Mark Leonard Winter’s “The Rooster” explores men’s experiences of bereavement. The narrative starts by inexorably following a mystery behind a death, but it falters and settles into painstakingly observing the ramblings of fragile manhood and the sham of masculinity. The men’s vulnerabilities—their mental and physical unreliability—define them against the expectations that are part and parcel of their social roles.
In this film, we meet two men who largely guide the narrative— a small-town Australian police officer and a forest hermit who was once a doting father. Their brief relationship is marked by accepting each other’s failure of what is expected from them. While the young police officer is reticent, the old man’s aggressive thwarting of himself is a sustained exercise in unreliability, for not everything seems to follow what meets the eye.
The Rooster (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
How does the death of an old friend cause Dan to spiral?
The film opens with the ghastly visual of Dan, a country cop, in his car parked in a deserted rural landscape against the backdrop of a dead body hanging from a tree. Dan gets an emergency call but does not figure out what the caller is trying to convey. Suddenly, we are presented with the startling image of a naked woman reaching out to the car with a rooster in her arms. This dream jolts Dan, and he wakes up.
Dan’s morning routine involves feeding his aggressive rooster. That day, Dan is presented with a challenge when his childhood friend, Steve, is reported to be nakedly spying on a girls’ netball team. Steve, clearly mentally unstable, is later found in Dan’s rooster cage, slumped with his friend’s white rooster in his arms. The next day, Dan finds Steve’s dog in the thick of the forest. The dog leads him to a shallow grave, which hamfistedly hides Steve.
Everyone–from Steve’s parents to Dan’s higher-ups– points fingers at Dan for not reporting that he is mentally unstable, for reporting on time could have saved Steve’s life. Dan is put on extended leave till an investigation is made to corroborate that correct procedures were followed in this incident.
When Dan returns home, he has to come face to face with another death. It is the death of his pet rooster, which a fox has killed. Inundated with grief and guilt in the immediate aftermath, Dan retreats to the winter forest where Steve’s body is found. His mental state is in shambles as the same dream repeatedly plagues him. This time, he sees Steve in the dream, clucking like his rooster.
Who is the man in the forest?
On his way to the core of the forest, Dan chances upon a dimly lit shabby hut. It is a hermit’s haven. He watches as the hermit takes a dip in the iron tub by his window. The hermit, however, realizes that Dan is prying on him. He scares him off. The following day, Dan is found. After initial hostilities, both manage to converse over a drink. While talking, Dan understands that the hermit might be the last to encounter Steve alive. But the hermit leaves Dan with an incoherent noise as a reply.
Dan tries to grow proximity– the next we know, they are playing table tennis in the middle of the forest. Subsequently, the mention of Dan’s father makes the hermit livid, harboring serious resentment for the man. The hermit accuses Dan’s father robbed him of his entire week’s pay and throws Dan out of his compound. Later, Dan returns and finds the hermit gone. Dan notices the key to Steve’s quad bike in his belongings. The hermit is seen alongside a waterbody in a dizzy state. Dan carries him to the hospital. Not too long before, Dan is invited by the sight of the man trying to escape the hospital without trousers.
How do Dan and the hermit build their bond?
That night, the silence of the dark is punctured by the hermit’s recounting of what seems to be Steve’s last moments. He says that by the time he found Steve, he had already slit one of his wrists open and proceeded to do the same with the other one. The hermit no longer felt the need to stick around Steve. He left him alone to allow him the dignity to pass away without anyone’s notice.
The following day, over a round of table tennis, Dan, for the first time, explicitly hints at the heaviness that sits around him due to the grief of losing his friend and his beloved rooster. The men encounter their masculinity falling apart and are allowed to be witnesses in each other’s deconstruction. Equally significantly, the hermit is presented as a character being shaped by the environments that surround him in the present and marred him in the past.
The hermit’s convoluted personal life– marred by sexual abuse and bullying at a young age and the masked relationship with his wife and daughter– informs the feverish exploration into the man’s psyche. The secret of the two’s survival in the woods is a thoroughly open one, quite literally– they run around the hut naked, wash themselves, and sing aloud.
In one conversation, Dan’s feverish dream image becomes clear, too. As he opens up about the incident that caused Steve to lose his mental stability, Dan reflects on his mental health and suicidal thoughts. The dream image of the man’s body hanging on a tree establishes the suicidal image of ending his own life.
Reflecting on his transient and lonely life, Dan realizes that there is no witness to his life, one who can fight against his memories withering away in the aftermath of his death. Ultimately, Dan has to leave his friend and return to his own life. He leaves him a walkie-talkie. Like Steve, the hermit takes his promise to allow him dignity in his final moments. Subsequently, the hermit says his name is Mit.
The Rooster (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
How does Dan move on after parting ways with the hermit?
After Dan returns to the town, the hermit opens a communication channel again. He says his name is Tim, but due to his childhood habit of spelling things backward, he prefers Mit. That night, Dan’s Chief visits him at the police station, poring over the files of a cold case. The Chief has been notified of a man spotted around the hospital who he had been after for years before the case went cold.
He shows Dan a photograph of a little girl with her eyes bandaged. Dan recognizes it as the hermit’s daughter. The Chief lifts the lid on Tim’s family. It was Dan’s father who stole money from Tim. However, Tim’s account is partial as he does not reveal the real reason behind the theft. The Chief throws some light as he reveals that Dan’s father took his money and gave the money to his wife to prevent his splurging on drinking. The chief believes that the hermit has killed his wife and daughter and buried them somewhere deep in the forest.
Dan drives back to the hut in search of answers. He confronts Tim about his family’s disappearance, but Tim has no definitive answer. Later, when Dan returns, Tim connects with him over the walkie-talkie and narrates the incident involving his dog and daughter, which caused her daughter to lose one of her eyes. The guilt of being a failing caregiver causes him to recoil, eventually desert his family, and disappear into the forest.
Confessing this, the hermit dies. Dan allows him the dignity of opera music being played on his deathbed. The following day, Dan arrives and finds his lifeless body in the cabin. He opens the forbidden trunk and finds a hidden treasury containing all his daughter’s childhood belongings. He rings up the number jotted behind the photograph. It is Florence, Tim Franklin’s wife. She sounds nonchalant upon receiving the news of her husband’s death from Franklin. In fact, they refuse to be a part of a funeral ceremony.
Dan is profoundly moved by his chance encounter, and this chance relationship with the hermit allows him the dignity of the dead. He buries Tim in the forest and reads his favorite poem, ‘The God Abandons Antony.’ In the end, Dan receives a basket. It is a grey rooster. The rooster’s arrival in his life counters the darkness and the grief-induced strange trance he has been in.
