Movie audiences should decide they’re mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.
The “it” is the habit of filmmakers of refusing to bring any real conclusion to their stories. We’ve all seen it dozens or hundreds of times, now: The movie sets up a big conflict about how protagonist Jimmy will handle situation X once he arrives at place Z. Then, the movie meanders all around, almost randomly, and it takes forever for Jimmy to reach Z. In all the meandering, nothing in particular seems resolved, other than a sense of just how random life can be. Finally, Jimmy reaches Z, knocks on the door, and the movie ends.
Not only do we not get the once-required part of a plot known in drama as the “denouement,” or the part of a story that comes after the climax and resolution, the part wherein subplots are explained and loose ends are tied up, but, now, we don’t even get a resolution itself and sometimes not even a climax. The movie doesn’t so much end as it just, well, stops.
At one point, decades ago, this sort of thing might have been avant garde. Expectations for five (or sometimes six or seven) “basic elements” of a plot were so ingrained that it was daring, even shocking, for directors to play around with the formula and leave the audience guessing. The point was either the value of the shock itself or to say that the story’s meaning lay in the journey, not its resolution. Or both. Groovy, man.
Well, it may have been groovy 50 or 60 years ago — think, perhaps, of the countercultural, “chuck it all” attitude of 1970’s Five Easy Pieces, when Jack Nicholson’s character leaves his wallet behind and hitches a ride to who-knows-where — but now, it’s just annoying. When almost every other movie ends like this, it’s not daring or creative, anymore. It’s just trite.
(I do exclude horror movies from this complaint: In many of those the ambiguity of an ending — think Blair Witch Project — is part of the horror itself and, thus, acceptable.)
The other night, my wife and I were watching a movie, mildly charming, that followed just the sort of “Jimmy’s journey back to place Z” scenario without ever creating a truly discernible conflict other than to hint that resolving whatever the conflict was would be emotional and interesting. Three minutes before the movie ended, I turned to my wife and said, “I bet she knocks on the door, and the movie ends before anyone answers,” and that’s exactly what happened. It all has become so predictable.
Of the past 12 movies I’ve seen, six have pulled this cliched stunt. Yes, exactly half. (I don’t want to ruin the endings, such as they are, for potential viewers, but, if you really want to see the names, follow this link.)
These aren’t groundbreaking movies where the goal is to play with viewers’ minds, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, from 1968. They aren’t films where the ambiguity is fun and sweet, such as the whisper from Bill Murray to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation. These are movies that use a now-banal sort of ambiguous ending to pretend to a profundity that doesn’t really exist. They give the impression that the reason there is no resolution is that the screenwriter or director couldn’t figure out how to do one.
OK, maybe you liked Lucy or Eyes Wide Shut, but I’m sure there are millions of us who like to leave a theater knowing what the heck just happened.
