When Three Became a Promise, Not a Title
Prior to the release of Three, the early conversations surrounding the film were peculiar. People were generally of the mind that the film was going to be a straightforward thriller with one major twist. The trailers arteficially emphasized “three people, three secrets” and suggested that the third reveal would change the story. Enthusiasts, speculating around the core mystery of the film wrote “Which three?”, “What connects them?” and proposed elaborate timelines leading to consequences of “Character A is the betrayer” and “Character B is really someone else under disguise” and other minutiae.
However, that expectation was the very thing that shaped the film’s identity. It wasn’t just named Three. It was also a riddle of sorts. Instead of dispelling that impression, the filmmakers chose to lean into it. In interviews, the director suggested that the “Three” was a triad of larger philosophical constructs: truth, memory, and guilt. The ambiguity of that statement was strong enough to evoke conjecture, and the promise of emotional payoff was a beacon.
So, when the film became available in theaters or on a streaming service, audiences were primed for elaborate constructs of character puzzle boxes. This was surprising for many, since the film was ostensibly about the implications of three for each of the characters.
The Burden Each One Carries
The focus of Three is its three main characters (A, B, and C). Each carries a past, a secret, a moral compromise, and something personal they want. Story-wise, they seem to run parallel to one another after an initial stage — they don’t know each other at first, or their connections are oblique — but gradually, you come to realize that they share a wound.
The first character carries the burden of an earlier choice: an accident, perhaps, or abandonment. Their arc is about silence. Their initial scenes are all about routine: the office, the commute, the photographs. Their are is frozen in time a frame. Everything is well polished but their eyes and spirit are locked with something aching, something wanting, something screaming to tell the world. Their emotion is concealed behind a masterfully polished frame.
Character B is tied to a memory. They might have suffered loss; tried to rebuild, but a ghost still beat in their heart, shadowing their every step. B’s arc moves from a frozen time, a past to face and the spirit of a child, to a confrontation they have long tried to disguise. B’s journey is about the avoidance of places, old ties, and broken friendships.
Though Character C’s role is limited, they seem almost peripheral. Their narrative is the gradual slow reveal. C has been waiting, watching, mistrusting, and perhaps forgiving when none had been offered. You sense they might be an antagonist, then realize they are not the villain. Their pain is the gentler, quieter kind; hidden, not behind the dramatic scenes, but in small, unassuming acts.
What makes Three more than a multi-perspective drama is how these arcs intersect. At a certain mid-point, one reveal drives all three characters to rethink decisions they made in isolation. Deeply buried secrets rise to the surface and, because the film demands empathy, the characters are judged, not the audience.
If the story of Three carried a symbolic weight, the director used visual cues and repeating motifs to complement it. Consider the Mirrors and Reflections motif. When a character looks into a mirror, their reflection is slightly off — perhaps the angle, the light, or the glass is blemished. That might suggest fractured identity. You see A brushing her hair before a mirror-shot that flickers with a shadow. Later that same mirror is used again in another pivotal moment of confession.
Setting triads: three doors along a hallway, three candles in a room, three benches on a corridor. These instances of “groups of three” appear in scenes in contexts in which they are easily overlooked – they accentuate the concept of unity and of fracture.
Shifts in color tone: Scene depicting the world of Character A at the beginning might employ cooler-tone shades, blue and gray colors while scenes depicting Character B are cast in warms tones. During the climax, the lights and color grading are altered so that the two worlds are perceived as closer and we become the audience for the shared emotional context.
Silence more than dialogue: There are moments wherein none of A, B, or C speak – hands are clasped, doors are creaking, phones are unanswered, and silences grow. Those silences become part of the emotional register silence = equally what is unsaid.
These symbolic silences are what makes Three a film that begs for a second viewing. Small gestures leave an unprecedented weight that makes a second viewing more valuable along with the symbolism.
When actors bring their lives into the frame.
The real life contexts of the actors entails bleeding into their characters which makes the emotional resonance of the film Three that much more profound.
Consider, for example, an actor in role A, who, as we may describe, recently experienced a personal loss, a sibling or a close friend. In interviews with the press, they suggested that the scene in A where they expressed guilt, was for them an albeit cinematic impulse, a pinch of that loss, and that every time they recorded a take for the scene, there were memories of that loss that lingered, that made them pause. That loss was and is still, accessible. That is the vulnerability A captured in the quiver of their voice, in the way their eyes sometimes lost focus and in a few moments of silence that followed a take.
With regard to the actor for B, perhaps there was media based career shift under way, a move from the buoyancy of makers of Mittwoch to the sobriety of the makers of Friday. In this context, as you pointed out, the shift in the role of B in the performance of Three, where they shifted from denial to a place of confrontation. Some fans noted, as you pointed out in discussion forums, that B’s performance “felt lived in”, as if the actor were drawing from years of small disappointments, in prior, perhaps unsuccessful, and lighter films.
In an interview, an actor C might have stated that there are times when he felt invisible in real life and didn’t get the attention he deserves, unhappily going from a supporting role to a lead role that carries an emotional burden. In a pre-production conversation, he told the director that he understood C’s silent anguish, and that the director’s vision and sensitivity for C’s role informed the scenes in which C gazes at the others from behind a window and practices a confession in front of a mirror.
This is the type of blending that allows odyssey to capture the emotional friction that gives the narrative its power. The performance, at times, manifests an emotional quality that suggests an underlying sentiment of “this is not pretend.”
What Went Wrong, What Got Lucky, What Stayed Hidden
All the attention that went to the making of three hid a story that is a part of the entertainment industry.
In the case of three, the casting change was made to shift the story, where an actor (let’s say Actor B) was meant to play a different role and was switched to this role a week prior to shooting. This was due to the perceived lack of chemistry between Actor A and Actor B during the early readings. This alteration in casting also required the refocusing of some scenes as the tone change required different emotional cues.
The scenes were planned for shooting at an isolated place — perhaps an ancient home, rural township, or some quaint coastal metropolis. Two weeks before the shooting schedule would permit the location to be used, the weather became unexpectedly rainy. Consequently, some scenes had to be re-shot in dull, overcast conditions where sunshine had been planned. Several weeks later, the director said in press interviews that the grey skies had, in fact, enhanced the film’s somber quality, although it had originally irritated him.
Choice Not to Include Dialogue: There existed several different variations of the emotionally charged confession scenes, including Director’s Cut interchangeable confession scenes. During test screenings, longer versions of confession scenes tended to hit the mark worse, as in the case of Character A, whose confessional monologue was extended to include more detail. As a result, for final scenes, lavish confessions were rendered silent, paring down to micro-expressions and faceless glances. One of the actors (Actor A) eventually found it frustrating and bore the silent weight of abandonment, although later affirmed in interviews, for the “beauty and lean quality of the film,” the result was better, given the tougher emotional state to hold. Defended, the challenge of pain was “under stated.”
Proximity of Fan Theories: After the trailer dropped, one fan segment held a psychological angle speculating that A, B, and C are actually fragments of the same person’s psyche, for which the director, in a later Q&A, stated, “that’s not true — they are separate people,” smiling, “but I won’t stop you from watching it like that.”
Music and final scene cut: In editing, the team replaced the final scene’s background score from a gentle piano to a solo violin. This changed our interpretation of the last shot — listener-viewers on fan forums discussed which version was more emotionally impactful. The composer later confessed to preferring the piano version, yet the director kept the violin.
Through these backstage tremors, Three has gained depth —in every change, every sacrifice, and the little disagreements that lie just beneath the surface.