occams hatchet had plans to go out this evening, so I'm on duty again.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!
Some of our favorite movies, we can’t remember the exact ending. (Just try the poll if you don't believe me!) Others, like Gone With the Wind are known especially for their endings. Comedy or tragedy, epic or small as can be, animation, documentary or musical, they all come to an end. This diary’s full of spoilers - so be warned!!
Most movie endings aren’t truly a surprise, with M. Night Shamalyan’s The Sixth Sense revelation that the Bruce Willis character is dead being the exception that proves the rule. Usually, movies follow a formula. But sometimes there’s something extra, a little je ne sais croix, like the sparkle from Tinkerbell’s magic wand, or the twitch of Elizabeth Montgomery’s nose on the old TV show, Bewitched.
After Casablanca, all the other endings don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But I’ll toss a some out for your consideration. This week they’re in alphabetical order:
- Alfie (the new one)
Alfie (Jude Law): What’s it all about? D’ya know what I mean?
Except it’s really all about that very catchy, Oscar-winning Mick Jagger/David Stewart song, which starts up as Alfie walks away under the Brooklyn Bridge into the blue-tinged night:
Old habits die hard, old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard, harder than November rain
- Amistad gives a postscript to a pyrrhic victory in the Supreme Court
Cinque (Djimon Honsou) returned to Sierra Leone to find his own people engaged in civil war. His village was destroyed and his family gone. It is believed they were sold into slavery.
- In the Battle of Algiers, every last
terrorist freedom fighter is captured and/or killed in 1957. Success for the French colonial powers. But it starts back up again in 1960. 2 July, 1962 comes Algerian independence due to unstoppable tide of mass movement.
- Before Sunset, the unusually satisfying sequel to Before Sunrise:
Julie Delpy: Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.
Ethan Hawke: I know.
- Chauncey Gardener (Peter Sellers) walks on water in Being There
- Bonnie and Clyde get shot up about as thoroughly as any anybody ever could be.
- It’s better late than never in Brokeback Mountain when Heath Ledger decides he can take time off from work for his daughter’s wedding. A small redemption after a big tragedy.
- John Sayles’ City of Hope has an exquisite ending. A deranged street person takes up the call for help after the son is shot off-hours at the construction site. But since he always yells around, nobody pays any attention to this modern-day Cassandra.
Crazy Street Guy: Help! Help! In the building! Over here! We need help over here! Help! Help! Help! Help!
- One after another, the characters we care for in A Dry White Season are killed by the South African apartheid regime. In the end, we’re left with a township cabbie, and we look down the sights of his gun as he shoots down a brutal Afrikaans torturer.
- The Full Monty ends with, well, The Full Monty. (The musical accompaniment is Randy Newman’s "You Can Leave Your Hat On".)
- William Hurt, the stolid Soviet cop in Gorky Park, a Cold War thriller, lets all the sables out of their cages, and they run free into the boreal forest.
- Leap of Faith is another personal favorite. Jonas Nightgale (Steve Martin) is a con-man/faith healer whose truck breaks down in a drought-afflicted Kansas town. But then a crippled boy really does walk and he can’t cope. He hitches a ride with a passing trucker to flee the scene, and it starts to rain. Martin hangs out the passenger window as the truck drives towards the first light of dawn:
Come on baby. Come on baby, rain! Thank you Jesus! Whoa-hoo!!
- The British have a great literary heritage, and the BBC has filmed lots of them. Their Middlemarch (George Eliot) ends with this voiceover.
Her full nature spent itself in deeds which left no great name on the earth, but the effect of her being on those around her was incalculable. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and on all those Dorotheas who live faithfully their hidden lives, and rest in unvisited tombs.
- "Till death do us part" doesn’t hold sway with Gena Rowland and James Garner in The Notebook. Their love is so deep that they even die together.
- We find how how truly creepy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is in Psycho when his mother’s long-dead mummified corpse is found at the end.
- Rudy (Eric Schweig) memorializes Mogie’s (Graham Greene) death by hurling five gallons of red paint onto George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore from above to close Skins, directed by Chris Eyre.
- Sliding Doors is an OK Gwenneth Paltrow romantic vehicle. Her life follows two alternate paths as she either catches or misses a subway train (the sliding doors), either ditching her creepy boyfriend, or not. But at the end, it turns out she was gonna move on to a new guy either way. Warren Zevon’s terrific song Tenderness on the Block plays, just as the elevator doors slide closed after this:
Guy in elevator: Cheer up. You know what the Monty Python boys say.
Gwenneth: No one expects the Spanish inquisition.
- Some Like it Hot is one of the classics. Jack Lemmon’s in drag is telling millionaire Joe E. Brown why he can’t marry him. (- - Can’t have children! - - We can adopt.)
Lemmon: You don’t understand, Osgood. (Pulls off wig and lowers voice.) Annghww - - -I’m a MAN!
Brown: Well... Nobody’s perfect.
- I really like Tony Scott’s Spy Game with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. Redford pulls off a helluva operation, under the noses of the Agency, while cleaning out his desk on his last day of work before retirement:
Pitt: Operation what?
Helicopter Pilot: Dinner out, sir.
Back at Langley, Redford pulls out of the employee parking lot for the last time just as the guys upstairs get wind of what’s been up:
Boss: There’s been an incident in China.
Steven Dillane puts down his phone: Oh, Jesus Christ.
- In Sullivan’s Travels, Sully swears off serious drama movies and vows to never make anything but comedies, as we fade to a montage of laughing crowds:
Joel McCrea: And I’ll tell you something else: There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.
- Sunset Boulevard
Gloria Swanson: All right, Mr. DeMille. I’m ready for my close-up.
- Thelma & Louise has mid-air stop action before the car’s inevitable crash into the (grand?) canyon, thus eliminating any chance for a sequel.
- One of my favorite movies is Thunderheart, so I try and fit it into any "best of" list. And it’s got a good ending. Ray (Val Kilmer) walks away after saying goodbye to Crow Horse (Graham Greene), stop and takes off his Rolex and gives it to Grandfather. Then finds a ceremonial pipe left on his car seat for him. Drives off to the intersection where he’ll pull onto the fast-moving highway.
- Traffic - Javier (Benicio del Toro in his oscar-winning performance) watches a baseball game. Kids, at night, with floodlights on the playing field.
- The Usual Suspects has a satisfying surprise ending, when we learn the mysterious Kaizer Sose’s identity. Great cast all the way ‘round in this one.
- War Games - wherein teenager computer gamer/hacker Matthew Brockerick helps the WOPR computer learn that Global Thermonuclear War is like Tic-Tac-Toe.
WOPR: GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN
STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.
HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS?
Gen. Berenger (Barry Corbin): Take us to DefCon Five.
All right, I’m done with endings. Now it’s up to you!!