Breaking the Cycle: A Call for Change

The highly anticipated movie “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s popular novel, is putting a spotlight on domestic violence.

The movie follows a florist named Lily, played by Blake Lively, who’s chasing her dream to open up her own shop. Co-star and director Justin Baldoni plays Ryle, a neurosurgeon who seems like a nice guy but turns abusive. Baldoni didn’t initially plan on casting himself in the movie, but an email from Hoover encouraged him to take on the role of Ryle.

“I was looking for movies that could be commercial and speak to the human experience,” Baldoni said. “I had never read a romance novel. By the end of the book, I couldn’t even read the text on the page because I was crying so much.”

Baldoni explained that Hoover’s novel, which sold 6 million copies, was inspired by her mother, who had a similar real-life experience as a victim of domestic abuse.

“She was Lily Bloom, and I just thought if this could affect me in this way, then I could only imagine what it could do for women and people who are in this situation all over the world,” Baldoni said. “All of us have a situation or a pattern that we need to end the cycle of.”

He hopes the movie helps create change. Too often, Baldoni said, people ask, “why did she stay?” when referring to a woman in an abusive relationship, whether in real life, a book, or a movie.

“We need to be asking ourselves, why do men harm?” he emphasized. “And that was the big thing for me. What I learned more and more is that these women who experience this every single day, there’s real love there. There’s charm. There’s charisma. There’s passion. There’s this belief they can be better, and it’s not so simple.”

Baldoni worked with No More, an organization dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence, to create an honest reflection of what women experience.

Baldoni hopes “It Ends With Us,” which premiered Tuesday, helps to create a safer world through compassion and empathy. He said he wants men to go see this romance movie and take accountability in their lives after watching it.

“I want men to go to the theater and, in some ways, see a version of themselves. You have two very different characters. Both of them, in Atlas and Ryle, have had past trauma,” he said. “One handles it very differently than the other, and my other hope is the men who have not done the work to heal, if they see bits of themselves in Ryle, have a chance to step back and say, ‘You know what? I don’t want to blow up my life. I don’t want to hurt the person I love the most.'”

Source: CBS News