One of the most enjoyable parts of watching a great movie is when, after creating and establishing an entire world of cinematic ideas and motifs, the movie asks the audience What Do You Think? An artful movie will handle this subtly and weave the question into the narrative in a way that does not feel ham-fisted, and does not (usually) break the Fourth Wall. The attentive viewer will find great reward by engaging with the movie’s themes and purposefully testing them against her own worldview. Furthermore, her response to this question from the movie is a great indicator of her beliefs–a cinematic ‘litmus test’ of her ethics, aesthetics, anthropology, and so on. A great movie achieves a transcendent quality when it poses such a question, thereby invoking spiritual conversation about its themes and ideas as they relate to the viewers’ life.
Before explaining, some qualifications need to be made. First, this is not a formula for great movies. Although these qualities should be universally found in some form in a great movie, they are too diverse and variable to simplify into some standardized test; a screenwriter could not plug in a final scene to this end and necessarily expect his movie to stand the test of time; it is a matter of art. Second, the scene does not have to come at the very end of the movie. Perhaps this timing is prevalent because of the nature of movies; it is easier to reflect on a movie once it is done, rather than throughout the viewing. (Certainly this suggests a weakness in the medium, as compared to books and their invitation to reflect throughout the reading.) There are likely several dozen examples of movies that contain such a scene in an earlier context. Probably, however, such a scene is most powerful as a climax or open-ended resolution. Third, this is by no means peculiar to movies as an art-form. Music, which also demands attention for a set period of time without interruption, is the most exact comparison, with the establishment of musical ideas and themes in that medium’s own unique language.
Three great examples of such a scene will suffice. Since these are the ending scenes, please take the warning of SPOILERS very seriously. To read only particular examples and not suffer spoilers, the examples are, by paragraph: No Country For Old Men, Do the Right Thing, and Citizen Kane.
In the Coen Brothers’ latest great movie, No Country for Old Men(2007), the central character is Anton Chigurh. He represents fate, or more accurately, an irrepressible evil that has no decipherable motivation. The thematic interest of the movie is how different people react to him: with contempt, disbelief, horror, curiosity, alienation, implacable rejection, charity, and so on. The main characters represent different sections of contemporary society, each deserving a separate investigation, but the character in question at the end of the movie is Carla Jean Moss. (Yes, Ed Tom’s final monologue contains another litmus test question, also worth consideration.) Chigurh visits Carla Jean to kill her, thus keeping his word to her late husband. Carla Jean objects to Anton, saying “You don’t have to do this.” At first, he throws aside her comment flippantly, but then she brings in words like “choice,” and his reaction is pointedly different. He appears to, as nearly as he can, get ‘choked up.’ And here begins the line of questions that build up to What Do You Think? Is Anton startled, or sympathetic with Carla Jean, or completely thrown off in his ‘fate principles’ ideology? Also, is Carla Jean innocent, naïve, or expressing a superior ‘free will/choice’ ideology? The answer is left up to the viewer. Indeed, the Coens display a remarkable detachment from the killing because it is not the subject of the scene; these questions are. Chigurh then drives away from the scene, very carefully checking his mirrors for the boys riding bicycles behind him, observing the solid green of the traffic light, and is suddenly struck by a car. It is clear that he was not responsible for the mash-up (the rest of the movie concentrates on the audience’s ethical responsibilities in relation to Chigurh), but why did it happen? Here is the resolution to the scene with Carla Jean, and the open-ended encounter with the audience’s epistemology: What Do You Think? Was Chigurh startled and moved by Carla Jean’s pleas for free will and thereby distracted, or was the car crash fateful, or totally random? The answer is in the audience’s capable hands, and ultimately operates as a litmus test for the viewer’s beliefs about free will, fate and God.
Spike Lee’s masterpiece, Do The Right Thing(1989), has been aptly compared to Dostoesvky’s novels for its ethical complexity. In the colorful landscape of Bed-Stuy, racism, economic responsibility, youth culture, music, established law, family ties, and still other issues, intertwine and form a life-like world ripe for ethical conflict and questions. Da Mayor poses the movie title’s challenge to Mookie early on in the film. Mookie responds, “That’s it?” to say that such a command is too simple/abstract/ambiguous in the face of great complexity; he opens up the corresponding abstract question What is the right thing to do? In some scenes Lee makes his answers to ethical questions explicit, as when Da Mayor rescues a young boy from being hit by a car; right action is sometimes complicated by harmful results or sacrifices, but the action is still right. The climactic action that open-endedly asks the audience What Do You Think is Mookie’s throwing the garbage can through Sal’s pizzeria’s window. Throughout the riot, Mookie does not say a word. The rioters have bloodlust in their eyes after the police kill Radio Raheem, and they shout out death warrants for Sal, whose confrontations with Radio and Buggin’ Out constitute the rising action for the riot. Mookie, whose role as protagonist or hero remains ambiguous, silently crashes into Sal’s pizzeria. The rioters destroy Sal’s property but (with the help of Da Mayor) do not harm him. Did Mookie do the right thing by throwing the trash can? Did he save Sal by redirecting the mob, or express a righteous anger against institutionalized racism, or is he an emblem of rage and wrath? Within the movie, Lee does not give his answer. (For better or for worse, he has made his position more clear in interviews.) Viewers who discuss the scene seriously will reflect on their own ethics in relation to the various issues as presented in the movie; the viewer’s argument serves as a litmus test for her ethical beliefs and, Lee would especially argue, her racial attitude.
