i love dwp1 so fucking much, but at its very core that movie says: you have to choose, and there's only one right choice. andy's friends are assholes, nate is a bastard, and andy is the one who framed as wrong for choosing her very good job that is a legitimately good entry into the industry she wants to work in. miranda's divorce, while inadvertently making miranda more interesting than the movie ever intended, is a narrative device to show andy that if she keeps this up, she will end up alone. what's crazy about all that is that, at the same time, the movie tries to argue that the choice to be made isn't whether or not to be a good person, but whether or not to be in a situation that makes you a bad person. this is insane, btw. but andy at the end is like, i don't want to be like you therefore i must not be here. the abdication of personal responsibility for your actions is, actually, wild.
so you could have knocked me over with a fucking feather by the time i walked out of dwp2. because i never in one hundred trillion years expected them to come back 20 years later and recognise that actually, andy made all those choices, they didn't happen to her, and yes, actually, she's that selfish bitch (huge fucking compliment). she didn't get married, she didn't have kids, she's flounced in and out of lily's life for 15 years, and the moment someone threw her a piece of driftwood to cling to, she leapt on board. even at the last moment, she still couldn't quite bring herself to not look down on the genuine potential runway offered her, but hell, she'll settle for it.
that car scene made me insane. miranda calling her out again, and andy finally agreeing, and more than that, going all on this arrangement that neither of them actually wants, exactly, but could be mutually beneficial to them both? i practically moaned.
that compromise was both the theme and the hero of this film blows my mind. miranda, who will do anything for advertisers, who will sit her assistant next to her and have her call out all the politically incorrect things she cannot say anymore, who hangs up her own coat, but is still, fundamentally the same person she was 20 years ago: she loves her job, and will do anything to keep doing it. and that is, from start to finish, who andy always was.
and instead of judging them this time, dwp2 says: yes, there are choices to make, and there are always costs whichever way you choose. but there's no wrong choice this time. just find a way to do what you love and you'll be fine.
(and if you can, along the way, make it up to the people you hurt as you do. because there will always be people you hurt, but actually there isn't some natural order of punishment that goes with that. guys, that emily wanted to be friends all that time? i cried. the nigel resolution? bawled.)
