Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale is a refreshing, charming, stylish, pulpy, and entertaining “bottle movie” that that is one of my favorites of the year for a whole host of reasons. Unlike a lot of other Tarantino-esque, unraveling type noirs, the characters at the El Royale are full of complexity and heart, with the substance to match the movie’s magnetizing style.
One of the primary themes, and the fundamental underlying conflict facing all of the characters, is one of morality. The question isn’t simply who is bad and who is good, but the far more interesting one: “who chooses bad and who chooses good”? Without going full Chidi Anagonye here (incidentally, The Good Place is produced by Goddard), it’s worth taking a look at some of the metaphorical dualities portrayed in the film.
First, the motel itself is a physical manifestation of duality. It is a wonderfully kitschy “bi-state establishment”, with a line drawn straight down demarcating the state borders of California and Nevada (“warmth and sunshine to the west, and hope and opportunity to the east”). The cars driving in straddle the line between the two states, and guests must pick which rooms they’ll stay in: Nevada, or more expensive California (they all choose Nevada). The Nevada side of the lobby has the black carpet, the bar, and the gambling, and the California side has the red carpet and the food. According to the joking conversation in the beginning, Nevada “might rain” while California is “still sunny.” No surprise then, when later on it starts to pour.
The inside of the motel is even more telling. Each room has a hidden side, and the large mirrors in each room are actually one-way mirrors. This revelation is masterfully done, but the implications are meaningful. There is a mirror image, a darker side, the opposite view, to everything.
The characters themselves are also drawn this way. Dwight Broadbeck (Jon Hamm) is an FBI agent pretending to be a traveling salesman; Dock O’Kelly (Jeff Bridges) is a criminal impersonating a priest; Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) is a hippie who doesn’t even bother with making up a fake identity and cover story; and Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) is a hotel clerk living with his own secrets, and who at one point gets half his face blown off and looks like Two-Face for the rest of the movie. Morality is not depicted with any shades of grey, it is binary – two sides of the same coin.
Each person struggles with this. Fr. Flynn is a kindly and sympathetic enough character, but he’s spent years behind bars for a crime he did commit, and lest we forget, the money he’s trying to retrieve was stolen. Miles has done and continues to do terrible things, but is wracked by guilt and strives for redemption (or at least forgiveness) when he sees the priest. Emily is trying to save her sister, but in doing so commits assault, kidnap, and murder. Broadbeck is part of the Hoover FBI regime and all of the ethical implications that come with it, but even in doing his job (illegal surveillance), he sees an apparent crime being committed and can’t help trying to save the victim. All of these characters are trying to do the right thing, or at least figure out what that is.
Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) is interesting. Out of all of them, she’s the only one that’s arguably purely good. When the four sign the guestbook, she’s the only one that uses her real name. Her choice to stay on the Nevada side of the hotel (and at the El Royale at all), is borne of necessity. Her arresting vocals leave everyone speechless; her singing is a symbol of the unadulterated good that is so striking to these conflicted individuals. When she’s sharing how tough it is to make a living as a singer, Fr. Flynn asks why she bothers doing it at all, and she replies, “I ask myself the same question.” Doing good is the same – it’s not done for a reward, and can even feel punishing – why do the right thing at all?
If Darlene is the only clearly “good” character in the story, Billy Lee (a brilliant Chris Hemsworth as a Charles Manson type cult leader) is the the only one that’s pure evil. But he has a charm and charisma and outer goodness, with a beautiful body and enticing words, who is the embodiment of evil inside. He alone is unmoved by Darlene’s singing. Ironically, he’s also the one that best understands the dualism at hand and the power of choice. He demonstrates the power of forced choice, first with the game by the campfire with his cult, and then later on with the red or black game in the lobby. As he admits, he wants to be his own god.
Ultimately, Billy Lee gets to the heart of the matter. You have to choose: “are you good, or are you bad?” But it’s not just what you choose, but having true freedom of choice that matters. The entire situation at the El Royale gets resolved when Miles feels like he has this freedom. After being forced by “management” (whether that’s his dad, the hotel owners, or his military superiors) to do despicable things his whole life, Miles feels that same terrible burden when he has the gun in his hand, but weeps that he can’t do it anymore. It’s only when Darlene whispers to him that it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to – when he has the freedom of choice, even to do nothing – that Miles finally finds the strength to fight back against the attackers and save the day.
There is a lot of interesting stuff here, and much to be said about other themes like prayer, salvation, redemption, but we’ll save that for another day. The underlying, fundamental theme of this movie, is that there is a choice between good and bad, and everything – religion, politics, racism, crime – is a product of that. Unlike in Cabin In the Woods (also a movie about forced choice), here each character has real agency, which is the critical component of morality. It’s best summed up by Jon Hamm’s character praying with his daughter, and he’s told that “and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take” is too morbid, so they instead recite: “and when I wake in the morning light, teach me to do what’s right”. It’s not about surrender or letting go, it’s about your choices.
