dual personalities

Recently, son #2 reminded me that El Cid died on July 10th, 1099. From there discussion moved to the 1961 movie El Cid starring Charleton Heston and Sophia Loren. We agreed that this very long, mostly boring film is only redeemed by its great ending [Spoiler alert for the rest of the post!]. The mighty hero dies of wounds, but so great is the moral power of his presence that his compatriots lash his body to his trusty steed to lead the army to victory against the attacking Saracens.

When I saw the movie on TV as a youngster, the end both deeply affected me and made me feel that sitting through the rest had been worth it. What a payoff!

Well, as you can imagine, El Cid got me thinking about other movies that had great endings — not necessarily ones that turned a bad film into a better one (that is truly rare), but an ending that took the whole thing to another level. Here’s what I came up with in no particular order.

1. The Natural (1984), starring Robert Redford. I read the novel in college and truly hated it, so I was a little worried about going to the movie. Happily, Hollywood changed the ending and thereby transformed a cynical tale into an incredibly uplifting baseball myth. The good guy won.

2. The Life of Pi (2012). A boy, an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a tiger get stuck on a life boat together.

This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But the ending, in which our hero offers an alternative version of his experience — this one involving people rather than animals — alters everything. A pretty fable about life becomes a statement about belief and God. Pi asks his rescuers, “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘That’s an interesting question.’ Mr. Chiba: ‘The story with animals.’ Mr. Okamoto: ‘Yes. The story with animals is the better story.’ Pi Patel: ‘Thank you. And so it goes with God” (Yan Martel, Life of Pi).

3. Signs (2002). A minister (Mel Gibson), who loses his faith when his wife is killed in a seemingly random accident, struggles to care for his children and feckless brother. Then aliens arrive on earth and all hell breaks loose.

Though the attentive viewer picks up on the message as the movie progresses, Mel Gibson’s character only begins to understand when he repeats his wife’s last words, “Swing away, Merrill”, to his baseball-bat-wielding brother as an alien threatens his son. Only then does Mel begin to see that everything happens for a reason and we are not alone.

4. Cool Hand Luke (1967), starring Paul Newman. This might seem an odd choice, but I’m including it to represent the category “when the hero’s death clinches the message”.

Face it, Cool Hand Luke would not have been as powerful if Luke had survived. Sometimes the hero has to die. I suppose this contradicts the title to this post, but what can I say? That’s just the way life is.

What endings changed your opinion of a movie? What about books? Perhaps we’ll save them for another post.

Have a great weekend!

*Oscar Wilde