[ad_1]
Summary
- Nico’s fate remains unclear throughout the movie, but it is likely that he is dead given the hostile situation he faced on the ship.
- The reason Nico and Mia were trying to flee Spain for Ireland is because of the hostile totalitarian regime that took over Spain, targeting pregnant women and children.
- Mia’s decision to eat the placenta after giving birth is not as wild as it may seem, as it is a nutrient-rich practice that some women choose to do. However, eating raw placenta can pose health risks.
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Nowhere.
The ending of Nowhere sees Mia and Noa rescued by a boat near Ireland, but how did they get there, what happened to Nico, and how did they survive the crazy events on their floating shipping container? Nowhere is a Spanish survival thriller from Netflix directed by Albert Pintó starring Anna Castillo as Mia and Tamar Novas as Nico.
After a totalitarian regime takes over Spain, conditions get worse and worse for the civilians. Basic resources become scarce, people are required to stay locked in their homes all day, and the regime begins rounding up and killing women and children. Hoping to escape, pregnant Mia and her husband Nico try to sneak out of the country aboard a storage container. Unfortunately, they get separated before being loaded on the ship, and then the container holding Mia falls off the ship during a storm, leaving Mia and her newborn baby, Noa, adrift in the ocean to fend for themselves as they await rescue.
What Happened to Nico?
Nowhere makes it very clear both Mia and Noa are discovered and rescued by an Irish family, but Nico’s fate isn’t so clear-cut. Nico isn’t even seen on screen after the first 10 minutes, and his voice is only occasionally heard over the phone when Mia is able to find cell reception. The last time they talk, Nico says he managed to sneak onto another ship, but was discovered and shot and says he’s “losing so much blood.” His situation is clearly dire, but Mia’s phone runs out of battery before his death is confirmed, and considering he’s already off-screen anyway, Nowhere‘s ending doesn’t fully explain what happens to Nico.
It’s probably fairly safe to assume Nico is dead. While he could have hypothetically survived the gunshot and recovered, he’s still on a hostile ship with people trying to kill him. And even if he survived the gunshot and escaped the ship, the odds of him finding Mia are also slim. Mia’s story shows her fighting and surviving against all odds, so it wouldn’t be a huge leap in Nowhere‘s movie logic for Nico to pull off a similar feat, but it’s unlikely Nico survived. After all, Nowhere is Mia’s story, and his death is an important part of her journey as she saves herself and Noa.
Why Were Nico and Mia Trying to Flee Spain for Ireland?
Nowhere depicts a world in which a hostile totalitarian regime takes over Spain. Before Noa, Mia and Nico had another daughter, Uma, who was taken by the regime when Mia let her go outside to play and Nico and Mia assume she’s dead, although her death is never outright confirmed. The regime is shown corralling women and children into a cage to shoot them and shooting people trying to hide in storage containers, so it doesn’t seem like they’re very interested in capturing and imprisoning people; however, like Nico, Uma’s death is never explicitly confirmed.
Spain is experiencing extreme supply shortages and the regime is explicitly targeting pregnant women and kids, so Nico decides to flee Spain for Ireland, which is why they’re being smuggled aboard storage containers in the beginning of the movie. Governments all over the world are toppling, but a broadcast from early in the movie specifies “countries like Ireland, Iceland, and Norway” may be safe, and Nico says Ireland has ruled in opposition to the regime. Of course, after Mia’s container falls off the ship, she has no way to control where it goes, so it’s just by sheer luck she actually ends up in Ireland at the end.
Why Did Mia Eat the Placenta?
After giving birth to Noa, Mia also delivers the placenta, an organ attached to the other end of the umbilical cord used to deliver oxygen and other nutrients to the baby while it’s in the uterus. Birth is extremely energy taxing for women, and nursing a newborn baby even moreso, so Mia is understandably starving with little to eat other than a little canned tuna. Eventually, she retrieves the placenta and umbilical cord she stored in a tupperware container and sniffs it before taking a big bite. While this may seem like extreme behavior, it’s actually not quite as wild as some of the other things Mia had to do to survive.
While there is some controversy surrounding placenta AKA “afterbirth” consumption (placentophagy), it’s not uncommon for women to eat the placenta after giving birth because it’s extremely nutrient rich, and it’s a very common practice in the animal kingdom. Granted, most people who consume placenta aren’t eating it raw while stranded on a floating storage container in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. Typically, a placenta will be dehydrated and processed into capsule form. While there are a number of advocates for placentophagy, WebMD warns eating placenta, especially if raw, could pose some health risks.
How Were Mia and Noa Discovered By the Irish Boat?
Mia’s “nowhere” shipping container fell off the boat in the middle of the ocean, so their chances of discovery seemed to be pretty low. She used several different cell phones to place a call throughout the course of the movie, so it’s possible she was never actually as far away from civilization as she thought, although the movie was stretching cell phone logic a bit already, so cell reception may or may not be a good story indicator of how far off the coast the Nowhere shipping container was at any given time.
Shortly after Mia opened the roof of the container to get outside, she saw a low-flying airplane, indicating she wasn’t far from land. She tried to signal it by reflecting the sun from a piece of mirror, but it didn’t work. After she started catching fish, she noticed seagulls were attracted to the fish remains, again indicating they must be close to land. After the Nowhere container sank and Mia and Noa were floating on the small raft she made for Noa, Mia sees another seagull, so she empties the fish remains out of the tupperware to attract a flock of birds, which is what ultimately draws the attention of the Irish boat.
Nowhere includes some very direct Biblical references. The most obvious influence is the story of Noah’s Ark, which Mia specifically calls out, but Nowhere actually references a number of Christian Messianic figures including Noah, Moses, Jonah, and even Jesus, although the gender is swapped from the original Biblical characters to reframe the messianic archetype through the lens of birth and motherhood. The Noah reference is the most obvious, as that’s where Noa gets her name, and Noa and Mia are both on a “boat” escaping the old world to start a new life.
Nowhere also draws heavily from the Biblical Exodus story where Moses is put in a small raft to escape infanticide at the hands of the Egyptians. He then grows up to lead the Jews out of slavery in Egypt and into the “promised land.” The story of Jonah sees Jonah resist God’s calling to spread his message to a specific land, so God sends a storm while Jonah is at sea, and he’s thrown overboard and swallowed by a giant fish, which takes him to where God wanted him to go. Mia’s initial resistance, her time in the storage container was like the belly of a whale, and there’s even a literal whale involvement in her story as well.
Finally, Nowhere includes some clear parallels to the story of Jesus, the ultimate messianic figure. As a child, Jesus’ family had to flee his home because King Herod demanded all the children in the area be killed, as clear parallel to Mia and Nico’s flight from Spain. A number of the feats accomplished by Mia could be considered “miracles,” some of which are similar to feats Jesus performs in the Bible. Then, finally, she seemingly dies to save her child and is resurrected when they’re discovered. While none of these stories are a direct one-to-one inspiration for the story of Nowhere, the messianic archetype through the lens of motherhood is prominent throughout.
[ad_2]
Source link
Armessa Movie News