Let's fix those "ambiguous" endings, shall we?

Very nice—although I stopped at the Sopranos because I've only watched the first part of season one.

I can see how "A Serious Man" might be typified as an abrupt ending, since (SPOILER) when God's wrath comes, it comes pretty quick, but how could anyone argue against such a stunning, virtuoso display of filmmaking?

I find this post a little odd, because both endings are, indeed, intentionally structured as ambiguous. "Serious Man" is somewhat ambiguous, "No Country for Old Men" is highly ambiguous, in fact its conclusion is essentially a series of probabilities.

I go into detail about "A Serious Man" on my blog at:

http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2009/11/guide-for-perplexed.html

while I consider "No Country for Old Men" at:

http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2008/03/no-movie-for-twist-endings.html

I wonder what they would have come up with if they tried putting 2001 into that video.

Awesome! Now we can all see The Descent 2 and finally get rid of all that pesky mystery that tainted the original.

Jim, regarding No Country for Old Men there is a point here the audience has that we just cannot ignore. I admit, I can never be in their shoes, in that I did understand the ending, but maybe, only because I had read the novel first. You see, while we read it, we have spent so much amount of time (8 hours) with the book (Ed Tom Bell) that we have reached the state of his mind and we are able to feel it.
Consider Mulholland Dr.. Or Inland Empire. We sure as hell do draw theories, but only out of compulsion. The compulsion because the film serves its purpose and makes us feel that emotionally desperate state of mind.
Not No Country for Old Men. I have only realized it after multiple viewings and many viewers coming up to me and saying things like - Is there a sequel in line? or What did just happen. You see Jim, audiences aren’t dumb. It is upto the movies to make them reach that emotional state of mind. Nobody ever complained about the ambiguity of any Hitchcock film, although all of them had similar endings. It is because we feel that horror or whatever.
In No Country for Old Men, the film is a grueling thriller for most of the time, and suddenly it pops into an existential crisis. That is jarring, and that is what troubles audiences, I believe. Monologues are never the answer. Is there any trouble we have when we think of William Graham in Mann’s Manhunter? No we do not. That is because the narration is so damn good. Of course Bill here is no different than Ed Tom Bell. Only that he is young and edgy.
I think The Coens just didn’t do enough while adapting. Otherwise, even a monologue isn’t necessary. Tommy Lee Jones is wrinkled enough to convey everything. And more.

The really sad part is, somebody did a YouTube clip a couple of years ago where they (allegedly) used audio boosting software to bring up the volume on Bill Murray's whispered line so that we could hear exactly what he said.

I don't know if that was really Bill Murray's voice in the clip, and I don't want to put a link here because I don't think that kind of literal- mindedness should be encouraged.

But it definitely plays into the phenomenon you so rightly lament.

Along similar lines, I watched Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" last year, for the first time since it came out, liked it much more than I had the first time, went online to read reviews and articles about it, and learned that Kelly released a "Director's Cut" with extra footage that "explains" what happened. It appears even directors whose films are distinguished by their open-endedness and opacity aren't immune from this tendency.

Apparently there's a remake of "The Birds" coming out. When the project was announced a couple of years ago, I recall reading a press release stating that the new version would improve upon the original by explaining why, exactly, the birds started attacking humans. I hope the new version doesn't do this -- not that a remake of "The Birds" is desirable in the first place.

Sigh.

JE: Yes, that "Director's Cut" of "Donnie Darko" is just terrible. It takes almost everything that's interesting about the movie and makes it literal. If you're engaged in watching a movie, seeing how its presenting possible patterns and directions, it's really disappointing when the director does too much of your (fun) work for you. Robs the experience of resonance. As I like to say, the movie's about what happens to you while you watch it. There's a certain kind of satisfaction in having an "explanation" for everything, but even greater satisfaction when you're left with some room to imagine possibilities and connections that aren't so explicit...

