Aahana Swrup
Directed by Mikael Marcimain, ‘An Honest Life’ is a tense thriller in which a desire for purpose leads an impressionable college student down a destructive spiral. The Swedish film revolves around the life of Simon, who, while entrenched in the endless complications of class and capitalism, goes through the motions as a law student at Lund University. However, everything comes to a halt when his paths cross with Max, a rebellious young woman who is a part of an off-campus anarchy group. As Simon becomes besotted by Max and her ideologies, which excel at delinquency and indulgence, he can’t help but get wrapped up in her world. However, soon enough, a heist-gone-wrong undoes the rose-tinted effects of Max’s alluring company, opening the young man’s eyes to the reality of her group of bandits and their intentions. Originally titled ‘Ett ärligt liv,’ this story equips a convoluted take on anarchy and ‘eating the rich,’ thus leaving its characters and their narrative shrouded in intrigue. SPOILERS AHEAD!
An Honest Life Plot Synopsis
Seven weeks after Simon arrives in Lund to pursue his higher education, his life takes an unexpected turn. The day he arrives in the city, he ends up on the wrong end of a violent protest. Consequently, he runs into a group of masked looters who end up saving him from a cop. Initially, he puts the interaction out of his mind, starting to set down the roots of his new life. He rents an expensive room as an off-campus housing option, sharing space with legacy students from wealthy families. Even though he has always wanted to be a writer, he enrolls in the university as a law student to build a reliable future and gets a part-time job to sustain his current situation. However, this life of monotony is interrupted when he runs into Max, whom he recognizes as the same woman who helped him during the protests. Even though he can tell an air of danger surrounds her, he can’t help but be drawn toward her.
Soon enough, Simon agrees to let her take him out on an adventure of cliff jumping. Nonetheless, by his second try, he becomes reckless and ends up severely injuring himself. Fortunately, Max’s sister, Dinah, is able to patch him up and slip him a drug for self-medication. This incident also brings the law student to Grey Gardens, where Max lives with her sister and other housemates. The owner of the property, retired political professor Charles, has long been recruiting students into this small circle of his. The group all share their anarchist beliefs, indulging in stealing from the undeserving wealthy to fulfill their own materialistic hunger. Their ideas, wrapped up in pretty poetry and cynical opinions, naturally attract Simon, who is tired of his own capitalism-born economic status.
Therefore, once Simon begins dating Max, it’s only a matter of time before he ends up taking up the anarchists’ offer of recruitment. Yet, before things can be official, the group needs the law student to prove his devotion. As a result, they put him in an impossible situation, offering him a last-minute choice to help them execute a robbery at a high-end watch store. Once Simon steals the expensive watches for them, he officially becomes a part of the Bandits. Nevertheless, while the first few days are full of hedonistic pleasure, things become tense soon enough. Max and the others plan a heist at the family house of one of Simon’s housemates, Ludvig. Yet, what was only supposed to be a robbery job becomes something more when Robin ends up shooting a housekeeper, Joyce. At the end of the disastrous night, Max forces Simon to return to his old life as an unassuming law student. Furthermore, she reveals that she has blackmail material on him, proving his connection to the heist at the watch store as well as Ludvig’s house. Worse yet, he also discovers that the Bandits have been lying to him this whole time about their identity, leaving him with no safeguards of his own.
An Honest Life Ending: What Happens Between Simon and Max?
Simon and Max’s whirlwind romance crashes and burns at the same speed it had bloomed. From the start, the former was attracted to the young woman’s radical idea and her ability to rationalize acts of civil disobedience as moral choices informed by one’s philosophical beliefs. Initially, when the student arrived in Lund, it was with the intention of sculpting a new identity and potential for himself. He didn’t want to be the same old shade of boring as the rest of his family. Instead, he looked up to Ludvig and Victor, two trust fund babies, who lived large and lavishly. Nonetheless, the odds had always been stacked against him. Even if his intelligence gets him through law school with flying colors, he has no connections that can ensure a lucrative and promising future for him. Simply put, the cogs of capitalism were working hard against him.