What is Rosebud? Who is Charles Foster Kane? And, what significance does the answer to the first question have for the second? These are the three main mysteries of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941). The observant trespasser on Kane’s life (or a faithful reader of Peanuts) will know that Rosebud is his sled, and perhaps represents his childhood, or his innocence, or his mother. Also, the general agreement in criticism on Kane is that knowing Rosebud is a sled does not help much in analyzing Kane; he is not that simple. A sled cannot explain entirely his yellow journalism, declaration of principles, political aspirations, or greed, or his obsession with Susan, or his relationship with Jedediah, and so on. Nor is the sled meaningless, or its burning a nihilistic joke. Ending with the objective long-shot of all Kane’s belongings ready to burn, and then the intimate close-up of the sled’s destruction, Welles leaves the final answering of Who is Kane to the audience. The discussion of What Do You Think is: which pieces of the unfinished Kane puzzle are most important, and how do they fit together? And the litmus test is for the viewer’s beliefs about humanity, and what makes a human human.
As with most great contemporary art, these movies do not give explicit answers to these essential, worldview questions. And even though they serve as a litmus test of important beliefs, they do not forcefully declare one of those beliefs as superior to another. There is no correct ‘acidity.’ The best movies ask these questions in order to continue the great conversation on what it means to be human. Great movies invite the audience to observe their own beliefs and principles, and consider them in new and exciting contexts. The best movies are, in this way, great art.
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Now, what do you think? I’d especially be interested to hear about other examples that support my argument, especially any foreign films, which I have neglected. Or if you disagree, why? Other interesting considerations: what examples of this are in other art forms, and is this sort of open-ended approach specific to particular time periods in art history, or worldviews?
December 23, 2007 at 9:33 am
First following your train of thought, one of the better filmmakers doing this right now is French director Michael Haneke. “Cache” and “Code Unknown” relate to both universal emotions and current social issues but in the end leave you wondering exactly what was going on in the director’s head, or what the final point he wishes to make is. It allows us to delve into the meaning of the film. “Blade Runner” when he picks up the paper unicorn, Andrei Rublev’s “Solaris”, Coppola’s “The Conversation”, Cornenberg’s “ExistenZ” all have endings like this (and these directors often delve into ambiguous endings). Sometimes a director relies on a simple visual like in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Passion of Anna” when we see the Max von Sydow character sink to his knees and the camera zooms in until he is nothing but pixels. What does this say about the character?
As I wrote in response to a rather snide remark on my own blog, it isn’t only indie or foreign films that do such things. Kubrick was also great with this, i.e. the shot of the final shot of the photograph in “The Shining” and more famously the entire final sequence of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. These were not indies or foreign, but for their time popular films.
There’s even a moment in “I Am Legend”, the new Will Smith film, that doesn’t come during the climax or falling action of the film, but there is a scene near the beginning of the third act that does this. It’s a moment in which he describes his passion for Bob Marley, and what Marley stood for. It adds another layer of complexity to perhaps what’s going on in the world around them and opens up venues for discussion about how the film relates to our current times. The themes and ending in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” would mean less if not for the scene that takes place about half way through in which the inhabitants of the ward play monopoly and McMurphy breaks it up by spraying water. It’s a mini movie within the movie that allows for better insight as to what the film is about.
One thing we were taught in screen writing was that movies should contain a scene that allows us to see the theme presented in such a way.
Sometimes these scenes are accidental, or at least the themes are so ingrained in the writer that he unknowingly accentuates his themes with such scenes.
Anyway, I do agree with you and if you wish to see a similar opinion via a defense of my writing check out the About page at my home base. The short comment about my writing of “I Am Legend” and my response to that comment.
December 23, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Thank you, Phillip! I have only seen “Cache” of Haneke’s movies, but agree that it is an excellent example. (Spoiler: The scene in which the protagonist is alone in the dark and naked in bed plays to this argument.)