For me, I don't think "No Country for Old Men" was annoying because it was ambiguous, but rather because it ends on such an odd note. I'm sure that Bell's dreams have some metaphorical relation to the events of the movie, but it seems like a pretty far way to go.

I didn't realize people thought the ending of "No Country" was ambiguous. I just thought some people found it unsatisfactory.

JE: Exactly. Those two words are not synonyms! I think it was David Edelstein who wrote that he couldn't help wanting a climactic confrontation between Ed Tom and Chigurh in which the latter would be blown to smithereens and death would be forever vanquished! But you can't kill death. You can't stop what's comin'...

"Ambiguous" endings are the best. Every time I see a movie during which I say to myself "what the f**k?" when the end credits roll, that usually means that something great just happened.

Well for me the only thing that was ambiguous to me about "No Country for Old Men" (which I loved) was that it was unclear if the body in the motel at the end was Llewelyn's.

One of my favorite ambiguous endings was in "Total Recall". It seemed straightforward, but then you remember that everything played out exactly as he had asked when signing up for his "virtual" adventure/vacation.

JE: But there's no indication that the body (dressed like Llewelyn, confirmed to be Lewelyn by Ed Tom) was not Llewelyn, so I don't see the ambiguity there.

For me, I did not get the part before the final scene in NCFOM. I understand what Bell is talking about in that scene. Before that though, when Anton gets into a car accident and just walks off, what was that? I did not really understand.

JE: Watch that scene again. He leaves Carla's house. Maybe, underneath his implacable demeanor, he's a little flustered by the way she stood up to him. He drives down the street. Kids on bicycles flutter around him, distracting our (if not his) attention. Boom, he gets hit by a car that runs a light. He walks away from the accident before the cops get there. The last we see of him, he's disappearing into the anonymity of suburbia. What more is there to explain? Let me quote again from an interview I did with the Coens in 1992, when we were talking about "Barton Fink":

Joel: "... I mean, some people come out going, 'I don't get it.' And I don't quite know what they're trying to 'get,' what they're struggling for."

Ethan: "It's a weird story, but it's a fairly straightforward story that I think can be enjoyed on its own terms... 'Barton Fink' does end up telling you what's going on to the extent that it's important to know --you know what I mean? What isn't crystal clear isn't intended to become crystal clear, and it's fine to leave it at that."

Joel: "But we have had the reaction where people leave the movie sort of uncomfortable and befuddled because of that. Although that wasn't our intention to do that. I was going to say that maybe our telling of the story wasn't as clear as it should have been, but I don't think that's true. In terms of understanding the story, it comes across.

"The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere."

I think what many of us miss is that many artists create ambiguity in their works but have a clear and definite answer in mind. "The Wrestler" is an example of suggesting the death of a main character but doing it in a much more elegant way (rather than just seeing "The Ram" land on the mat and never get up). "The Sopranos" is an example of this as well-who really wants to see Tony's brains all over his family? Chase superficially left it mysterious but gave a clear answer for the hard core fans to figure it out (and if anyone doesn't believe that just google a Chase interview by Richard Belzer where he seems to clear up his intentions).

NCFOM is a whole other animal and can't really be compared to the other two. On this I agree with Jim, It's ambigious to the extent that we don't know the fate of Chigruh.

JE: Thanks for giving me yet another opportunity to say (as Scorsese does at the top left of this page) that movies are about what's in the frame and what's out of the frame. If it's not in the frame. The important thing is not what becomes of the characters outside of the frame, or between shots, or after the movie ends, it's how the film chooses to show what it shows. You're right: If chase wanted to blow Tony Soprano's brains all over the place, he could have done that. He didn't. He takes you right up to the edge of suspense and then stops. Make of that what you will -- no matter what Chase may say about his intentions afterwards. What's on the screen is on the screen and what isn't, isn't. The point being that (in the case of "The Wrestler" and "NCFOM," too) the filmmakers didn't want to limit your experience to just ONE definitive "fate" for the characters in the final moments of the piece. Think of it this way: We don't know what happened (specifically) to Chighurh because all that's important is that he walks out of this story alive -- just as Ed Tom does. We don't follow every character in every story all the way from birth to death, after all. "The Wrestler" leaves Mickey Rourke's character "up in the air" (literally) -- as "The Dark Knight" does with the Joker (last we see him he's suspended upside down). We can assume everybody eventually dies. As the title says at the end of "Barry Lyndon": "Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

