Verity transforms the house into a witness to a story in which no one seems to tell the whole truth.
There’s a question that runs through Verity from the start: Who is the villain?
Directed by Michael Showalter and adapted from Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, Verity starts from a universe where the villain’s perspective matters. Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) built her career writing from this point of view, and perhaps that’s why, when the film begins to blur fiction and reality, truth and manipulation, it’s so difficult to know who to believe. Because, after all, everyone could be telling a story. And every story depends on who tells it.
Even before diving into this game, however, the film seems to make three introductions. First, the house. Then, Verity. And finally, Lowen. And it’s no coincidence that the house comes first.
There’s something about it that transcends the function of a setting. The Crawford property is as dark as the characters who inhabit it and, little by little, almost assumes the position of a silent witness. It was there. It was there that saw the different versions of that story unfold. If there is anyone capable of knowing the truth, perhaps it is precisely that house. The problem is that she can’t speak.
Verity appears in another time, at the height of her career, during an interview. Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), on the other hand, is introduced in the present, in an almost opposite situation: she is in a bookstore for the launch of her book, but practically no one seems to be there for her. She is a struggling writer, without an audience and in need of money. Curiously, shortly after, Lowen says she likes being invisible.
And that phrase remains.
Because the question remains: does her lack of success stem solely from a lack of opportunities, or is there some comfort in this invisibility?
It is precisely this woman who will receive an opportunity capable of changing her life. After an unlikely encounter with Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett), Verity’s husband, Lowen is hired to finish the writer’s book series, now unable to write. There is an evident financial need; her mother’s death left debts, but there is also the possibility of finally approaching the recognition she never had.
But there is an interesting contradiction in this: to be recognized, Lowen needs to disappear. As a ghostwriter, her job requires her to write as someone else. It’s not enough to simply finish a story. She needs to find Verity’s voice, reproduce her rhythm, understand her logic, and deliver to readers what they expect from that author. To write as Verity, therefore, Lowen needs to get inside her head. And that’s exactly where Verity starts to become more interesting.
On the family’s isolated property in Vermont, Lowen comes to know not only the work of a writer he had never even read until then, but the fragments of a life marked by tragedy. Among books, drafts and notes, she finds what appears to be Verity’s autobiographical manuscript. And, as you read, the question stops being just what happened in that house and becomes something else: Who is Verity?
Is she the woman in those writings? Is it as disturbing as the characters you created? Is the manuscript a confession, a literary exercise, or something in between?
Michael Showalter builds much of the suspense precisely in this space of uncertainty. The film puts us inside Verity’s head through Lowen’s eyes, but never offers enough security to know whether what we see belongs to reality, writing or the imagination of the person reading. It is in this aspect that photography and editing become fundamental.
The house is surrounded by nature and, at the same time, seems to allow this nature to invade its interiors. There is glass everywhere, large transparent surfaces, an architecture that creates the impression that everything can be seen. It’s a particularly interesting choice for a story built around that which remains hidden. The more transparent the house appears, the less we can see what really happened inside it.
This feeling also appears in the way the images are organized. Verity works with overlaps, parallels and images that coexist within the frame. When Lowen reads, the words can invade the screen; While accessing the reports, what we imagine takes shape before us. Present and past begin to occupy the same visual space. Reading stops being just an action and becomes an image. And there is a danger there: we too begin to see as Lowen sees.
The montage doesn’t simply present an objective past. It materializes a version of that past. As Lowen delves into Verity’s writing, the viewer dives in along with her and begins to lose the ability to separate what happened from what was written, and what was written from what was imagined.
The soundtrack reinforces this instability and the constant feeling that someone is watching. There’s something in that house that never allows Lowen, and consequently the viewer, to be completely comfortable.
It is in this environment that Anne Hathaway encounters perhaps one of the film’s most curious challenges. For much of the narrative, Verity is in a wheelchair, seemingly catatonic. Doctors speak of involuntary movements and little chance of recovery. Hathaway, therefore, needs to build presence precisely through the absence of movement and words. And yet someone is there.
A look, a small change, a gesture that may have happened; or perhaps not. The interpretation works because it forces us to observe Verity with the same obsession as Lowen. We look for signs in that body. We try to discover if there was intention where apparently there should be none. And, at a certain point, we no longer know if we are really seeing these signs or if, like Lowen, we have begun to want to find them.
Dakota Johnson functions as our path into this labyrinth. Lowen arrives at the house as an observer, but observing is never a completely neutral gesture. The more she gets to know Verity, the closer she gets to her life, her writing, and Jeremy. And, little by little, the boundaries begin to blur. Perhaps that is why the idea of repetition becomes so unsettling.
In entering Verity’s mind to be able to write like her, to what extent does Lowen remain Lowen? How much identification, how much projection, and how much desire exists in this approach? At some point, knowing another person’s story can also mean beginning to occupy their place?
Verity finds her strength precisely when she doesn’t immediately answer the questions she creates. Fiction and reality, manipulation and attraction, opportunity and obsession begin to exist too close to one another. And, when each character can carry their own version of events, the truth ceases to be a certainty and becomes a dispute. Perhaps that’s why the house is such an important presence.
While everyone talks, writes, remembers, imagines, or hides, it remains there. Silent. It watched Verity before Lowen arrived, observes Lowen trying to understand her, and holds within itself events that we only know through other people’s versions. In the end, we return to the initial question: who is the villain?
Perhaps Verity’s unease lies precisely in realizing that, before answering, it is necessary to decide which story we are willing to believe.
You can find Verity in theaters starting today.
Did you enjoy the content? Then leave a comment so I know!
See you in the next post.