Lizzie (2018) Review: The Silence and Ruinous Love of Two Women Split by the Axe of Oppression

Within the confines of suffocating insularity and patriarchal violence, the energy generated when isolated souls recognize one another sometimes accompanies a tragic explosion.

The film Lizzie (2018) reinterprets the aftermath of the brutal murder case that shook late-19th-century America not through the lens of a bloody thriller, but through the desperate lens of deficiency and solidarity between two women.

This article is an in-depth analysis that deeply traces the forbidden desire that sprouted inside the prison of a family, and the structure of the ruinous conclusion that desire brought forth.

🌿 Moments When This Film Penetrates Deeply

• When the space of the home, which should be the safest, feels like a suffocating prison, leaving you desperate for your own escape route.
• The moment when solidarity with another person, with whom you share an unspoken secret, transcends mere emotion and becomes a condition for survival.
• When you want to confront the chilling sense of liberation brought by violence against oppression, and the acute isolation that follows in its wake.

Therefore, the reason to read until the end is to fully understand, from a humanistic perspective, the class and sexual solidarity of two women hidden behind the most mysterious acquittal in history, and the eternal fracture left by its conclusion.

🎞 Notes Before Viewing

This work is based on a real 19th-century murder case and induces a chilling, intense psychological tension in the process of resisting physical and sexual oppression. Rather than focusing on the brutal acts themselves, it is a well-made psychological drama that centers on the emotional shifts and relational narrative between the two characters.

🎬 Movie Information

• Title: Lizzie (2018)
• Director: Craig William Macneill
• Screenplay: Bryce Kass
• Original Source: Based on a true story (The Lizzie Borden Axe Murders)
• Country: 🇺🇸 United States
• Genre: Biography, Thriller, Drama
• Running Time: 110 minutes
• Platform: VOD, DVD
• Cast: Chloë Sevigny (as Lizzie Borden), Kristen Stewart (as Bridget Sullivan)

📖 Lizzie, the Suffocating Violence of Patriarchy and the Beginning of a Forbidden Solidarity [No Spoilers]

Lizzie, a 32-year-old single woman, lives a life of complete social isolation under the control of her dominant and strict father, Andrew. In a patriarchal household that values only wealth and reputation, the only breathing room where Lizzie can find solace is the pigeons she cares for.

Then one day, Bridget, a young housemaid of Irish immigrant descent, enters this cold mansion, and the quiet air of the household begins to shift subtly. Lizzie forms a deep bond that transcends status and class by teaching the illiterate Bridget how to read and write, and their relationship soon develops into a secret love that the family cannot tolerate.

However, when the father kills Lizzie’s cherished pigeons and inflicts sexual violence upon Bridget, driving the two women into an extreme corner, the invisible conflict simmering within the house ultimately accelerates toward an irreversible, ruinous incident.

🔨 The Ritual of Nudity to Break the Cage and the Aesthetics of Concealment

The most intense directorial intent in the film Lizzie is revealed in the murder sequence carried out in the latter half. Before committing the deed, Lizzie prepares for the crime by shedding all her clothes and remaining completely naked.

This nude murder goes beyond a practical choice to prevent blood from staining her clothes; it is interpreted as a symbolic ritual of liberation, entirely casting off the oppression of patriarchal norms and the hypocritical garments of the Victorian era that bound her.

Instead of sensationally consuming the bloody scene of violence, the director focuses on the chilling subjectivity that the oppressed subject finally acquires by executing the oppressor. The cold process of burning the handle and dismantling the axe head to destroy evidence is a segment that visually proves the scale of Lizzie’s rage and her meticulous calculation to exploit the legal system of a male-centric society.

🚪 A Sad Solidarity Forged by the Wall of Class and the Transaction of Silence

The film does not allow the structural relationship between Lizzie and Bridget to remain a simple romance. Although Lizzie is the daughter of a wealthy family, she is stripped of her inheritance rights and autonomy simply because she is a woman; Bridget, as part of the immigrant working class, is exposed to the front lines of physical and sexual exploitation.

The two form an alliance by sharing deficiencies from different trajectories, but they reveal clear class limitations when faced with the extreme event of murder. Even though Bridget holds the axe at the final moment, she hesitates to execute the act due to class terror and moral reluctance, leading Lizzie to seize the axe and execute her father herself.

At this moment, their relationship transforms from a pure emotional union into a heavy transaction of silence called ‘conspiracy to murder,’ demonstrating the tragic irony where solidarity to smash oppression conversely becomes another form of mental prison.