Perhaps for the same reason, Max and his group were attractive to Simon. With him, he could rationalize his desire for wealth and luxury while creating clear channels to access them. However, he was never quite prepared to go as far as the others. After the bandits planned a heist at Ludvig’s house, Max seduced the latter and slept with him to steal his home keys. When Simon, who walked in on their hook-up, confronts her about the same, she asserts it was simply in service of the mission. Furthermore, she implies that he would have never stolen the keys himself, which is why she had to resort to drastic measures. If this doesn’t create a clear rift between the couple, the events of the heist, wherein a housekeeper gets shot, certainly do. Simon learns that throughout the course of their relationship, his now ex-girlfriend has been collecting incriminating evidence against him to employ as blackmail material.
Therefore, Simon realizes that all this time, he was simply being played by Max and her group of out-of-control bandits, who were manipulating and exploiting him from the start. Yet, he refuses to take his losses lying down. Instead, he decides to investigate matters. This brings him to the mystery of Henrik Jonsson, a former member of the Bandits. The confounding thread leads the law student to make a golden discovery, uncovering the real names and numbers of Charles’ anarchist group. Consequently, Simon finds himself armed with an invaluable weapon against them. Thus, when Max inevitably comes back to him, seeking out his help, he is prepared for one more run-in with her and her friends.
This time around, Max asks Simon to stay over at a high-end hotel, manipulating him by making tall tales about her separation from the Bandits. In reality, this is just a cover for them to use the law student to sneak into the secure establishment. As it turns out, a billionaire is staying at the hotel, which makes it a prime target for the self-proclaimed anarchists. The heist unfolds as chaotically as their other missions. A front desk worker gets shot, and Simon’s unexpected resistance leads trigger-happy Robin to shoot Gustaf as well. Nonetheless, in the end, everyone manages to flee from the scene. While Dinah drives the injured Bandit to the hospital, Simon is given a moment to corner Max. In the confrontation that follows, he takes the latter’s image and reveals that he knows her and the rest of the bandits’ big secret. This puts them back on even footing with the law student, who is no longer the blackmailed but also a blackmailer in his own right. With the same conviction that he had decided to join the Bandits, he decides to cut ties with them. Ultimately, his and Max’s love story, built on lies and manipulation, has always been doomed from the start.
Did Max Love Simon? Was She Just Using Him?
In the aftermath of Max’s betrayal, one can’t help but question the truth of her character and her actions. Initially, the duo’s romance seems organic, growing from a chance meeting and blossoming from their shared ideas and beliefs. Nonetheless, it’s evident that the woman has an undeniable influence on Simon. The latter’s ideologies remain scattered and impressionable. When he witnesses the luxury enjoyed by his housemates, he aspires to achieve a similar status. Similarly, his head is turned by the easy hedonism of Max and her gang of bandits. Therefore, he allows circumstances to shape his beliefs and ends up trusting the dangerous group of people around him. The beginning of his new and infatuating relationship certainly informs the amount of trust he’s willing to put in the Bandits.
For the same reason, Simon repeatedly overlooks many red flags surrounding the situation. In fact, he even ignores a warning that Charles shares with him about his romance with Max. Eventually, it becomes difficult to believe the latter had genuine feelings for him when she revealed the blackmail material she had collected on him. Additionally, the revelation about Henrik Jonsson, another student who has previously been in an identical situation to Simon, also puts Max’s affections under question. Yet, on numerous occasions, her sister, Dinah, admonishes her for falling in love with a mark. Similarly, her decision to hook up with her ex-boyfriend at the Stiller hotel and kiss him before parting ways with him for good suggests some reciprocation from her side. Ultimately, the reality of Max’s feelings remains a mystery. If viewed in a good light, one can argue that she did feel something for the law student. However, her cynical ideals and propensity for self-serving deceit far outweigh the significance of this connection.
Who Are the Bandits? What’s Their Real Identity?
