peter is the distraction, there to make us think that Anna probably has someone to trust, even if that’s the hard choice… but then it’s subverted and we see him as the antagonist he unknowingly but indisputably is to her. He considers her unknowingly stepping into the water as her giving full and undeniable consent, he expects her to submit to him “because God said so”, he attacks her and is completely blind to the fact that she may have different feelings and opinions on the matter than he does. And so when Anna, at the end, says “Peter got what he deserved”… we agree with her. He was beyond redemption. And then the film ends with Anna moving on, without having her life revolve around Peter’s character, life, or death, as the case may be.
But just because he was that doesn’t mean he’s one dimensional. I’ve said before that something this film did perfectly was explain his “villainy” but didn’t justify nor sugarcoat it. We saw where he came from but his actions were shown as the horrible things they are and would be in real life. And again, since Anna is the sole protagonist, the film doesn’t spend time trying to redeem Peter or even turn him into a martyr.
So going into that explanation… oh boy, here come the feelzTM.
So basically Peter was like 8-9 when the apocalyptic disease burst out. He says he only has “flashes” of the old world, not being 100% sure if those are real memories or things he made up. And like, 8 years old is a bit old to not have solid memories of the world, anything about it. Which only points to childhood trauma, severe enough to cause memory loss. So first thing that messed him up, and in such a young age as this.
Second thing: thinking that his parents abandoned him. He says how his parents left him with his grandfather because he would probably be safer there, but then admits to thinking they might have abandoned him because he was dead weight to them. Things would’ve been much simpler for him if he thought they died trying to protect him, but no, the fear of having been abandoned was there.
Third thing and connected to the previous one: 20 something years having passed since his parents being gone, and him looking surprised when Anna tells him “Don’t ever think [your parents abandoned you]”. I got the feeling that it was literally the first time in his life someone told him not to torture himself with that thought. One would think that someone in the village would have told him that at some point in those 20 something years. But hey, why would the Elders care?
Fourth: Zach says that even as a 13yo Peter had “the blessings of the Holy Spirit running through his veins” and then keeps praising him about the work he’s done for the community. I don’t know if they intentionally wanted to show him caring for Peter only due to his religious beliefs and not because Peter was an emotionally scarred teenager who deserved love and care no matter how “blessed” he was, but combined with some other things Peter says about himself… he probably does indeed believe that his sole redeeming feature (since he thought his own parents didn’t want him) was that God somehow for some reason chose him. And the “abandonment” thing probably played a big role in him desperatly clinging to any positive traits Zach and/or Judith would recognize in him. Probably also why, despite their closeness to him, they never bothered to drive that painful thought from his mind. They probably truly only cared about him being “blessed” and how he would be of use to them, nothing else about him.
Fifth: his currently absent grandfather. We know the latter met Zach… but that’s where his story ends. We don’t know where he ended up, if he’s still alive… and there isn’t anything, especially about Zach that suggests the grandpa is alive and well and happy somewhere, or even that his possible death was not of Zach’s making.
Sixth: Judith. She’s a whole chapter of her own. Imagine all the things Peter had already gone through, then he had to deal with her claiming him as hers when he was still underage, and very very possibly unwilling. We see the teen girls saying they wished they were older so that Peter would sponsor them… which is so fucked up but at least they lived in their delusion of it being okay, so who knows, perhaps it wouldn’t have messed them up as much as it did Peter. And consider this: not only is Peter visibly uncomfortable when Judith touches him, not only does he know he has to protect Anna from the Elders… he says himself he wants an “equal”… meaning that he isn’t willing to sponsor a CHILD for the community’s future, even if said child was brought up to think this thing is acceptable, especially if your sponsor is hot. So, he knows doing it to a child is wrong - though he’s too messed up to realize that doing it to an adult against their will is also wrong. So, yeah. Adding sexual assault to an already traumatized teenager’s psyche… what were his chances?
And, wow, that’s some great character exploration from the narrative itself, isn’t it? Peter clinged onto the “blessings running through his veins” and considered himself immune to mistakes and misjudgments. He not only doesn’t bother to ask for Anna’s consent before he marries her, he takes it for granted, because Anna is good and religious; and the only good and religious way is to automatically give full consent for life to an Elder.
And then, there’s his last scene. His comrades have been murdered by the Berserkers, his village is being burnt to the ground… how could this happen? God was on their side. Unless… God wanted the others to die. Yes, that must be it, since Peter is God’s chosen one. No one survived but the chosen one and the one to bear his children. He immediately turns his back to the others, even not acknowledging Anna’s request to go and look for survivors - something she herself does later - because, well, God must have given up on them for some reason. “Our community was corrupt, I can see that now.”
The illusion has become his life. He’s too messed up, and even if he had any acknowledgment of it and any willingness to get help for it, he doesn’t have the means. And it’s when he pushes it further that you for sure know he’s past the point of no return, and his death comes off as the only way his story could go.
His “It’s okay, Anna. I forgive you” will always FUCK ME UP though. In his messed up mind, he was seeing everything he did to Anna as right. He welcomed her in his community, he saved her from those two guys and forgave her for her “mistake” of having invited them to join them, he sponsored and “took care” of her, he guided her to “God’s true path”, he would protect her from the Elders, he avoided humiliating her in front of the whole village by not tying her up before they left… and he forgave her for literally killing him. Putting her first, in his own, messed-up way.
Forget Romeo and Juliet. This is the most tragic (albeit very disturbing) love story of them all T_T
