Citizen – The harp music plays as the camera surveys the damage of the massacre, right? It also plays as the camera pulls back from the exterior street scene with cops and onlookers. Does that music play beyond that point? I don’t remember.
Yes, up to the part where you see the police cars outside.
After that some jazz music starts playing (http://dai.ly/c58hvD – I thought about rickrollin’ everyone, but it’s a bit passé).
So much happens in a film like La Dolce Vita it could have ended an hour earlier and still been enjoyable.
I think endings are important but it’s more important to be able to make it to the end of a film.
I recently re-watched Casablanca, which made me think of this thread. I don’t know if the ending made the film, but it sure elevated it. At the same time, a really bad ending could have significantly diminished the film. Se7en is another film with an ending that elevates it to greatness, imo.
What about films that were ruined or diminished because of the ending?
About films i have seen in the last months. happened to me with the 2 Steve McQueen films, i don’t really understand what he wants to say. I guess Shame is about the guilty feeling, because something happened in the past with his sister and … maybe his father? i don’t know.
And good films which turn great because of the end: Nazarin from Buñuel.
@Alex
There are two threads on Shame and at least one of them goes into the meaning of the film and the last shot.
“Fish Story” (available to watch on Mubi), a mediocre film for the most part, with an amazing transcendent ending which also completely subverts the tone of the film into something that makes the mind boggle. I don’t think you get a more definitive film then this, in terms of the ending really taking it to the next level in comparison to the rest of the film.
Also, about Taxi Driver, i think people are being a bit too literal minded in this case. Him having no scars and being fully recovered etc at the end, doesn’t make it a dream, let’s not be overly fastidious and trivialize film debate.
The idea that the end is tonally so different that it could be a dream doesn’t go with me, as most movies have in the final scenes a completely different tone then the rest, also characters tend to change or as Jazzaloha says “triumph”. Though i understand why you might feel it’s tacked on in this case, as the contrast is so sharp and the catharsis not so much as a result of his whole recovery being off-screen or via the newspaper cuttings and voice-over, compared to the stark violence we saw visually just before.
I think it’s unfortunate that often times we are compelled to use our logic and rational to try and justify in a quantifiable way,events in a film, by saying the director has used certain narrative devices rather then look deeper then the literal events and their assumed verisimilitude, into a broader social/cultural/political context.
SPOILER ALERT (TEE HEE)
Ingmar Bergman’s “The Magician” is totally amazing, because the last 10 minutes turn the entire movie into a comedy. Up until then, Bergman plays the whole thing dead serious. I thought it was really great.
David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method seemed to peter out in its concluding 3-5 minutes, leaving me a movie that lacked finality.
Fortunately, that was the only noteworthy flaw. The rest of the film was extraordinary, and I’m still upset that so many people seem to have hated it.
Pedro
People have been shot in the face and survived, never mind the neck.
I’ve always thought TD was as real as it gets. However, I reviewed the ending and if there’s anything [for me] which would hint the beginning of a dream sequence, that would be the harp music floating around. But I think the dream is as probable as Harvey getting up and challenging Bickle for a duel.
Because quite often reality is stranger than fiction, he gets lucky (to be praised, in a way) and survives; only to return to the streets, play the vigilante again and wipe out the “trash” once more.
I’ve always thought what would happen legally, though. Would he be back to driving his cab as easy as he did? Go figure.