"Wait, what?": In Defense of the Abrupt Ending

As successful modern movies become more and more overtaken by independent sensibilities, one aspect of this change in style is becoming increasingly more noticeable. The abrupt ending. The smash cut. The fade to black. What I’m referring to is the movie ending in which things are not necessarily made clear and viewers are left deciding for themselves the things many think the filmmakers should have spelled out instead.

A good, recent example of this device was the ending of Inception, which is arguably one of the most widely accepted abrupt endings of the past several years. In other movies, the kind of closing shot that Inception has leaves the audience dumfounded and irate. Yet in this case it fired up the public’s imagination and sparked heated conversations and debates between those who had seen it (And everyone saw it. Twice.). I think the big difference between this ending and others like it is that the public was better prepared by the movie that preceded it. Inception is a very slick and tidy film and really not as confusing and layered as everyone seems to think it is. In spending most of the runtime just trying to keep up with it, viewers didn’t feel cheated by an ending that they perceived to simply add to the intelligence of the picture as a whole.

You see, a movie like Inception makes people feel smarter for having seen it, with the exception of those who didn’t pay attention and left the theater in a cloud of confusion and regret. When you really sit down and look at what happens in the movie, it’s a fairly simple premise that seems complicated because of how it’s presented. The ending is slightly less precise, but nevertheless just as logical. The viewer can accept it because they accepted all the dream-hopping and whatnot prior and were being prepared for that last shot that could technically go either way.

Most people who saw the movie made a definite decision as to what the ending meant, and in this certainty is the easy acceptance. Not to mention that by the time Inception was released, director Christopher Nolan already had a loyal fan base that was familiar with his other sudden conclusions (Like The Prestige, which was wonderful, and The Dark Knight, which was sequel set-up.) and was of the mindset going in that it would be another masterpiece of Dark Knight caliber, which they all decided it was. Then came the dreadful Dark Knight Rises, which was also blindly accepted as cinematic scripture, but that’s for another day.

So, Inception’s debatable ending was a hit with the public and became water-cooler material for many, many months. Most good movies in the couple years since then that had similarly abrupt endings for just as good a reason or better have not been so lucky. When the average Joe sees a movie, any kind of movie, they get an idea while watching it of how it will end. This habit has been around since the beginning of moving pictures. The audience wants to feel smarter than what they’re watching and stay a few steps ahead of the story, and therefore feel affronted when their movie doesn’t end the way they already imagined it.

I think this is a terrible way to behave at the movies and I will never understand this desire to figure out what will happen before it does. For the most part, those of you watching movies are not screenwriters and are only creating conclusions based on the other movies that have already done the same thing. If you accurately predict how a movie you’re watching will turn out, odds are you’re not watching a good movie. And yet, when this does happen, the public is more satisfied.

Personally speaking, I prefer the surprise of the cinema and I don’t want to know how things will turn out. I’m all for analyzing a movie’s content after it’s all said and done, and picking out what worked and what didn’t. But while the movie’s still running, give it at least the respect to play out naturally. Even bad movies deserve the chance to make an impression, which is hard to do when you’re perpetually jumping in front of it.

Anyway, I read an article that was recently published on the website of the Chicago Tribune called “Over and out: When movies end abruptly,” which complained about the endings of three “art films” from the end of 2013: All is Lost, Inside Llewyn Davis and August: Osage County. Author Christopher Borelli pointed out the frustration of the viewers around him at screenings of these films, seeming to argue that their experience was short-changed because of the unclear nature of the endings. I argue that this view is rubbish.

All is Lost is a movie in which Robert Redford wakes up on a sinking boat, bails, and spends a good hour and a half (movie time) on a lifeboat trying to survive. The movie does end, and I don’t really think this is a spoiler if you’ve ever seen a movie, with his rescue. And I mean ends. We only see the hand of the rescuer before the credits roll. This has apparently caused viewers to cry foul, although I can’t imagine why someone who had the patience to watch the movie to begin with and seemingly became involved in it enough to stay through to the end would have a problem with it. All is Lost is, more or less, a character study without a character. We spend 100 minutes with this man whose name we don’t know, looking on largely in silence as all manner of bad things happen to him. We despair with him and share his solitude, and then ultimately rejoice in his triumph.

