Back in the Dark Ages when I was a film studies professor, I had a student take great umbrage at my showing Un Chien Andalou. No, it wasn’t the sliced eyeball or Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Freudian mélange of sex, death, and pianos that got his dander up. It was the sudden conclusion that refused to offer any explanation for the general weirdness that preceded it. “All movies,” he declared with the righteous indignation of the young and ignorant, “should have an ending.” Yeesh, he must have burst ten blood vessels at the finale of The Sopranos. And I hate to think what will happen if he sees No Country for Old Men. His head could explode.
For of course, he wasn’t really talking about an ending per se. Every film receives an ending as soon as the director says, “Cut!” in the editing room for the final time and the picture is locked. Some films just seem interminable. His error was one of semantics (let’s leave aside philosophy for the moment). In his emphatic, Hollywood-shaped opinion, all movies should have closure. All questions answered, all loose ends tied up in a neat little bow. He wouldn’t go so far as to insist all movies should have a happy ending, but then again, narrative closure does offer a measure of comfort and certainty. A romance is either eternal or done for good. Everyone learns something. The war is over. The bad guy is punished. We can enter our houses justified. The end. Certainty is nice, no?
If you have seen this film, go here for an interesting film analysis.
1 comment:
I'm gaining a better appreciation for the end of this film, which I think will increase further once I re-watch the beginning. When we saw it, JPX and I had an absent minded waitress, either that or just really slow, who left us aguishly waiting for our popcorn. I was struggling to keep full concentration on the movie as I listened to everyone around me thunderously crunching, and the voice in my head saying, "where's my popcorn, I want popcorn, and how do those people over there, and there, and there already have food when we haven’t even ordered yet!"
...the power of popcorn, mmmmm it’s good.
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