Initially, the Bandits are introduced into the story as a ragtag group of anarchists who are all about overthrowing the system and indulging in their pleasure in the process. Under Charles’ political tutelage, they have formed an ideology for themselves that casts society’s richest and privileged in an antagonistic light. Furthermore, their beliefs allow them to justify their own thieving ways, insisting they are simply taking back that which should be rightfully theirs. However, apart from these moments of self-serving economic opinions, we never see any other significant political stances from the group. They criticize the systems and institutions that are responsible for class divides and financial disparities. However, they seem to only be interested in using their dissidence to rationalize violence that would benefit them.
The Bandits justify the heist on Ludvig’s house with the logic that the family doesn’t deserve the riches they are hoarding. Yet, they’re stunt only manages to rob the billionaire family of a few trinkets, cars, and cash. Instead, the person who pays the real price for their crime is Joyce, a working-class housekeeper with a family to take care of. Even so, the Bandits spare no thought for her well-being. Although they claim to be anti-capitalist and quote socialist/communist personalities, they exhibit no real actions of either of those economic systems. In fact, they aren’t even faithful to their small self-proclaimed family. As Henrik’s story reveals, Max seems to be in the habit of seducing others to rope them into the Bandits’ anarchism, only to leave them vulnerable and alone. Yet, it seems the other student had seen through their lies. As a result, he managed to dig out Max, aka Lea Valverde, and the others’ true identities.
How Did Charles Die? Did He Kill Himself?
Charles has a peculiar plotline over the course of the story. Initially, it seems like he’s the brains behind the operation, collecting young anarchists to make his own little rebellion. He advocates their way of life and justifies their thieving philosophies. Overall, it seems like he’s the glue holding the family together. Nonetheless, this soon stops being true. Once Max and the others come up with the idea of robbing Ludvig’s house, Charles remains adamantly against the idea. He doesn’t believe the risk is worth the reward and wants to be secluded from the crime. Nonetheless, the others go through with their plans. Once it all goes down, and the professor emerges with an “I told you so,” he only receives violence from Robin for his troubles.
Thus, it quickly becomes clear that even though the Bandits have long stopped being under Charles’ control. Their inclination toward rebellion has compelled them to rebel even against the professor. In the end, the older man helps Simon find his way to Henrik Jonsson. Nonetheless, shortly afterward, he meets his demise. Simon finds the older man in his house with a bullet through his head and a gun in his hands. The narrative leaves the details of this brutal death up to the viewers’ interpretation. The gun in Charles’ hand can be seen as a sign that his death was a suicide, perhaps brought about by the guilt he feels over the Badits’ actions. Alternatively, his death can also be seen as a murder, covered up to seem like a suicide. Given Max and her group’s liking for self-preservation, it isn’t hard to imagine that one of them could have staged this death to cover their own muddied tracks.
Who is Henrik Jonsson? Happened to Him?
Henrik Jonsson is the pivotal piece of the puzzle, who helps Simon out of his own unique predicament. In the beginning, when the latter moves into Grey Gardens, he’s assigned a room once occupied by a former tenant. It isn’t until much later that he discovers the identity of this tenant. Before Simon, Henrik was Max and her friend’s unfortunate fool. Much like the law student, he also fell for the wiles of the anarchist and her way of life and ended up following her to his doom. However, somewhere along the line, he started to grow suspicious of them. For the same reason, he delved into their past and found out their true identities.
Afterward, Henrik hid the information away in a library book, leaving clues for another unfortunate soul to find it if they end up in a similar situation as his. This instinct implies the student must have had a reason to believe that the Bandits are in the habit of repeating this con with others. Ultimately, it helps Simon earn his own freedom from Max and her blackmail. However, it’s never revealed what becomes of Henrik. He has been missing for two years now, and no one seems to have heard from him. Given the Bandits’ history with violence, one can’t help but wonder if the student ended up facing a similar fate as Joyce, the front desk worker, and numerous other innocent people who crossed paths with the Bandits.
Read More: Where Was Netflix’s An Honest Life Filmed?
