Posted on 10/13/2014 7:51:22 PM PDT by EveningStar
Whether writing a movie, TV series, novel, or any other form of storytelling, one fact rises above all: endings are hard. The sentiment is proven on a yearly basis, as countless films deliver an intriguing premise, compelling action, or powerful messages, only to fumble with the closing act. Sometimes, the film’s final impact can be so poorly executed, it leaves audiences wondering whether the film that preceded it was even worth the trouble.
(Excerpt) Read more at screenrant.com ...
By what standard? The script is filled with great lines. It’s dazzling and as much fun as you can have watching a great film. And virtually every shot is Welles showing off in some way. He was an illusionist in his spare time and it shows.
Kubrick and Clarke wrote the script based on a short story called The Sentinel and Clarke went on to write the novel - while the film was being made. The ending doesn’t have to show that man has progressed to a state beyond war. It’s implied. There is no reason to make that concrete.
I don’t even remember the ending of Close Encounters. All I remember is how overwhelmingly stupid the whole thing is.
Yeah.
The topic is movies ruined by bad endings.
I wouldn’t say it was ruined. But the ending was kind of silly.
Fred’s comments about the Rosebud inside joke are probably true.
In the movie the Rosebud as last word was instigated by him looking at the snow globe. At the end, finding out it was a sled doesn’t really do anything to provide psychological or other insight.
I don’t have the same negative feelings about it as Fred.
I also think it is a lot more than simply and technical exercise, and if that’s all it were, it wouldn’t be a particularly good movie. But the “mode of storytelling” as you put it, is integral to the overall aesthetics of the film and it’s experience.
Go watch The Third Man which is basically 30 minutes worth of plot jam-crammed into an hour and a half, or better yet, Touch of Evil [possibly the worst major film ever made] and get back to me on what a "great storyteller" Orson Welles was.
Right.
Because an incomprehensible psychedelic experience followed by a giant baby floating in space just screams that conclusion.
Right.
QED.
I have no idea what politics has to do with Welles’ esteem. He was never really respected or supported by the Hollywood mainstream. He had trouble getting financing for his films all of his life. Studio heads regarded him as a bad investment.
Also, Welles didn’t write or direct ‘The Third Man’. ‘Touch of Evil’ is a masterpiece which looks ahead to David Lynch (another guy you probably think is a ‘bore’). Welles never directed a bad feature film. ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ is awesome even in its butchered form. His three Shakespeare films are the ideal (and preferable to anything Olivier or Branagh ever did). ‘The Trial’ is as good as any Kafka put on screen and ‘F For Fake’ is a marvel of making something out of nothing.
Yes it says all it needs to say. It’s an elliptical modernist narrative. If you need to have your hand held then watch the Doris Day/Rock Hudson vehicles. If you want to see what 2001 would be like with more ‘explicit’ storytelling then watch 2010...it ‘explains’ everything. And it’s long been forgotten.
A GREAT ending in The Shawshank Redemption would have been if Tim Robbins was thrown off that roof by the guard. : )
I think the ending of 2001 is really a litmus test on the viewer. It asks whether you can handle a little vagueness and thinking in your movies, or need it all spelled out. Basically should you see art house movies or stick to blockbusters. The whole movie is really an exercise in the moviemaker meme of “show don’t tell”, what little dialog there is in the movie is in the movie is largely tangential to the plot, and the ending takes that to a rather extreme level. But if you’re willing to think about the movies you watch after you watch them it all makes perfectly good sense. My funniest 2001 incident came when I bought the DVD and on the way went to my wife to share my joy of now owning it. She ask “what’s it about” (she’s not a nerd, of any kind really, I married out of clan), which lead to a rather prolonged pause on my part, and finally “I guess you could say evolution”. She still hasn’t watched it.
The Stephen King novella did not show if the Robbins character ever finds the Freeman character at the end. The theme is hope after all. The film explicitly shows them meeting and runs roughshod over that.
#56 He drops around 1:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KupAgY18QDc
It actually makes perfect sense in terms of what it’s about.
#131 I like the Simpsons version where Dwight Diddlehopper escapes from prison by crawling thru a sewer pipe only to discover there is a clean water pipe right next to it.
agree, it was a stupid movie beginning to end...
OK.
You've done it now. I can barely stop laughing long enough to type.
As for David Lynch: more of the Emperor's New Clothes. His one decent film was Dune [which he obviously did not write], which was actually done better as a Syfy miniseries.
I think Lynch's best 3, in no particular order, are:
The Godfather
I hated the ending too :)
Do you mean Part III,which stunk,or do you mean the ending of Part I?
I’m a tad dense. :-)
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