The Truthers has what might charitably be described as an anti-ending. In the spaces where all the payoff would be in a more traditional murder mystery, it instead produces significantly more mundane explanations, revealing a string of relative disappointments that feed into the movie’s underlying theme about the connection between grief, loneliness, and the tendency towards conspiratorial thinking. It’s in keeping with the film’s underpinning ideas, but it doesn’t exactly make for a raucous, satisfying climax.
It’s worth thinking about, though, and it’s a chewy enough sentiment for us to spend some time breaking it down. So, let’s go ahead and do that, for the fun if nothing else.
The Gist of It
The Truthers is about multiple interlocking mysteries, most of which turn out not to be especially mysterious. But in general terms, here’s the idea.
Mystery #1: Ruth returns to her hometown after the seemingly accidental death of her mother, Lucia, who apparently fell over and hit her head while drunk in the shower, despite, to Ruth’s knowledge, not being a drinker. Thanks to his deeply suspicious and newly conspiratorial mindset, Ruth begins to suspect that her father, Martin, might have been responsible.
Mystery #2: Martin is obsessed with a pharmaceutical company called Certyx, which he believes is responsible for the disappearance of a local boy named Alejandro, with whom he is becoming increasingly obsessed.
Mystery #3: Relatedly, Martin and his sole ally, Berta, believe that Certyx is experimenting on children on a massive scale and keeping them hidden in tunnels beneath the company headquarters.
Who’s Berta and What’s Her Deal?
Ruth immediately assumes that Berta is some woman that her father is having an illicit relationship with, but her true identity is a lot more mundane. She’s just another nutter who believes the same things that he does.
The problem with Berta is that she has some ex-military skills that mean she can take the fight to Certyx in a genuinely significant way, and more to the point can aid Martin in doing the same. This is what leads us to the dramatic final act, where Ruth races to stop Martin and Berta from blowing up the company HQ.
Who Killed Lucia?
The first anti-twist is that nobody killed Lucia. Her death was genuinely an accident. She got drunk, locked herself in the bathroom, and fell over in the shower. The end.
There’s a little bit more to it, naturally. Lucia had discovered what Martin and Berta were up to in regard to Certyx, which had worsened her drinking and feelings of isolation. Martin had already checked out of the marriage before Lucia died, and his selfish pursuit of “the truth” had contributed to her demise. But he didn’t harm, drug, or kill her, which makes it a bit embarrassing for Ruth that she bonked him over the head with a vase.
Are Certyx Really Kidnapping Kids?
The second anti-twist is that Certyx aren’t doing anything to any kids, at least as far as we know. The whole thing really is conspiratorial claptrap, and all Martin and Berta end up doing is bringing about their own demise. They detonate their explosives, which demolishes the building on their own heads.
To be fair, though, they do inadvertently start a movement that outlives them both. In the final scene of The Truthers, Ruth starts a new life in Madrid, but she’s stopped by a masked protestor who is full of praise for her late father, believing that he’s merely in hiding, continuing the fight in secret.
Despite the fallacy of the whole endeavour having been revealed, people still believe the conspiracy anyway. Of course they do!
What Really Happened to Alejandro?
The third anti-twist is that poor Alejandro wasn’t abducted or killed by anyone. Given that Certyx doesn’t seem to have been up to anything particularly nefarious – outside of the usual scummy Big Pharma stuff – that also means that Alejandro wasn’t kidnapped, experimented on, and murdered.
Instead, he, like Lucia, died in a tragic accident. When Ruth spots his bike on the news and recalls cutting her leg in the lake, she realises that he probably drowned in there. Indeed, his body is eventually recovered, the circumstances of his demise not at all suspicious.
What’s the Point Of All This?
In its ending, The Truthers is drawing an explicit connection between conspiracism and people who are nursing personal reasons to withdraw from reality. Martin was unhappy in his marriage when Lucia was alive, a feeling exacerbated by Ruth’s absence, and following Lucia’s death, he only became lonelier and more unstable. Fixation on made-up conspiracies about a convenient, almost cliched target gave him something to do. It gave him an excuse to withdraw from his own reality and live in one where he was more important.
The teeming throng of people who idolise Martin as some kind of hero proves that there will always be a market of the needy, ready and waiting to believe anything that they feel gives them some kind of unique, insider knowledge about the reality that has become too painful for them in its unvarnished form.
You’re better off sticking to the facts.
