Most Memorable "Open" Endings in Cinema

“Open” endings can make a profound statement about the human condition and about the absurdity of existence, they can leave an audience contemplating for days, months, even years about their significance … What are some of the great “existential” endings in cinema history?

I’ll kick it off with a few of my favorites:

- Antonioni: “L’Eclisse” (1962), “Blow-up” (1966), “Zabriskie Point” (1970), “The Passenger” (1975),
- Rafelson: “Five Easy Pieces” (1970)
- Hellman: “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971)
- Ming-liang Tsai: “Wayward Cloud” (2005)
- Resnais: “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961)
- Bergman: “The Silence” (1963), “Persona” (1966)
- Bunuel: “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972)

Wait wait wait, your user name is “Antoine Doinel,” you’ve started this thread, and you didn’t mention 400 Blows in your first post? Sacrilege!

I personally like the going-to-be-a-sequel-oops-actually-we’ll-just-leave-it-insane-and-open-ended finale of Sword of Doom.

Haha! I was trying to block out my painful childhood!

Truffaut followed up with 4 other films about Antoine Doinel so not really open ended … but if you take the film as a stand alone, then most definitely it is one of the most unforgettable endings in cinema history!

- Haneke: “Caché” (2005)
- Bunuel: “The Phantom of Liberty” (1974)
- Truffaut: “Fahrenheit 451” (1966)
- Rafelson: “The King of Marvin Gardens” (1972)

Agree with all the above and add: Jim Jarmusch Down By Law, Stranger Than Paradise.

Down by Law? Really?

The opening and the ending scenes of Fires of the plain makes this movie a masterpiece!

Taxi Driver. Antoine nice pick with two lane blacktop.

Yeah Down By Law. A strange mood of open road, forking paths.

I guess I have a different understanding of an open ended movie. Road movies are a different beast I think and considering Benigni did get closure and that Waits and Lurie are road hog archetypes it just seems natural that they’d be like ‘hey fack you’ and go down the road.

I put another vote in for Haneke’s Cache… another for Taxi Driver… Close Encounters (yes)… and The Science of Sleep. Hell, they left me thinking where they’d go and how it would end up.. no matter how inevitable some things feel.

Yeah they need to be films that leave you restless and edgy! Films that make you stay up all night arguing about them, or reaching for your heavily underlined copy of Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” haha!

- Lynch: “Lost Highway” (1997)

Wouldn’t you say that the majority of Lynch’s film are open ended.

For sure, but “Lost Highway” has a particularly memorable ending and created an “endless” amount of debate, most notably with Roger Ebert who was on the point of self-destructing like Alpha60 in “Alphaville”.

HAHAHA! Nice reference Antoine. But I’ll ride with Bronc on this one and say that Lost Highway was not just open ended; it was open everything.

Assayas’ Irma Vep had a brutal open ending… it’s probably the thing that made me love the movie the most. What’s the fate of the movie? What’s the fate of the director? What’s the fate of Cheung? The best of open ended movies are when all these questions leave you rattled. Never confused though. You’re left scratching your head, in a bad way, when the film cut out the ending cuz it had nothing left to say.

I don’t know, I think Lost Highway is actually more “logical” than people think if you focus on it as a psychological study into masculinity; the main character’s intense jealousy drives him insane, so everything ultimately is being created/altered within his mind … this is not to say the film can be completely summarised, it certainly leaves many questions unanswered and is memorable for that exact reason.

Yes, “Irma Vep” is great, Jean-Pierre Leaud is awsome! But it’s so hard seeing him old in films, particularly in “The Dreamers”.

Cronenberg definitely needs a mention here, “Existenz” (1999) and “Spider” (2002) both have provocative endings.

Michael Haneke’s Hidden (2005) for me; I watched this with my family and the amount of frustrated debated it created was unparalleled.

“Yeah they need to be films that leave you restless and edgy! Films that make you stay up all night arguing about them, or reaching for your heavily underlined copy of Satre’s “Being and Nothingness” haha!”

One man’s open road is another man’s existential crisis. It’s not where you begin, it’s where you begin again.

- Chabrol: “L’Enfer” (1994) – Unforgettable ending … that’s right there wasn’t one! Haha! I saw it 10 years ago so I can’t remember exactly what the title says at the end but something like “Without end”. It totally stunned me when I saw it in the cinema.

Memorable? Hitchcock’s The Birds ending.

“This is CHINATOWN Jake”

Roman Polansky’s Chinatown ending…

I am not sure if this can rank among the most memorable open endings of Cinema, but one of the endings that very immensely affected me was the ending of “Half-Nelson.” I thought it was a very naturalistic ending; it conveyed a message and ‘some-what’ a change in the characters, but also nothing was neatly tied-up and explained, and the future of the protagonists was hugely left to the imagination of the audience… Though, I must also say that I am bias concerning since movie, since I really really like this movie and identify hugely with the struggles of its characters…

i once had a scratched VCD of Masters Of The Universe and it kinda stopped when He-man entered the portal to go home….does that count?

HAHAHAHA! classic

Peter Weir’s classic “Picnic At Hanging Rock” (1975) is probably one of the most famous open endings in cinema.

Alain Resnais’ La Guerre est Finie

Nice Gabriel, I really like “La Guerre est Finie”! It’s a brilliant piece of cinema! Sacha Vierny’s beautiful cinematography, Giovanni Fusco’s haunting score and Resnais innovative “future tense” montage sequences make it a landmark film and the ending is very fittingly left “open”, even if we have a pretty good idea what may happen.

The use of super imposition of Yves Montand in the car on his way to the Spanish border and Ingrid Thulin walking down the corridor at the airport on her way to save him is very effective. It reminded me of Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” when the actual criminal and Henry Fonda’s faces are superimposed over one another! It’s an absolutely powerful moment and an incredibly masterful one!

Polanski’s KNIFE IN THE WATER, Penn’s NIGHT MOVES…

My own private idaho, can you tell me what is going to happen to that young man. I love how the movie is bookended perfectly starting were it began which is common but the way van sant showcases the road and the full circle aspect of finishing were you started off is set up beautifully.

I watched “Idaho” again recently and was still impressed with it, yeah it’s a fitting “open” (road) ending. The criterion dvd has some nice extras which explain that Van Sant actually shot more footage for the end which revealed that it was his “brother” who picks him up at the end and drives off with him, but they thought the tone was wrong and cut it out, which was of course the right call. Sorry if that ruins the open ending for you! haha!