ToeCutter wrote:

Carry-On 2024 Excellent movie that reminds me of a mix of Red Eye (2005) & Speed 1994. Very Entertaining Thriller. There are things that happen in Carry-On that could never happen in real life but if you just go with it then you will enjoy it.

 Spoilers

I know I'm late to this, but that was the whole point. She did resent the house her entire life in it. She resented the life she didn't have and that Hanks didn't give her. She left him and that house to pursue it. I don't think it was meant to be a saccharine "oh, I guess I really did love this place after all." It's meant to be show that once everything is stripped away, there were things to love about the life she had and highlight the tragedy that she didn't feel that way while it was happening. It's a cautionary parable about appreciating the things that matter. Everything Wright let herself build resentment over were things she wouldn't have remembered and wouldn't have mattered. She lived dreaming of the house her husband designed, longing that "that would have been a beautiful house (life)" despite it never being more than a dream and she missed out on loving the house (life) she ended up with.

In the end, when her memory is pretty much gone, she has a moment of lucidity where she remembers the family she had there, the little moments of joy and triumph. She loves her daughter, and she raised her in that house. Had pivotal moments in that room. The tragedy is that she missed her entire life focused on a resentment of the past and desire for the future. Only at the end of her life does she have a moment where her memory is gone and she's free of all the baggage of missed expectations and failed dreams and can have a moment to appreciate the love she shared in that house. To me, the point of this stark contrast is to show how much of a disservice she did to herself by never appreciating the life she had and what she had to be joyful and grateful for.

I see a movie about the ephemeral nature of life with a thesis that life is really more about little moments with people you love around a living room than it is about trying to achieve something you think it ought to be or that you deserve. Sometimes you get that, sometimes you don't. But if you live with nostalgia or resentment for the past and worry or longing for the future, you never appreciate and live your life while it's happening.

The happy couple wasn't happy because they achieved their dreams. They were happy because they really lived in the feeling of love they had for each other. It was time where women couldn't really be anything other than housewives, but the 20's wife found a way to enjoy domestic life and found herself sitting as a partner at that meeting selling their chair. They could have allowed themselves a moment to resent the marketing pivot to LazyBoy from RelaxiBoy, but they chose to just enjoy the success they did have. They were happy and in love when the chair was a crap prototype and success followed.

Robin Wright hated living with her in-laws, not feeling like they had enough space, not fulfilling her career ambitions, not seeing Paris, and it ruined her marriage and caused her to live a life of contempt and longing. She missed all of life's little miracles, like the one with the blue ribbon. Only once it was too late did she realize the things that mattered and stuck with her happened regardless of all the things she didn't get out of life. She loved that house because she loved her family, and that's where they were together. I found it heartbreaking that it's only when she approaches death did she realize she had a life worth loving and enjoying. I'm glad that seems to be what she's carrying with her at this moment, to the extent that she's carrying anything at all, but it's tragic that she never really got to live in that peace and love throughout the years.