For me at least, the ending here needs no expansion. The movie does not follow a normal outline of presentation. It has no plot. It has no beginning, middle and end. It has only one character and he has only a few brief moments of spoken dialogue. The film is a flow of events that operates as a whole and not as consecutive fragments of information. It is not like other movies that build and progress to a high point of narrative that would then require a resolution. It is merely a chronicle of the man’s isolation. It begins at the point in which he realizes that the boat is sinking and ends at the moment in which he is no longer stranded. We need no additional explanation because there are no unanswered questions or subplots to fulfill or even character traits to establish. It is a purely cinematic expression; visual and emotional, but not structural. The ending is very final and purposed, completing the film’s absolution.

Perhaps less easy to swallow are the often ambiguous endings of the films made by Joel and Ethan Coen, including their latest extremely underrated effort Inside Llewyn Davis. Again, the film is essentially plotless, more an experience than a story. It follows the title character, a folk singer in 1960s New York, through several events in his life over a period of just a few days, as he searches for shelter, companionship and success. The trouble is that he doesn’t have much true ambition, cares little for the people who really do care for him, and is haunted by the suicide of his music partner, which led to the barren position in which he now finds himself.

Unlike All is Lost, Inside Llewyn Davis functions through episodes in a series of almost surreally tragic events that build upon each other, but not for the purpose of a grand outcome. The actions of Llewyn in one scene are what lead to both the events of the next scene and things that don’t happen until sometime later. His interactions with the other wacky characters he meets, also mostly in various states of hopelessness, add more to the entertainment of the picture than any progression. As the scenes continue to carry on, the finale does arrive rather suddenly, bringing us full circle, as the opening scene repeats itself in the movie’s final irony. Attentive viewers will realize that the film ends at the point in which no more action is necessary. No, we don’t know anything more about the character or his circumstances than when we came in, but should we? The point of following Llewyn Davis seems to be more to laugh at him than to understand him.

The Coens have had an unfortunate history of endings that cause audience confusion and hatred, most notably with their award-winning No Country for Old Men, which ended perfectly logically with a soliloquy from the film’s central character. The confusion arises when the viewer doesn’t realize that the movie was really about this character to begin with. The film’s conclusion concerns his feelings, because they are the central study of the story. The larger plot of robbery and murder was setting, not purpose. Causing even more fury was A Serious Man a few years later, a movie very similar to Inside Llewyn Davis, with the exception that its hero is searching for answers and getting none, while Davis couldn’t care less and marches into his own comeuppance. The fact that the ending of A Serious Man truly makes little sense is part of its entire aesthetic. What in the movie did make sense?

That brings us to Borelli’s last example, which is August: Osage County for some reason. I was unaware that this was a movie that left audiences scratching their heads, and I am actually more inclined to believe the contrary, since the author seems to have personal problems with the movie beyond the fact that it ends in clarity. I don’t really care that it differs from the play, which ended with one character in great emotional agony, because the movie’s ending establishes and actually makes more evident the fact that another character, despite technically questionable actions, is the true victor in a battle that definitely required a clear climax. I seriously doubt anyone really had any big objections here.

The ending of a movie is vital to its overall impact (Remember how the ending of Thelma and Louise was lessened just by how quickly that freeze frame came and went?), but there does seem to be some confusion about how a movie should end in order to be satisfying. What I have tried to prove with this post is that a movie can end without a spelled-out, overly-obvious explanation and still make perfect sense and perhaps even become stronger in its ambiguity. There are many ways a movie can end successfully, but it all ultimately depends on what the movie is trying to accomplish. For example, Ridley Scott’s newly-released The Counselor is deliberately vague throughout and appreciation of the ending depends on how much one got into the abstract nature of the film as a whole. And another: the recent indie rom-com Safety Not Guaranteed only has a disappointing ending if you thought it was actually about time travel.

Therefore, when a movie ends, especially one that does so untraditionally, and the initial reaction passes, it is important to consider the events that led up to the ending and what the overall purpose of the movie really was. In Inception, the ending had little to do with the overall point of the picture, which was telling a specific story. This story was complete prior to that last shot, which was really the introduction of a completely new idea, separate from the rest of the movie, and a potentially different way of looking at what you’ve already finished seeing. An example of smash cuts that don’t work are the endings to all these found-footage horror movies that already suffer from being generally pointless without the additional mess of intentionally sudden endings included just for the sake of being sudden.

Understanding the benefit of sudden endings is similar to finding entertainment in slow-moving movies. Boredom, after all, is not a natural occurrence; it is a state of mind. When watching a movie, you make the choice to be interested or bored by either fully considering what you’re watching and how it is truly affecting you or by deciding that the movie has nothing to offer you because it doesn’t meet a base compulsion to be distracted rather than provoked. Seeing one of these sudden or confusing endings works the same way. You can either be frustrated at its inconclusiveness or actually think about what conclusions it really did reach.