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Pining for the perfect movie ending

 
THE GRADUATE
THE GRADUATE
Published Sept. 3, 2015

Movie endings aren't what they used to be.

Sure, they can still be emotionally striking: Sandra Bullock's wobbly first steps on Earth in Gravity, Solomon Northup's family reunion after 12 Years a Slave.

But what will be this century's enduring final impressions on screen that instantly conjure greatness? Where is its Rosebud on fire, its Scarlett O'Hara at sunset, or Benjamin and Elaine escaping conformity in a bus?

When was the last time the last line of a movie made you wish you'd said or written that?

And has anyone been genuinely surprised by a final scene twist in 20 years since The Usual Suspects?

Movie endings these days are too often just transparent set-ups for sequels, which is okay if you're a Marvel superhero but not The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The laziest finales are gag reels tacked onto comedies that already failed to make viewers laugh. Or that feel-good fallback, anyone — even Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash — dancing to pop oldies.

Steered by test screenings and safe studio decisions toward uplift and simplicity, the belief is that the widest possible audience doesn't want to leave theaters feeling blue or confused. Save that for the subtitles crowd, and whoever understands Christopher Nolan movies.

Yet much of our indelible cinema, the works changing the medium and repping it forever in tribute montages, often end downbeat, complicated (insert any 1970's favorite here). Or perhaps with humor about horror to follow; Hannibal Lecter having an old friend for dinner, and Slim Pickens rodeo riding a nuclear bomb.

There is no such thing as an unhappy ending, if it's masterfully done.

Few filmmakers except the most independently obscure even attempt that today.

What is this century's signature closing line of dialogue, that will be as relevant decades from now as "Well, nobody's perfect" from Some Like It Hot is in today's era of same-sex acceptance, or "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" whenever things get too inscrutable?

What concluding movie images can become iconic as a shattered Statue of Liberty in the original Planet of the Apes, or as medium-changing as the ballistic, balletic ambush ending Bonnie and Clyde?

Behind my desk at work hangs a poster for Hollywood Endings, an otherwise neglectable Woody Allen dramedy. The design is a collage of stills from the final seconds of 52 acclaimed movies, each identifiable by a single, unique image.

The poster is nostalgic, certainly, and also silently defiant of modern Hollywood's packaging and repetition from first frames to last. Memorable endings will never be created with assembly line cinema.

Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365. Follow @StevePersall.