Let us have pirates, clowns, and a happy ending
- Shakespeare in Love
5 Movies you should watch just for the ending
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, IF YE HAVE NOT SEEN SAID MOVIE OR CARE ABOUT THE ENDING, DO NOT ENTER WITHIN
1. Random Harvest - As I was telling Inga yesterday, this is the ultimate kleenex movie. It's sappy beyond all reason, terribly unrealistic, the dialogue horribly prosaic, and heartrending to the very end. A wealthy officer in the first world war loses his memory and falls in love with a music hall star. They live happily until an accident restores his memory and he resumes his old life, completely forgetting about his wife, who becomes his secretary in order to be close to him. Will he remember who she is or will he make a huge mistake? You just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake the bastard and scream "WAKE UP DAMN YOU". The final scene, where he finally remembers who she is just grabs your guts and twists.
2. The Bridges of Madison County - let me just preface this with saying I don't like Meryl Streep. I think she is overrated. She's a good actress yes, but not the greatest actress of all time as some would like to believe. Therefore, this movie had a lot going against it when I went to watch it. I didn't think I'd like it at all. And for the most part the movie was....meh. But the ending. The ending. Where she's in the car with her husband stopped at a traffic light in the rain behind Clint Eastwood in his truck, and you can see her cross hanging from his rearview mirror, and they just stay there, interminably, in the rain, with no words being said, just the look on her face, and the pose of his siloutte, and you can practicaly see his heart break. It's gutwrenching in all the best ways. This, to me, is the ultimate "the ending makes up for the rest of the movie" movie. You need to watch this movie just for that final scene. Where there are no words, just emotion flowing across the screen. Sigh...
3. Nuevo Cinema Paradiso - Reel of Kisses. Nuff said.
4. Being There - this is a strange, strange....strange film. One of the best Peter Sellers movies (outside of Dr. Strangelove). It's....ok I'm not going to bother describing it, you can read the synopsis on the IMDB. The film is sort of one awkward situation strung to the next. But the ending is burned into my memory. It's Peter Sellers, as his weird disconnected character, walking out on the water of this lake. Walking on the surface, like Jesus, and he pauses to stick his folded umbrella into the water beneath him, while the voiceover (a man reading a eulogy) says "Life is a state of mind." It's just...a really different moment. I wasn't expecting it. You could never expect it. It's something utterly fantastical in an otherwise fairly realistic movie. Well, realistic in that it abides the general principles of reality. But it just FITS so well with the message of the film. That is an ending I carry with me.
5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, episode "His Way" - Ok, so this isn't a movie, but I don't care. I love the ending of this episode. This is the episode when Kira and Odo finally get together. It's a beautifully crafted episode. And it's the end, where Odo is yelling at her, sardonically, upset that she's finally figured out he loves her, and she's standing there with this look on her face, she's practically begging him to kiss her. It's a beautiful moment of tension. Your emotions have been wound up into this tight climax and you are so emotionally invested in the proceedings that you are practically twanging. And he finally kisses her it's such an emotional release you just can't HELP but feel good.
Honorable Mention. The Lord of the Rings, Return of the King - the part where Aragorn says "my friends, you bow to no one" and the entire crowd on Minas Tirith bows. I was in the theater and there were grown, redneck men behind me WEEPING OPENLY. This only gets honorable mention because it was the first of about 7 endings for the film.
| Posted by Coyote @ 08/31/2007 05:52 PM PDT |  | |
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