🔎 Reinterpretation of the Ending: Eternal Alienation and Fracture Left by Legal Acquittal

Following a trial, Lizzie receives a verdict of not guilty in court, finally securing the vast wealth and physical freedom left by her father. However, what this ending leaves in their relationship is not a complete union, but an eternal fracture. Waiting for Lizzie upon her release from prison was not the joy of freedom, but a declaration of permanent departure from her beloved Bridget.

Unable to bear the tragedy and guilt of the crime, Bridget leaves for Montana, while Lizzie remains alone in her hometown of Fall River, living a life of thorough ostracization by the local community. What Lizzie gained was the family wealth and independence she had so desperately craved, but what she lost was the partner who uniquely understood her soul.

Lizzie Borden’s legal liberation is not a complete victory, but the beginning of another solitary confinement that must be endured in lifelong silence.

The epilogue, which notes that in her old age she donated most of her fortune to animal welfare organizations rather than humans, can be called an aesthetics of lingering resonance, revealing the lonely dignity and the reverse side of growth of a woman who was eternally alienated from human society and relationships.

💬 In-Depth Analysis and Critical Interpretation of Lizzie (2018)

Q. There are divided opinions stating that the tempo of the film is too slow and static compared to the brutality of the actual incident. What is the intention behind this direction?

Answer: Many viewers expect the slasher film gratification that comes from the sensational material of an ‘axe murder case,’ but this work instead focuses on the breathing of the characters and the stillness. This static tempo is an aesthetic device intended to make the audience fully experience the suffocating insularity of daily life felt by women at that time. On the critical side, points can be raised that the dramatic tension drops, but this was an inevitable pacing adjustment to depict the accumulation process of emotion—asking ‘why they had no choice but to make such a decision’—rather than the outcome of the incident. I invite readers to judge for themselves how they felt the tension rushing through this slow breath.

Q. Is the homosexual romance setting between Lizzie and Bridget a distortion of historical fact, or does it excessively instrumentalize the queer narrative?

Answer: Even in the actual case, various historical speculations existed regarding the relationship between Lizzie and the housemaid Bridget. The film actively adopts this as a modern method of female representation, utilizing it as the most powerful driving force of resistance to create a fracture in the patriarchal system. While some critics argue that excessive fiction was added to the lives of historical figures, the romance in the film functions not as mere spectacle, but as the most desperate form of solidarity through which two marginalized individuals sought to save each other. Whether to view this as a simple distortion or as an artistic reinterpretation that restores the voices of women buried in history remains open to each viewer’s interpretation.

✨ Lizzie, Freedom Standing Alone on the Axe Blade that Split Oppression

Going beyond a mere reportage of a past murder, the film Lizzie poses a question to those of us living in the 21st century about the price that must be paid to protect identity and desire. It exquisitely demonstrates how far patriarchal power and social oppression can destroy an individual’s soul, and how fragile, like glass, the solidarity born at the end of that destruction truly is.

Violence against oppression can destroy a structure, but it cannot reclaim a lost paradise.

👁️ What is the weight of sin you can bear to save someone?

Was the judgment of blood executed by Lizzie in front of the massive wall of patriarchy an inevitable survival strategy, or was it a ruinous handshake that invited another tragedy? Please share your thoughts in the comments below on whether your heart resonates more deeply with Lizzie’s sense of liberation or Bridget’s fear.

🎞️ Violet Screen Recommendation: Other Captivating Female-Led Narrative Works

The Last One (La petite dernière, 2025)

• Reason for Recommendation: A work that received critical acclaim as the winner of the Queer Palm at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It depicts the process of Fatima, a 17-year-old girl raised in a French-Algerian immigrant family, confronting her attraction to women while studying philosophy in Paris. The psychological anguish of negotiating her identity between a strict religious atmosphere, family norms, and a newly awakened autonomous desire is portrayed both sharply and beautifully. It sheds deep light on the intellectual and physical growth of a woman who breaks the boundaries of oppressive tradition and declares her own liberation.

Anaïs in Love (Les Amours d’Anaïs, 2021)

• Reason for Recommendation: It depicts the passionate attraction that unfolds when ‘Anaïs,’ a volatile and spark-like young woman, meets ‘Émilie,’ a married author who is more mature and intellectual than herself. Lightly subverting male-centric narrative structures, it wittily traces how the intellectual admiration between two women, transcending their age difference, evolves into a sensual and autonomous desire. In a completely different vein from the heavy, true-story-based drama discussed previously, it is a charming work where one can appreciate female desire through a liberating and delightful mise-en-scène.