Feature: Happy Endings

[Originally published in the Forge Press 05.12.08]

Happy Ever After?

Feature: Happy Endings

Baz Luhrmann, king of tragedy, has met his nemesis: the test screening.
After audience responses were negative, he has been persuaded by the big cheeses at 20th Century Fox to change the ending of the upcoming Australia from a death bed to a rose petal, everlasting love fest. The purported reason for the change is the aim for bigger box office takings, but is this really what audiences want?
Baz Luhrmann’s two biggest films, Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet, both end in tragedy.
The double death of the lovers in one of Shakespeare’s most heart-wrenching tragedies needs no explanation, while tuberculosis has never exactly been recommended for its aphrodisiac effects.
The drama of these stories is ingrained in their weepy endings and the tales would be incomplete without such morbid culminations.
However, what is wrong is the use of a sad ending for the sake of it. Script writers get to the end, they think: ‘Uh oh, the characters have fallen in love, everything’s perfect, where do we go from here?! She will get wrinkles, he will grow hair from his ears……how oh how do we preserve such perfection?!’ Lightbulb moment. ‘Kill ’em off.’ This is unacceptable conclusion dodging.
One test screen audience member was reported in the Australian Sunday Telegraph saying that "there is no reason to kill off Wolvie.’’ If there really was no need then perhaps this is one siphoning of a director’s artistic integrity that can be forgiven.
We go to the cinema to laugh; we go to cry; we sometimes might go to be educated. But, overwhelmingly, we go to escape.
A film gives us a chance to forget our own meagre existences and enter a world where everyone is beautiful and no one ever does boring things like go to sleep, unless it is in the arms of another beautiful person.
A tragedy can be heart-warming by making us realise how lucky we are but sometimes a sad ending can be unsatisfying and, like the final sip of tea that has been allowed to go disgracefully cold, leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Rather than putting our own grievances in perspective, sad cinema serves to reinforce harsh reality.
In Breakfast at Tiffany’s the ending was changed from Truman Capote’s more open-ended novella to the famously romantic trench-coated kiss in the rain. Sigh. Let’s hope that Australia can recreate this kind of sunset

Natasha Lewis

Feature: Realistic Endings

Without meaning to sound like a miserable bastard, happy endings are rubbish. Complete and utter crap. Who in their right mind wants to watch some emotional nonsense where everyone learns a valuable lesson at the end and lives happily ever after?
It’s perfectly understandable if you are under the age of 10 and enjoy a bit of Disney; 101 Dalmatians wouldn’t be quite the same if all the puppies ended up dead now, would it?
Then again, perhaps when watching such Disney classics as The Little Mermaid, you were unaware that in the original version of the fairy tale the little mermaid’s handsome prince decided he’d rather marry someone who wasn’t a fish, so the little mermaid tops herself by jumping off a cliff. Morbid, yes, but far more emotionally affecting than the alternative, and we are all spared the rainbows, singing and tearful farewells. Thumbs up for the dead mermaid.
On the other hand, endings don’t have to be completely miserable to be any good, just so long as the audience’s intelligence isn’t insulted by the illusion of perfect people living unobtainably perfect lives (The Holiday, everyone is looking at you) or nonsensical drivel about being nice and thinking happy thoughts (The Holiday, go back and never be made).
Take one of the best movie endings of all time in The Empire Strikes Back, a climax which fits the dictionary definition of ‘bleak’ but succeeds in making you really want to see Return of the Jedi. And then take the end of Return of the Jedi which opts for the simple ‘all is well in the universe’ ending and has ever since been regarded as a complete cop out.
So, perhaps the main point here is that while happy endings are generally vomit-inducing, realism is the key to whether or not they are acceptable. Obviously, a film such as The Holiday probably wouldn’t work so well if someone walked in with a machine gun at the end and shot them all (or would it?), yet it’s just too happy to be taken seriously.

While the romantic ending to Titanic did end up bordering on the offensive, the previous hour had been depressing enough to lend the ultimate ending sufficient poignancy in order to get away with it.
The final nail in the happy ending coffin is the predictability of such films; if you hadn’t read the book, how could you possibly have seen the ending to Atonement coming?
Whilst being the mother of all depressing endings, it resounds in the mind long after all bitter memories of The Holiday have been banished to the fiery depths of hell, and that is the real reason why happy endings just don’t cut it anymore. So throw away your Kleenex, toughen up, and enjoy some really depressing cinema.

Jamie Cusworth