THE GRADUATE (1967)
As I noted in our list of the Top Ten Best Movies Of All Time, The Graduate is pretty close to perfect, right down to its classic finale. All by itself, the climactic rush to the altar made our list of great “race-against-time” scenes, and the sequence where Dustin Hoffman’s character pounds the church window and wields a crucifix against the older generation to rescue his lady love from bland suburban mediocrity still feels cathartic today. But the final moments truly seal the deal in one of the greatest ambiguous fade-outs of all time as Katharine Ross’ Elaine stares at the man she’s chosen, suddenly wondering what exactly comes after “happily ever after,” while Hoffman’s Ben stares straight ahead, the lost expression of the opening scenes returning to his face as he clearly wonders, “Now what?” Considering Charles Webb, the author of the source material, spent the next several decades in cash-strapped obscurity, tending a clinically-depressed lady with painted-on eyebrows named Fred while trying to get a Graduate sequel off the ground, maybe Ben and Elaine had reason to worry. (AO)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
The ending to Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece continues, forty years after its release, to baffle and intrigue, its post-light-show sights – a white room; Keir Dullea’s astronaut seeing himself, as an elderly man at a table and dying in bed; the monolith’s sudden reappearance – forming a tantalizing riddle. In its final, mesmerizing image of the star-child, 2001 does what no subsequent Kubrick film did, presenting a hopeful vision of the future, one in which man is finally free (at least until the forthcoming dystopia of A Clockwork Orange) of his base animalism. (NS)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
Let me first make it clear that I’m very much aware that the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange was originally published with a final chapter that never saw the light of day in the United States until Rolling Stone featured it in a 1987 issue. That’s when I first read it, and at that point I’d already seen the movie approximately 783 times. (Stanley Kubrick claimed he’d never seen the missing chapter before making his film, but he had – he just didn’t like it.) Burgess’ ending finds the cured Alex out for another night on the town with his new droogies. But he’s not really up for it – he’s getting too old for this shit, and entertaining thoughts of domestic bliss. I never felt like I needed to know this about him. “I was cured all right” strikes the right note for me – it doesn’t preclude the possibility of Burgess’ outcome, after all, but if we’re going to give this guy his free will back…well, we better be prepared for anything. It’s hard to imagine that final chapter fitting in cinematically with the world we’ve been immersed in for over two hours, and as Kubrick later demonstrated when working with Stephen King, he was never one to let the author’s intentions get in the way of his own worldview. (SVD)
STROSZEK (1977)
Werner Herzog has never been interested in sticking to convention, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the strange and wonderful Stroszek. Beginning with a fairly formulaic setup -- a trio of misfits journey to America in search of a new life -- Herzog then proceeds to spin out his story in the most unexpected of ways. After hard times hit, the film courts cliché as the title character (played by Bruno S.) and his elderly pal Clemens Scheitz decide to hold up their bank, but when the bank is closed they rob the neighboring barber shop instead to the tune of a whopping $35 and use it to go shopping before Scheitz gets arrested. From there, it gets even odder. It’s the images that Herzog finds to conclude his tale that make this a classic, as we witness the sight of the stolen tow truck, now set ablaze, driving in circles around the parking lot with nobody at the wheel. So bizarre is the spectacle that it’s easy to miss Bruno climbing onto the ski lift with his shotgun, followed by the sound of the shotgun firing. Then, of course, there’s that dancing chicken, one of the most famous images in Herzog’s entire oeuvre. According to Herzog, the entire crew hated the damn chicken, but it so fascinated him that he felt the need to journey 600 miles from his principal filming location in order to shoot the final scene in the rest stop where the chicken danced. What does it all mean? Herzog, to his credit, leaves it to us to decide. (PC)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)
No Country For Old Men denies audiences the grand gesture and the blood. Strange to say about a film that features a killer who is less a man than a force of nature, but it's true. When Llewelyn first comes upon the scene of the drug shootout, the violence is over. When the bullets finally find Llewelyn, it happens offscreen. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stumbles into a potential conflict with Chigurh, the killer has melted away. Carla Jean even dies offscreen. It's a bloody movie, sure, but it studiously avoids giving audiences the easy conclusions that they may want. This is especially true at the end of the movie. Sheriff Bell has retired, giving his wife the peace of mind she wants, and he describes a couple of dreams he had to her. Both feature Bell's father, who he told us in the introduction was sheriff before him. In the first, he's lost money that his father gave him. In the second, his father silently passes him, carrying a fire, and Bell knows he will make a fire to protect and warm him. That's one of the beautiful things about this movie: even as it denies audiences their basest impulses, it gives them something unexpected. Here, the language is one of author Cormac McCarthy's major concerns, the existential quest for a moral code in a fallen world. The Coen brothers like to subvert expectations, and it's fair to say that this jolt of philosophy wasn't at all what audiences were expecting. But it was a far greater gift. (HC)
Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs