I just got done watching Bugonia, and as is par for the course for any Yorgos Lanthimos film, I have a lot to say. But I mostly wanted to comment on a single point relating to the film's (presumed?) commentary on morality, that I didn't see represented in any of the reddit threads that I scoured after watching the movie. (Spoilers ahead!)

The entire premise of the film rests on the question of whether Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is correct about his conspiracy theory that Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien sent down to do harm to humanity. As the film goes on, we discover that Teddy, whose mother is an alleged victim of alien experiments, has gone to extremes to unravel the truth, enact some form of justice, and ultimately save humanity. These extremes involve kidnapping, torture, and killing of other supposed Andromedons. Lanthimos keeps you guessing as to whether he's correct or just crazy.

If Michelle is an alien, then Teddy is (at least to some degree) a hero -- a lone dude fighting to protect his fellow human beings, despite being an outcast, and despite having been subjected to some of the more horrible aspects of humanity himself (e.g. his childhood experience with his babysitter). But if Michelle is not an alien, then Teddy is a terrible person who has done some truly horrible things. But what dawned on me after the film was that it seemed kind of ridiculous to pin whether he was good or bad on a truth that was outside of his control and which he could not know with 100% certainty. The key point is that he put in the effort to try to understand that truth, and acted morally given his understanding of the world.

The same can be applied to a lot of social dissonance that exists today. Taking climate change as an example, there are people (like myself) who believe that man-made climate change exists and that we have a moral responsibility to try to avert it. And there are people who believe that it doesn't exist (or that it's inevitable and not man-made), and that we're acting immorally by curtailing jobs and industries in our attempts to address it. Both parties seem to be worlds apart in what they believe is moral and how they choose to act. But I think it's important to recognize that most people (besides a subset of truly evil people, which I won't deny exist) want the same thing: safety and security for themselves and their fellow human beings. How to achieve that safety and security depends on what you believe is true. But as is the case with Teddy, I guess it means we have some moral responsibility not just to react to the world as we see it, but to seek an accurate understanding of the world before we react to it.