Two endings that opt for majestic serenity: Martel’s HOLY GIRL and Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
I agree with Chinatown and Jules and Jim…left me disillusioned…
I’ll mention two… I found Mulholland Drive’s ending stunning, so much so that I immediately rewatched the film and was convinced that it was brilliant.
Second, I originally saw The Sixth Sense in a theater on the day of its release. Though it may seem old hat now, I must confess that then, it was the one thing that I did not see coming. It left me considerably disturbed.
best endings ever
1. there will be blood “im finished”!
2. a clockwork orange “i was cured all right” (then quickly going to singing in the rain)
3. apocalypse now “the horror”
4. wanted “what the fuck have you done lately”
very awful tragic (but nessesary) endings ever
1. american history x
2. the deer hunter “one shot”
and another to add to non-tragic a scanner darkly
Definitely Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and There Will Be Blood
Revolutionary Road. Standing on the carpet. Looking out the window. “I think I need help.”
then
Revolutionary Road. Kathy Bates is talking. Her husband turns down his hearing aid. Silence.
It hurts so much
Spoorloos aka “The Vanishing” has one of the most heartbreaking endings ive seen.
HM to La Haine
The ending of Old Yeller was hard to take – I wanted a ‘happy’ ending when I saw this as a kid. Now, any kind of ending that isn’t happy is usually more satisfying.
Il n’y a qu’un, mon ami – Jeux Interdits / Forbidden Games. D’accord?
Oh yes, A Talking Picture. And Gordon, oui, d’accord pour Jeux Interdits.
The ending of Forbidden Games. Heartbreaking.
I’m surprised so few people have mention Elephant.
Elephant has the most disturbing/traumatic ending of any movie I’ve seen. Van Sant spends the whole movie bringing you slowly into the dreamlike, slow-motion world of this high school and then he almost literally blows it all up. The fact that it has happened in real life and sadly will happen again no matter what we do makes it an even larger impact.
(It’s about a school shooting for those who have never heard of Elephant)
Vertigo and Day of Wrath are the first two that pop into my head.
@Jim
good call on elepahnt
People who havnt seen Irreversible often think its some awful, terrifying experience. Its a great movie and the violence is terribly overrated, many other movies are much worse!!
Traumatic? Perhaps I might include Deliverance, Tenebrae, Psycho, Seven, and Blue Velvet.
Dramatic? Perhaps I might then include La Strada, The Great Train Robbery, City Lights, Arabian Nights, Solaris (USSR film), and The 400 Blows.
Evan, I’ve never seen anything as violent as that guy getting his skull pulverized into hamburger in Irreversible. And if there’s a more graphic rape scene out there, I don’t want to see it.
Always: the donkey’s death in AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (nor was it easy watching that “Little Fly” roll into the water a couple of years later).
THE PASSENGER, of course.
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE always grabbed me, against my will, trying so hard to be unromantic. But there you go …
Someone had mentioned touching end credits. The end of Merci Pour le Chocolate w/Isabelle Huppert weeping on the sofa—and it goes on and on as the credits role. It’s devastating.
DOOM GENERATION
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
I believe the ending of John Sayles Limbo is outstanding, the ending truly makes you think about eveything you’ve just seen.
Here’s one for you……..
The lap-dissolve, dream sequence in Los Olvidados, wherein the impoverished, Mexican mother brings diseased, maggot-ridden meat to her famished, young son – it’s the only meat she can afford.
I saw Los Olvidados almost 60 years ago, and every couple of years since then I have awakened screaming in the middle of the night, recalling this.
Just now finished watching La Haine for the first time
Damn
la regle du Jeu
au hasard balthazar
lancelot du lac
the wild bunch
a short film about killing
the boys (an aussie film worth seeing)
passion of joan of arc
night of the living dead
ordet
come and see
ivan’s childhood
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Ivan’s Childhood
400 Blows
Sunset Boulevard
Citizen Kane
It may not be the most traumatising end, but the most traumatising end to a film I have seen recently is Hunger. The scenes where we see Michael Sands’ health and body deteriorate are terribly harrowing.
By the way, how do you type something in italics/bold please?
Straw Dogs
Twenty-Nine Palms
Don’t Look Now
Fat Girl
I see that someone already mentioned Forbidden Games.
Also – Klimov’s Come and See
Michael Radford’s 1984 (Winston and Julia meet again, zombies and quite indifferent to each other)
Tarkovsky – Solaris; Stalker (in both cases striking the most intimate and personal note in what one has taken as a sci-fi premise)…But The Mirror is the one that fucks me up profoundly: the elderly mother leading away her incongruously young boys by the hand, Bach on the score…(The image of elderly wife and infant husband in Benjamin Button hearkens back to this, and is also very powerful – was this conscious homage?)
Paya
The end of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead where he walks away into the light has stayed in my head since the first and only time I watched it a year ago.