And so what’s really interesting is the decision whether or not you choose to go down this route. And these movies – Take Shelter, Safety Not Guaranteed, Life of Pi, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises – all demonstrate slightly different ways of addressing the issues, and just how profound an effect this can have on the film (particularly an ending, which is the taste in the mouth a film leaves us with). Big Fish could be said to have done something similar as Life of Pi, but for some reason everything that came before it didn’t seem as crucial or dependent on the definitive verdict of one character late on.
Perhaps it’s because there is still an element of doubt in films like Big Fish, whereas the “confession” in Life of Pi is first-hand, removing pretty much any element of doubt about what has happened beforehand (although first-hand narrators can be unreliable too, of course – as the previous 1hr 45 minutes of the film indicate!). To me it’s too much like clunky exposition or awkward dialogue – did it really need to be said, and if so, couldn’t have it been put differently? Though Lee’s ending does still offer room for interpretation and manipulation (as pretty much all films do), it’s the inherent ‘message’ of the whole thing – the nudge, nudge, wink, wink towards the camera that says ‘do you get me?’ – is the problem from my perspective.
Let’s move on to TDKR and Inception at this point to explore how master-director and all-round-genius Chris Nolan (can you tell that I like him yet?) has handled the subject on two separate occasions (and more if you look at his previous films). The issue of Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises ending, particularly in the wake of what he did with Inception, is some intriguing food-for-thought indeed. TDKR was Nolan’s next film after Inception, whose ending received groans and grumbles and yet, most importantly, discussion: whether the ending worked, whether the top did or didn’t, and other such theories and postulations.
This indicates to me that the vast majority of cinema-goers actually weren’t particularly unsatisfied with it at all – on the contrary, they loved it. The buzz surrounding Inception and that blackout went on for a very long time indeed, and rightly so. This isn’t to advocate controversy (or ambiguity) for controversy/ambiguity’s sake either, which is a different thing entirely. I certainly don’t believe in the open-ended ending for all films, not even all fantasy films or films of this narrative type – it’s simply about the right ending. Without giving anything at all away, anyone who has seen Martha Marcy May Marlene will almost certainly accept that the director cut that ending perfectly, so that it cuts away at precisely the salient moment. And in the case of Inception, I think it was a pretty perfect thing to do too.