criterionforum.org

I meant identification with Michelle moreso in terms of the dynamics between Teddy and her. While she's a corporate CEO that speaks largely in the first half like a hostage negotiator in rather flat de-escalating phrases (which I thought was one of the comedic highlights of the movie because she seems to be completely unconcerned with her own well-being, almost like she's talking to Teddy on the phone while he holds a third party captive), Lanthimos is clearly pulling back the layers as the film progresses to reveal more and more of Teddy's violent side and Michelle as the reasonable one. This is most apparent where Lanthimos makes Michelle a surrogate for the audience as she walks in on the severed body parts and records of Teddy's past victims, having her discover it at the same time as the viewer. Lanthimos I think is being quite clever here, because he, in my mind, shifts the viewer's trust and alignment from Teddy to Michelle with that scene (if not before), only to pull the rug out from the viewer with the final reveal.

And that ending, with Michelle looking upon earth, is I think exactly as Sausage puts it, inviting the audience to take part, to condone her action.

I don't think Michelle is possible to really "know" as a character, since her obfuscation is the point, but I do think Lanthimos gives her an arc that the viewer is meant to take part in and sympathize with. Whether Lanthimos meant that sympathy to simply be a gotcha moment once she's revealed as an alien, or if he intended a deeper takeaway of questioning humanity's right to continue I can't say, but I think there's plenty within the film intended to sway the audience toward Michelle's decision.

Several times the cop is hinting at having done something to Teddy when he was his babysitter.
Teddy’s character can be read for what he is, a misogynist loner who makes his own reality by believing conspiracy theories he reads online and in self-published books. Being a victim of corporate evil could be a factor, at least to a certain extent, that made him that way. There is this flashback where we can see that the mother wasn’t the guardian of common sense either. So Teddy might have been indoctrinated early on in his life.

And then there was the babysitter (now cop) who probably abused Teddy as a child. The abused often becomes the abuser.

All in all I found it a bit difficult to see Michelle as the embodiment of corporate evil because she clearly was privileged and well educated but not dislikeable. She did what most people would try to do in order to survive. She is the personification of a beautiful, most successful (cover of the Time magazine) and ultra-rich woman – the perfect projection screen for hate and envy from those left behind socially. She certainly has her skeletons in the closet but other than the failed experiment with the mother we don’t get to know that much about her personally.

Teddy once says that he has no friends but Don. He had to care for the mother, he has no partner but he has a job, a house and during work we can see that he has a sense of justice when trying to help the woman (which admittedly is a bit ambivalent). What we don't get to see at all is where he took a wrong turn (of course, in the end it wasn't and he was the only one right) and where he learned about the aliens, the ship. His storage full of body parts, alien or not, shows that he was obsessed and deeply disturbed.