Movies with relatively inexplicable endings

Schindler's List
Adaptation
Being John Malkovich
Mulholland Drive

I don't really have much to say on the topic. Depends on the film, I guess. Interesting subject, though.

Betraying my age a little, but this was very much a 60's - early 70's tendency. When it works, it really works. (I love the final frames of Two Lane Blacktop.) But it does have to be earned, or it come across as a cop out:"Aw maaan, the backers want an ENDING?"

Speaking of Kubrick - and I'm just throwing this out - wouldn't Eyes Wide Shut's ending be the antithesis to those rules? It's very much grounded in reality and restores some narrative strucuture to an otherwise odd dreamlike trip; I wish Kubrick would have cut out that silly scene with Pollock's "explanation", because it didn't fit at all.

The overall message I got from "Solaris" was that humans are never going to be able to fully understand life - the universe, and even themselves (are memories the only thing defining us? etc.). So the protagonist being on an island in Solaris, which itself was a mystery, reinforced the themes and narrative beforehand. It also added to this overall mystical tone the film had throughout. So.. I felt it was an 'earned' ending. Also, I think endings like this are more jarring than anything, especially if you're new to them, like I am..

As for the other question about artistic transcendence, I don't know...It seems to me that the viewer is going to be the judge of that. You're the one experiencing it; whether is it's built into the narrative or it's a complete break from the narrative, you're the one who decides if it has any significance or if it is laughable. I know it is probably an easy-out to bring the subjectivity argument into this, but I really don't know how to answer this otherwise.

That's my stab at answering this, but eh, I felt like I just wrote a bunch of crap anyway.

aguirre, wrath of god. i dont know actually

Tarkovsky's Andrei Rubylev - the shot (in color) of the horses

Hellman's The Shooting

The ending of Don't Look Now makes sense to me.

before that what hed thought was his drownde daughter was actually the murderous dwarf

oh, pulling it apart like this makes it sound stupid, but it never made less than perfect sense to me, i think its one of the most chilling films/stories ever.....respect!!!!

http://home.earthlink.net/~gussheridan

Let's try this: why didn't the older kid go to see their pastor? Why isn't a visit to church shown or even mentioned in the movie? Was his father the only religious authority in his life? These are some big, obvious, and I daresay intriguing angles Frailty leaves unexplored, in favor of an ending that's really implausible even before we learn that McConnaghey really can see peoples souls (How did a bunch of shallow graves in a public rose garden go unnoticed all this time? Why does McConnaghey tell his life story to the agent anyway? How did Powers Boothe Kill his mother when he was 30 when their last photo together shows him at 50? For starters)

A.I., which is kind of like a movie, a short film, and a 3-minute alien WTF stapled together with awesome results.

Rosemary's Baby's ending made me laugh out loud
what an awesome punchline to a 2hr setup.

otm! it's so fucked up: "yes we're Satanists and you just gave birth to the Antichrist but...isn't it great!"

that whole Oedipal mommy thing in AI is just creepy and fucked-up as hell!

Five easy pieces.

Birdy.

reflections in a golden eye has a completely inexplicable ending, at least in the way it was filmed.

ocean's thirteen.

i just watched "i'm a cyborg but thats ok" the new chan-wook park film and WTF is up with the last five minutes???? (i suspect a lot of people hate this film but i really enjoyed it)

fat girl
12 monkeys
the deer hunter
parenthood

Fear X (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2003) with John Turturro

Michael Haneke's 'Hidden' ('Caché') totally rules this thread in every way. So frustrating, so wonderful.

so fraudulent.

As Good As It gets

John Sayles' Limbo
The Quiet Earth

What about Polanski's The Tenant? I know the whole story is so surreal that it's probably pointless to think about any logical explanation to it... But anyway, the only thing I can come up with is that Polanski's character is a product of the previous tenant's imagination, which explains why he starts wearing her clothes and thinking that he's her; so in the end she realizes it's all been a dream, and she's been tied to that hospital bed all along. Actually, this interpretation would bring it quite close to Lynch's Lost Highway (the whole film feels proto-Lynchian anyway), since in both them the main character turns into another person, and both of them a circular structure, where in the beginning and the end we see the same scene from the point of view of two different characters, except that they turn out to be the same character. But that would sound kinda too easy, because "it was a dream" is the most clichéd twist ending ever.

not totally inexplicable but the ending of beau travail kinda comes out of nowhere (or i thought so)(not to say it's bad either, it's actually incredible)

-- joseph (joseph), Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:06 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

When I first saw this last January I walked out of the theatre/my class kind of confused, and almost immediately after I fell into a sort of pensive melancholic phase that lasted a few weeks or so. Since, I've been constantly watching it on youtube (like 5-20 times in a week, once every month or two). I'd say I'm more or less obsessed with this sequence, it's just beautiful, I can't explain it. Something about this great cathartic, Dionysian burst of (relatively) unselfconscious expression that has made me certifiably glassy eyed on many occasions. Theres really a sort of primal beauty that I'd even dare call life affirming (and I mean this in a totally unironic way, in spite of the what one could perceive as entirely cheesiness.

I just felt like mentioning this. You can blame air canada for losing my fucking luggage and making me wait for it at home all fucking day for needless thread revives.

The Marriage of Maria Braun used to be cited for its ending, although I think I could explic it if I tried.

you have to compare it with the opening shot where the wall is broken to reveal the wedding.

jackie chan's Rumble in the Bronx was kind of like this, but only because he broke his ankle leaping onto a boat and they couldn't finish any of the film's closing action sequences...

Akira! it's been a while, but i think's supposed to represent the creation of an alternte universe where Akira-Tetsuo can exist without destroying the world.

Akira! it's been a while, but i think's supposed to represent the creation of an alternte universe where Akira-Tetsuo can exist without destroying the world.

The Last Wave!!!

easy rider

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ui8-b5ZCQnk

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7XtJ_Hp17Xk

I just hate that song at the end of Beau Travail, and chortled/ grimaced.