By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
20 Weeks To Oscar: The Trouble With Endings (spoilers)
SPOILER ALERT!!!
This piece deals with the end of three Oscar Best Picture candidates, revealing the ending of American Sniper, The Imitation Game, and Unbroken. DO NOT PROCEED is you haven’t seen the films or do not want to know the endings… you have been warned!
SPOILER ALERT!!!
If there is a theme to this award season aside from all the biopics, it is this… movies that end and then tell us what happens after the film is over, which seems like something that should have been a major event in the film itself.
I’m not talking about the often clever “what will happen to” titles that end a lot of “real-life” movies, as well as film comedies like Animal House. I’m talking about “this is what this movie was really about and I can’t believe they didn’t show us this.”
In three major cases this Oscar season, two are specifically about the death of the lead character just after the last time we see them in the film. In the third, Unbroken, it seems like the title card replaces not only what could have been a very interesting (read: more interesting) third act of the film, but what could well have been the dominant story.
In alphabetical order:
I don’t know what the thought was here. Perhaps Eastwood and/or screenwriter Jason Hall just didn’t want to have a veteran kill the hero to end the movie. Perhaps they just felt this was in better taste. I don’t know. But I think that a movi, which is now taking heat for a lack of perspective on the war from liberal quarters would have been well-served to engage the horrors of war back at home—which is the third act of the film already—in a more direct way.
A lot of the complaining about the lack of gay content had overshadowed my central probably with the film, which is that the ending was not as poetic and painful as I think it deserved. Moreover, as I here it, the real Alan Turing died with a half-eaten apple next to him on his bedside table. Did he dose the apple with the cyanide that killed him? I don’t know. But, Snow White… Adam & Eve… just a magical, visual metaphor that was not exploited.
2 hours and 40 minutes of people trying to break this guy… and then we find out on a card that he broke wide open after he got home. That is the movie that I want to see from Angelina Jolie. Not so clean. Not unblemished. Not just relentless. Human. Fallible. And then, in recovery, powerful… perhaps more powerful than ever. Where was that movie?
Would have loved to have seen Spielberg wrestle with that American Sniper ending. Amazing that Kyle’s murder is reduced to a title card.
I don’t know …. I think the ending shot is one of the best moments in The Imitation Game. It may be the only great visual moment.
David, I totally agree! These endings were surprising – and frustrating – because these were major points in the story, and in two cases I felt so disappointed that such a major plot point was revealed in such a way, especially because both “Imitation” and “Sniper” ended in such an unsatisfying manner…
On the flipside, I really liked how Selma told the story it told and then title-carded other elements at the end.
Dancing around a campfire in slow motion?
RIght. Because Spielberg’s been really great with endings. Maybe we could have seen Kyle break down and ask his wife if he was a good man, while we half-dissolve to an American flag waving in the background.
Ha. Fair point.