Out of the other movies you mentioned that I am familiar with, I’d like to call “Blade Runner” to attention. I have not seen it too recently (and am excited for the Final Cut), and so may be tainted. But I need to use it to clarify a point. While it is certainly a worthwhile movie, even a great one, I am not sure whether its thematic interests finally ask What Do You Think? I believe the main question of that movie to be: How human is a replicant?, and vice-versa. While this is certainly a worthy question to study, especially for a sci-fi geek, I do not believe that it can invoke spiritual conversation about the more essential question: What does it mean to be human? Instead, the conversation over “Blade Runner” would necessarily be competitive, as its thematic frame-of-reference is limited to a psychological versus match (behavioralism vs. cognitivism).
Again, I haven’t seen it too recently. It’s probably a bad example for me to use with this point, but I wanted to clarify my argument with that qualification–to better define ’spiritual conversation.’ I borrow the term from John Taylor Gatto, an educational theorist from New York City.
December 23, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Interesting, because I’ve always found “Blade Runner” to be exactly about what makes us human or not – from a very spiritual point of view. When you deal with a “maker” and it’s “creations” how could it not be spiritual? When someone realizes they are fallible after thinking they were better than the ones they were hunting the whole film, it certainly begs many spiritual questions. Questions about ones own mortality. That’s what makes the best sci-fi, the best. I’ve written a much longer piece about “The Final Cut” as I was able to see it screened in a nice theatre here in LA, check it out.
If you truly want spiritual conversation then check out Andrei Tarkovsky’s films. “Solaris” is the prime example of the ending you’re referring to. And while “Andrei Rublev” doesn’t have the ending that asks us what we think, sometimes a filmmaker doesn’t need to end with a question, sometimes the whole film is question enough.
December 23, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Well, that is a darn-tootin’ superb interpretation of “Blade Runner”! Now I am quite excited to see it again.
And thank you for recommending Tarkovsky, the more I hear about his movies, the more intrigued I am.
Thanks, Phillip!
January 9, 2008 at 1:32 am
Phil, I’m glad to see that I’ve found someone else who appreciates No Country For Old Men. It blows anything else the Cohen brothers have ever done out of the water. Not even close. I also think this in an interesting theory about movies that put the onus of interpretation on the viewer.
I’m not sure I like the way that you’ve almost allegorized the characters and what they stand for, but in some ways you’re pretty much write. I took the film to be a sort of contemporary Hebrew theodicy. Chigurh is evil personified in the world, and while there’s no agency behind his evil, the whole point of the film is that we exist in a world where a divine being (if there is one) refuses to rationalize evil. Carla Jean understands this better than any other character because she refuses to indulge Chigurh in his facade of fate. The look on Chigurh’s face is priceless when she tells him that she won’t participate in a coin flip. I think Chigurh understands deeply that Carla Jean “gets it.” She refuses to participate in a quest that attempts to seek a reason for evil in the world, just like Job does in the end when he recants his questioning.
I actually think the “moment” in this film comes just before, when Tommy Lee Jones visits that crazy guy in the trailer with all the cats. All I recall about that sequence is that Jones laments the rampant evil in the world; indeed, he interprets it as a sign that his prowess as an upholder of civil virtue has since passed. He’s sharply corrected by the guy in the wheelchair, who reminds him that senseless evil has always existed in the world, it always will, and to think otherwise is “vanity.” Of course, this has to be Cormac McCarthy’s allusion to the Quoeleth in Ecclesiastes, a book that is an indictment of those who lust after a world where evil is rationalized.
It’s a brilliant movie, the best one I’ve seen in 3 years.
January 9, 2008 at 3:43 am
Andy! Good to hear from you.
The theological interpretation you bring to No Country For Old Men is especially helpful. And I also think that the cat-man scene asks the final questions in the movie on civic virtue; the next (and final) scene with Ed Tom does not have as much to do with ‘the law’ as Old Men.
You’re right; I have allegorized a bit much. I think it’s just my easy way of interpreting the religious elements of the movie, and certainly does the movie (and McCarthy) some injustice. This is certainly not Pilgrim’s Progress.
I love what you have to say about ‘rationalizing evil.’ This is something I have struggled with religiously. Reminds me of Lewis’s Screwtape Letters (which I have not read); he dedicated them to Tolkien, who actually disagreed with their primary thesis. Tolkien believed that evil cannot be deconstructed with mere rational thought. Hence Saruman making quite rational commands from high on his tower in an appealing voice–and note, too, that Tolkien never tells the story from the villain’s point of view.
As for No Country For Old Men being “not even close” to the Coens’ other movies, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Fargo comes fairly close, some would say Miller’s Crossing, too, and I have a special section of my diaphragm reserved for laughing at Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy. Anyways, NCFOM’s superior to all of those, but I wanted to help your Netflix queue.