In Holland's ending, both Dave and Nancy posed the same question: "Was it even real?" The film's opening and closing credits were eerily similar, save for the fact that Fred Vandergroot, Nancy's husband, disappeared from her life. Yes, Nancy killed him... she smashed his head in and blew his brains out with the white clog, which was part of her traditional folk dances.
Director: Mimi Cave
Writer: Andrew Sodroski
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal, Matthew Macfadyen
Holland's ending revealed that Dutch Fred Vandergroot was actually a serial killer for whom all the women in town were nothing more than simple dolls. He played with them whenever he wanted and returned home when he grew bored of his toys. All of Michigan was Fred's playground, at the very least. He had a miniature diorama in his house where he had marked the homes of all the women he had murdered so far. I believe Fred often befriended independent women and then became involved in the relationship before finally murdering them. And while all this was going on, he carved a model of the victim's house, as a sort of trophy for the murder. And what was worse, Fred was effectively indoctrinating his young son, Harry, which was one of the reasons Nancy wanted to protect her son from his father's influence. The fact that Fred was an optometrist also highlights his ability to trick people into seeing things that weren't real.
Early in the film, Fred, holding a knife, told his son to "keep the peace," foreshadowing how he used to kill his victims and dismember their bodies so the authorities would never find a trace of them. Well, classic Patrick Bateman, if you ask me. In one scene, Fred even ordered Harry to cut off a doll's head, foreshadowing the death of one of his victims later in the film.
Speaking of Nancy, she was the ideal wife for Fred and the perfect puppet for the dominant male figure. He never consulted her opinions and made most of the decisions for her. These were the reasons why Nancy often felt suffocated despite believing she had a perfect married life. Nancy couldn't pinpoint the factors that made her feel imprisoned because her cage wasn't physical. It was a gilded cage, decorated to resemble a happy marriage, which provided the perfect cover for his heinous crimes.
No one would really suspect a man who was a loving and openly religious husband, but we all know the reality was very different. One of the reasons Fred kept Nancy and didn't kill her like the rest of his victims was because he could manipulate her and bend her to his will. And whenever Nancy crossed a line, he could easily hit the reset button and reset everything so they could start over. In a way, Nancy was one of the village visitors he had managed to mold according to his Dutch ways and traditions, and she was no longer a stranger or an outsider. Giving Nancy new names also implied that he treated her like a mere pet.
At the beginning of the film, Nancy saw her son, Harry, dressed in the Dutch costume he wore during the Tulip Time parade at the end. Additionally, Harry looked older than he was in the current timeline, suggesting that Nancy had already experienced those memories and might be stuck in a loop where Tulip Time signified the beginning of a new cycle or a fresh start for all the characters in Holland, Michigan.
The constant mention of windmills in the movie further explores the fact that the characters are stuck in a sort of cycle that begins with Tulip Time and ends, well, differently each time, since no one really knows the outcome. In fact, it was these small details that made me think that a lot of what we saw in the movie wasn't real and that Nancy was just making it up. Whether Fred was really a serial killer or if Nancy imagined it all while anxiously searching for a reason to convince herself to leave Fred and escape her stifling marriage.
Furthermore, the curious case of the missing earring at the beginning of the film hinted that someone might be controlling Nancy's life from afar. She had searched almost the entire house for the earring, but it suddenly appeared when Fred discovered that a single piece of jewelry was bothering and manipulating his wife. He wanted his wife to be focused and happy, without any negative thoughts, as stress caused her trouble and made her see things she shouldn't. Or it was Nancy, who from the beginning had been trying to find flaws in her life, no longer wanting it to be perfect.
There's also the possibility that Dave wasn't real and was just a figment of Nancy's imagination to save herself from her caretaker, which could explain why Dave disappeared at the end of the film when Nancy finally broke down the cage and killed the man holding her prisoner. It's as if she were saying to Dave, "I think I'm making this up to play detective." This also raises an important question: whether Fred was actually a serial killer or if Nancy just wanted him so she could play the damsel in distress and rescue herself. Holland's ending evoked Fight Club, implying that Dave and Nancy could be the same person, though many other people interacted with Dave, so I'm not entirely sure about this theory, but let me know in the comments if the same thing happened to you. However, if he was real, he likely left town after such a violent encounter, believing he'd killed a man, and Nancy was just as psychopathic as her husband.
In Holland's ending, Nancy's lover, Dave Delgado, who followed Fred to Greenville to gather evidence against him, caught him red-handed—literally—near a lake house. Now, here Dave accidentally stabbed Fred, and shortly after the confrontation, Fred fell into the water, suggesting he wouldn't survive. But the man returned, convincing Nancy that Dave had lied to her.
It was obvious that Nancy no longer wanted a hero in her life. She didn't want Dave to save her from her miserable life and wanted to take charge, so she wanted to kill Fred with her own hands so she could have closure. She wanted to tear down the walls of her prison herself, and that's probably what she did when she spoke out against her captor and finally killed him in the car. By killing Fred, she finally found a way out, but she still didn't know if she was truly free or had simply fallen into another great prison outside of Fred's dollhouse. It could be that Nancy was still a prisoner of Tulipland, except that Fred wasn't around to control their lives. Meanwhile, Dave, who suddenly disappeared after a head injury, likely fled the land and returned to his place of origin.
Obviously, when a movie tries to almost turn an object into a motif throughout its runtime, it has to mean something, right? If I had been Dutch, I suppose I would have been able to come up with a better explanation for the tulips and the festival, but here I am, trying to explain the symbolism as best I can. I believe the colorful tulips maintained the appearance of a perfectly happy life in Holland, Michigan, preventing the residents from seeing the flaws in their society.
These colorful, picturesque flowers hid the town's ills, much like Nancy and Fred's perfect portrait, where you couldn't see the cracks in their marriage. But the devil is in the details, like the missing earring or the subtle grooming. A garden full of tulips is everyone's favorite spot, but if one were to sleep beneath it, it could be deadly poisonous, because at night, these beautiful-looking plants release carbon dioxide. And this could be why Nancy often felt suffocated and wanted to fight the tulips in her life, so she could finally breathe fresh air. Yet, the question that still lingers is: Did Nancy find her freedom? I think so, at least in her own mind, she erased the demon from her life and was no longer a prisoner.
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