‘Bananas’: Wild Mountain Thyme features baffling ending twist

Film starring Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan has been widely panned by critics

Wild Mountain Thyme has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.  

First, the trailer was widely ridiculed for the Irish accents of its lead stars, Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan. Then, it was panned by critics, with The Guardian describing it as “a mess”. And now, it has been revealed that the film has a completely baffling twist ending.

The premise of the romantic comedy from writer-director John Patrick Shanley is as follows: Anthony (Dornan) and Rosemary (Blunt) have grown up on neighbouring farms. Rosemary is in love with Anthony and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t seem to return her feelings.

That all seems perfectly normal, but the ending has left people very confused.

Warning: major spoilers ahead.

The twist is that Anthony thinks he’s a bee.

Yes, that’s right. When Rosemary finally confronts Anthony and asks why he won’t return her affections, he admits: “I think I’m a honeybee.”

There are some hints to the twist throughout the movie. At the start of the film, Anthony takes an exceptionally large sniff of a flower. A girl mocks him for getting pollen on his nose, and Anthony later explains to Rosemary that the same girl ran away from him after he told her he loved her and admitted he was a bee.  

Throughout the film, he tells people that he’s “mad" and “delusional,” and tells one admirer that he has a “tininess in his brain”.

He also appears to be caught arguing with bugs in the air, at one point, and there is a faint buzzing sound in the background of his most challenging scenes.

The strangest thing of all is that Rosemary appears very unphased by the revelation.  

Many critics have been left baffled by the twist, with Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips writing: “Is he speaking metaphorically? Horticulturally? Why can’t I take his belief at face value and move on?”

LA Times’s Gary Goldstein added that the characters do “strange, showy things that defy logic or payoff”, writing: “Does Anthony honestly believe he’s a honeybee? (OK, he does.) It’s that kind of movie.”

Slate’s Karen Han called the ending “bananas”.

Wild Mountain Thyme is out now on Amazon Prime.