Tear Jerker / Pearl (2022)

• As psychotic as Pearl can be, her anguish when she's rejected for the dance troupe is genuinely heartbreaking.
  • There’s also the added sadness that, for the first time that something bad happens to Pearl, it’s not tied to her psychotic behavior or erratic personality, but simply because of how she looks, since she lacks the “All American” look (and it’s all but outright stated that it’s because she’s of German descent). While Pearl has her flaws, it’s sad that the reason she was rejected was so shallow and reflective of her time period.
  • This also puts her appearance in X in a sadder light. Pearl’s lack of success wasn’t because of her horrible personality, but because she was judged by her appearance by archaic standards. In a way, she was genuinely cheated out of a fair shot of being judged for her talent or personality (which likely would have screwed her over eventually, but at least she would have been judged fairly based on her behavior rather than how she looks.)
• The whole movie counts in a way, due to the ending being largely a Foregone Conclusion. No matter her dreams and ambitions, Pearl is not only stuck on the farm for the rest of her life, but is ultimately fated to wholly succumb into her murderous insanity and die a gruesome, lonesome death at the hands of Maxine decades down the line.
• The scene where Pearl finds Ruth sobbing in her bed. As cruel as she is to Pearl, Ruth is suffering terribly herself: the husband who is supposed to be her partner is now her burden, their family has fallen from prosperity to poverty, and her daughter is not just unhelpful, but actually dangerous.
• Crossing over with Nightmare Fuel. Pearl’s tearful six-minute-long confession to Mitzy, admitting her frustrations with her marriage and that she has killed people, Mitzy understandably backs off and tries to get away, but it’s so heartbreaking how all Pearl truly wanted was to be loved and make something of herself beyond just being a farmer, especially when taking her ultimate fate (getting run over by a truck) in X in mind.
  • To say nothing of Mitzy's fate. She was just trying to be kind to Pearl, and then tries to protect herself by leaving the house after the horrific speech. And all she gets is a brutal murder at her friend's hands. Mitzy's screams for help and hopeless begging for her life are devastating, knowing how kind she was. She deserved better than such a painful death.
• Also crosses over with Nightmare Fuel. After killing Mitzy, Pearl returns to the basement and curls up in her dead mother’s arms, where she imagines Ruth singing a lullaby to her in German. The next scene is a Gross-Up Close-Up montage of Pearl dismembering Mitzy, feeding her to Theda, and preparing the corpses of her parents (as well as the now maggot-infested pig) to look presentable for when Howard gets home, all while Ruth continues to sing in the background. Once this ends, we return to the basement where Pearl imagines Ruth, now alive and well, telling her that she loves her (once again, in German), and she returns the sentiment; the only time we hear her speak in her mother’s native language. It’s the only positive interaction they have in the entire movie, and it doesn’t even happen for real.