|
I
was wondering about something. Have you ever seen a film with
an unhappy ending?
Now... By that I don't really mean 'unhappy'. There are loads
of films where the hero dies at the end or everyone ends-up
in floods of tears or whatever - but in just about every case
I can think of the film ends on a note of moral positiveness
or hope.
The whole cast may be killed-off or whatever but you generally
find that there's a sense of catharsis or denoument or a prevailing
sense of hope for the future, or a moral lesson to be learnt.
Even films like 'American Beauty' which documents the gradual
crumbling of the facade of domestic happiness tend to finish
with a sense of hope... Our hero may be dead but we realise
they did all love each other, there was a chance of reconcilliation
with morality or 'god' or whatever.
It occurred to me that I've never seen a film with an entirely
negative view, given the number of manic depressives and 'look
aren't I woeful' arty types in the world, you would have thought
someone might have managed to create something that purposefully
set-out to communicate a sense of hopelessness to its audience?
You could argue that such a film would be - by means of example
- a great advertisment for hopefullness, but I think an intelligent
audience should be able to decide exactly how a piece of art
or film affects them. An example - look at Fight Club, one
its major themes was the exploration of destructiveness and
self-destruction.
The concept of casting-off things like hope and growth - of
embracing the fact that once you've sunk to a certain point
there's nothing left in the world that can harm you. I was
just starting to get interested when we discovered the whole
thing was the result of an 'aberration', a schizophrenic mindfuck.
And, once again, it's the good side (Edward Norton) that wins-out
in the end.
So
is Hollywood too scared to actually give us a movie that is
prepared to give us movies that are confident enough to leave
the film on an unhappy and downbeat ending?
I
for one would appreciate it if they treated us with enough
respect to do so.
Si
Spurious
|
