Endings Aren’t Easy
For me a great or very good ending is almost half the game. The rest is covered by (a) the famous Howard Hawks dictum about a good film needing “three great scenes and no bad ones,” and (b) the HE rule that a lead character can’t irritate or alienate or piss you off. But a great ending can persuade you to forgive a film for an awful lot of things.
It’s understood that most Sundance films either don’t get or are unable to subscribe to the great ending rule. And I realize, of course, that people would completely reject any Sundance film that tries to imitate the finale of Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment. We all understand that it worked back then, couldn’t work now. And yet this 1960 dramedy ends superbly according to its own terms and standards.
The fact is that none of the Sundance 2011 films I saw between 1.20 and 1.27 had the first clue about how to end their films even half as effectively. Most of them seemed to just stop or wind down or run out of gas.
I didn’t see everything I needed to see in Park City, as noted, but I saw six Sundance 2011 acquisitions that had weak or nonexistent endings, or no great scenes, or a major character who was profoundly irritating.
Gavin Wiesen‘s Homework (Fox Searchlight). Problem: The lead, Freddie Highmore , delivers each and every line and emotion exactly the same way with the same faintly self-amused expression, the same faint intellectual-hipster smile, the same space cadet/distracted-artist vibe, the same glassy-eyed expression. I wanted to see Highmore get hit by an MTA bus.
Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene (Fox Searchlight). Problem: The mildly creepy finale hints at what might be happening — maybe, sorta kinda, probably — but it leaves you up in the air and scratching your head. I walked out saying to myself, “Wait…what happened…?”
Lee Tamahori‘s The Devil’s Double (Roadside). Problem: [Spoiler Warning] Any story about the demonic Uday Hussein is going to create a longing to see him “get his” at the end. And he doesn’t. He just gets shot in the groin area but survives to murder and torture another day until finally getting killed by U.S. troops in 2003. And his double is said to be off in Ireland somewhere. The ending leaves you with nothing.
J.C. Chandor‘s Margin Call (Lionsgate). Problem: It tells a very realistic but highly cynical story about some very smart and selfish Wall Street pricks (including Kevin Spacey‘s half sympathetic character). It ends in a pit of despair, shadows and defeatism.
Jacob Aaron Estes‘ The Details (Weinstein Co.). The ending — or rather a confession scene between Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks — is probably the best thing about this film. But it leaves you convinced of the likelihood that God or fate or whatever is going to drop another piano on Maguire’s head any second.
Drake Doremus‘s Like Crazy (Paramount). Problem [Spoiler Warning]: A film about a very tender and trusting romantic relationship loses more and more energy during the third act. By the time it’s over you’re wishing you’d left at the halfway point. On top of which the middle-aged actors portraying Felicity Jones‘ parents don’t even faintly resemble her. They don’t even look like cousins.
IMO Sasha wrote it best: the last 20 minutes of a movie, make or break the movie. So true. For me, the last 20 Min of True Grit made the movie for me. I was sold.
Ah, The Apartment. The last fully black & white film to win Best Picture.
I think a great ending is worth even more than half the game. You can flounder through most of a movie not knowing if you really like it or not, but if the ending knocks you out, then the movie is a winner. A lot of films don’t work because they start and proceed brilliantly, but can’t sustain it to the last act. It’s very detrimental because a great ending can redeem any weak elements that have gone before, whereas a bad ending tends to invalidate the strong elements, even the whole movie.
Well, Winter’s Bone didn’t even bother including an ending, and that’s up for Best Picture.
God, “Homework” sounds (and looks) irritating. Freddie Highmore? Is there some reason they couldn’t get a mopey *American* kid? Not like he’s a box office draw, so making an American high school dramedy and casting some British dork from Finding Neverland in the lead makes about as much sense as an all-British production going way out of their way to nab Robin Tunney for the lead in a movie about the Royals. Don’t we have enough Max Theriot-Johnny Simmons-Justin Chatwin type D-bags here in America?
And I LOVE Emma Roberts, but she’s gotta watch it with watering down the brand; The girl should be fronting some big chick-horror-romance tentpole a la Seyfried and Stewart, not moping around in all these $5 mopey loner Sundance movies.
Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, etc. Was anyone better at endings than Billy Wilder?
@Chicago48…I thought you were going a totally different direction there. I think the last 20 minutes, aside from that wonderful ride with Rooster and Mattie, is pretty weak stuff. I didn’t like that climax in the 1969 version and I didn’t like it here, either.
I can’t say I liked the ending of True Grit either. The too-convenient ending of Kids Are All Right was its weakest point.
Inception ended just right. Shutter Island and Ghost Writer had good endings.
Worst endings of 2010? Repo Men, The Last Exorcism, Prince of Persia, 44 Inch Chest.
The lame aspects of the ending of “True Grit” would’ve been redeemed if, instead of coming upon the store from the previous scene, Bridges had come upon the guy in the bear suit was who also a doctor.
I love the True Grit ending. That was Mattie’s price for revenge; lonely, one armed stubborn woman.
Unforgiven probably has the best ending ever.
Don’t the TRUE GRITs end differently, or is there an aspect that they have in common?
“That was Mattie’s price for revenge”
Yeah, it’s just that, after watching a whole movie which is in no way about that, it’s really disappointing for the Coens to settle on such an over-done cliche for the final ending emotion. I mean, what was the last western that was made that wasn’t explicitly and primarily about how revenge takes its toll on the revenger and the revengee? Whatever it was certainly pre-dates Clint Eastwood and probably pre-dates John Wayne. I wish that we could take that as a given and dig a little deeper, rather than literally regurgitating exactly the same idea into every western.
Ferrante and Teicher – Theme from the Apartment… needed to hear that just a bit more.
Aw Jeff – you’re no curmudgeon. You love happy endings most of the time, as long as they’re not too predictable.
and why not.
I’ve always thought, if you don’t have a good ending in place for your film, you shouldn’t even bother to start filming. It is really that critical to the success of the film.
Bobby, how many have dealt with a child doing so, and being scarred for life by the endeavor? I really don’t remember that theme of revenge taking its toll too often. At least it isn’t another Western where they play up the aspects of modernity changing the “old West” as they know it.
Yeah, but she’s not a *real* child like the kid in ‘Shane’, she’s an impossibly-wise-beyond-her-years-child, who, in pride and hubris, attempts revenge.
Killing and revenge taking its toll is the theme of every western worth a damn in the past forty or so years. You either have the true grit to live with it or you don’t, but if you live with it, you’re scarred for life. It’s not even subtext, except maybe in ‘Tombstone’.
“At least it isn’t another Western where they play up the aspects of modernity changing the “old West” as they know it.”
that’s not really that common anymore, but, sure, there was a brief period in the late ’60′s where ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Butch and Sundance’, and ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’ all explored that theme, and we’ve seen a lot of echoes of that, and it wouldn’t have fit in ‘True Grit’. But I don’t think any other recent western has really dwelled much on that.
“Don’t the TRUE GRITs end differently, or is there an aspect that they have in common?”
I’m talking specifically about the “action climax” – the run into Chaney on the river, Labeouf saves the day, “fill your hands…”, Mattie falls into snake pit, etc, etc.
Best endings from 2010: Inception, Black Swan, Greenberg…
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