A few great endings

Not the only great endings in movie history, obviously (trying to compile that list ain't possible), just some that come to mind when I think about "great endings." Proceed cautiously because obviously, there will be spoilers:

M (Fritz Lang, 1931): Serial killer movies today usually end on an optimistic note: With the killer caught, life can return to normal. Right?

Wrong. As anyone who's lost someone to crime knows, it doesn't matter how quickly the police catch the guy, or how many volts of electricity the government zaps through him, or what new safety measures they create to keep sex offenders off the streets -- nothing can bring back the dead.

Fritz Lang captured that feeling of hopeless nihilism perfectly when he replaced the censor's original ending -- a shot of smiling mothers watching over their children, who are now 100% safe and sound -- with a shot of four grieving mothers dressed entirely in black, lamenting that the killer's death "won't bring back our children."

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000): Hard to believe, isn't it? A kung-fu movie with an ending perfect enough to make my eyes water?

Make fun of me all you want, but I swear to you that when Zhang Ziyi leaped off the mountain, hoping that her death would bring Chow-Yun Fat back to life, I felt tears come to my eyes. It wasn't that she was sacrificing herself to save someone else (something that she never would have done at the beginning of the movie) it was that she was risking everything on blind faith. After all, the story about the boy who leaped off the mountain to save his parents was a thousand years old; for all she knew, it was just a legend. When she hit the bottom, Michelle Yeoh would have two dead friends instead of just one. But still she leaped.

Sacrifice and faith are powerful enough on their own; put them together, and you get endings too incredible to describe.

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975): I'm not one of those people who thinks that "Nashville" is Altman's best movie (it's a little too long and shapeless for me), but when Barbara Harris climbs up that stage and sings "It Don't Worry Me" to a crowd shocked by sudden assassination -- God my heart drops every time! Some critics have attacked it for implying that we're mindless sheep whose minds go blank the second we see something bright and shiny, but I think that it's a powerful tribute to the optimism of the human spirit -- our ability to triumph over tragedy. If Rudy Giuliani was singing something on September 12, he was singing that song.

The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998): For years, I always skipped the last third of "The Thin Red Line." Why? Easy. The first time I watched the movie (at the enlightened age of fifteen), I loved the battle scenes, but hated the long, shapeless, meandering aftermath that Malick followed them with. Besides, I never had three continuous hours to kill.

But a few weeks ago, I was watching the movie with my brother (who had never seen it) and figured, what the hell, I'd give them another shot. God, what a revelation! The post-battle scenes felt just as shapeless as they did four years ago, but now I could finally see the method behind the madness. You see, Malick didn't let them drag on and on and on because he needed to fill space; he was trying to recreate the empty feelings -- the questions, the doubts, the holes that killing leaves -- that soldiers feel after battle. Of course the last third drags: feelings that empty don't call for climaxes. (So basically, never stand by opinions you had when you were fifteen.)

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988): "What's wrong, baby?"

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982): One piece of paper changes everything Harrison Ford ever thought he knew about his existence. If that isn't poetry, then I don't know what is.


More to come!