View it
how you like – professional, friendly, romantic – the connection between Jyn
and Cassian is one of Rogue One’s
highlights. Considering the very limited
timeframe in which the film is working and the understandably-fraught dynamic
at the start, it’s a huge credit to both the writing and Felicity Jones/Diego
Luna’s performances that I completely buy where Jyn-Cassian end up compared to
where they begin. Spoilers ahead.
As things
get rolling on the strictly-business end, Jyn and Cassian’s beginning is
already kind of fluid. Forcibly
recruited to help the Rebellion, Jyn is busted out of Imperial custody and
handed over to Cassian to assist with his mission. Neither trusts the other, but neither fully distrusts the other, either – when
Cassian sees that Jyn has appropriated a blaster from somewhere, he orders her
to hand it over but changes his mind after listening to her reasoning. On Jedha, his “head down, follow my lead, and
don’t screw it up” brusqueness softens pretty quickly when everything hits the
fan. As the city explodes in violence,
both of them are given a closeup demonstration of the others’
capabilities. Jyn rescues a young girl
and lays an impressive smackdown on some Stormtroopers, and Cassian shoots a
member of another rebel group to keep Jyn from getting killed in the rebel’s
crossfire.
We see
this a lot with these two, an ebb and flow between trust and distrust, leaning
on one another and jockeying for authority.
Of course, everything is further (massively) complicated by the fact
that, unbeknownst to Jyn, the mission to find her father is actually a mission
to kill her father so the Empire can
no longer use him in the construction of the Death Star. When that secret comes out, it’s predictably
horrible, and everything that’s hesitantly built up between Cassian and Jyn
seems to get washed away in the wake of this betrayal. Naturally, it helps that Cassian doesn’t end
up being the one who kills Galen (he points out how he couldn’t go through with
obeying his orders,) but more so, I think it helps that Jyn isn’t the only one
of the two with a grievance to air. In
the argument between them, I’m impressed with how much the balance of sympathy
tips towards Cassian as he needles her for having had the luxury of ignoring
the Empire’s crimes until she had a compelling reason to join the fight,
reminding her that he and others like him didn’t get that choice. Despite Jyn’s efforts to keep focus on
Galen’s death and the Rebellion’s hand in it, she can’t fully ignore Cassian’s
charges.
In light
of this, it makes sense that Cassian steps forward to stand with Jyn when she
realizes that they have to get the Death Star plans themselves. It’s hard to say how much of this is down to
Cassian’s admission of his sins committed in the Rebellion’s name, Jyn’s
recognition that this is her fight, too, or the knowledge that the mission is so
much bigger than either of them, but for the rest of the film, they’re
basically a well-oiled rebel machine.
They tag-team the job of organizing and rallying the soldiers who’ve
volunteered to go with them, they (and K-2) do a fine job of infiltrating the
Imperial archive, and as danger looms, there’s a wonderfully-equitable air to
how they both fight. Though each tries
to protect the other, neither loses faith in the other’s ability to hold their
own. When Cassian falls, Jyn’s
determination carries her through with a heavy heart, and when, at the last
moment, it looks like her luck may have run out and it will all come to
nothing, he reappears to give her the final chance she needs to succeed.
Battered
but victorious, they lean on one another as they stumble out of the facility,
wondering if any of their friends are still alive. They don’t know what happened to Bodhi,
Chirrut, and Baze, and they never will, because once outside, they see the end
of the world rolling toward them. A kind
of calm overtakes them, and rather than scrambling for an escape route they
won’t find or railing against a demise they can’t avert, they kneel on the
beach and wait, holding one another to brace themselves against the blinding
light that’s about to envelop and consume them.
Together, at the very end. I find
it so beautiful.
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