The hyperbolic levels of discomfort surrounding the ambiguity of endings should not be surprising. In my experience, people tend to have rather low thresholds for tolerating the unknown -- especially in their art. I, myself, have been plagued by this most unfortunate condition. However, I refuse to let it dissuade me. Like you said above, the experience of watching a film ought to transcend what is happening on screen. The points and twists of a plot will decay in our memory over time. But the sensations we feel while engaging a narrative (or any sort of artistic medium), the circumstances of the viewing and the emotions it elicited, will, at least hopefully, last a lifetime.

And I just have to ask: why would anybody complain about ambiguity in a Coen Bros. film? That's like deriding Picasso for taking "liberties" with form.

I wonder what they would have come up with if they tried putting 2001 into that video.

RE: "2010: The year we make contact"?

Regarding: "I wonder what they would have come up with if they tried putting 2001 into that video."

They could have done no better if they had simply uploaded the entire movie "2010." Yuck.

I don't really think the ending of the Wrestler is ambiguous. All the important information is there,when he took that one final leap, that is the point of no return. He knows very well he could die by making that jump and by the time he's in the air he can't turn back. The entirety of the final scene has the audience wondering whether or not he'll throw in the towel, and quit to protect his health. Once he's in the air, that question is definitively answered. No Ambiguity at all. The fact that he could die is the point. His decision is what is important to the film.

Daniel, Great minds think alike. Greater minds also don't double post. :-)

Loved the clip of spoofed, unambiguoused endings. Most of the time, I'm fine with ambiguity...the end of Lost in Translation is a particular favorite. I never found the ending of No Country For Old Men ambiguous at all, however, although I remember at the time having to explain my take on it to a few people who basically saw it and went, "Huh?" The voice-over by Tommy Lee Jones at the beginning of the movie was enough for me to accept him as the main character of the movie even though he doesn't appear immediately. For the movie to circle around back to him for the end with his description of a dream symbolizing his emotional response to events and the passage of society beyond what he could handle made sense to me. The cut to black screen may have been a little abrupt after he finished talking, but HIS story was at an end. The others were characters in his story, for me; not the other way around.

One movie whose ambiguous ending did drive me nuts was Limbo, where in the final scene a plane is headed towards an island to either rescue or kill the people stranded there. Of course, with a movie named Limbo, being upset at an ambiguous ending is a little unreasonable. Not like I wasn't warned by the title.

Just as David Chase's cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out, his sentences are a matter of what words he uses and what words he doesn't. He has never said (publicly, anyway) that Tony dies or doesn't die, or that the ending to The Sopranos is meant to convey Tony's death or suggest his continuing life. In his interview with Richard Belzer, Chase does not give "a clear answer for the hard core fans" in regards to whether Tony "lives" or "dies". Rather, he briefly alludes to two scenes from the final season that are thematically recalled in the final scene at Holstens: one where Bobby Bacala tells Tony that (paraphrasing) "you never hear it coming" and the second a scene where a New York mobster is killed in front of Silvio at a restaurant - a visual depiction of the man "never hearing it coming". Neither of these scenes either explicitly or implicitly predict Tony's death at Holstens, nor does Chase expand on his reference to these scenes in the interview in any way that reveals an intention to have inferred or established a sense of Tony's death in the final moments of the series: either representationally in the cut to black that ends the episode or in viewers’ imaginations after having watched it.

Getting back to what Chase actually shows in the final scene, if he had wanted to clearly suggest Tony's death, he could have utilized any number of methods to do so that he didn't (brains on the wall, etc). Additionally, if he had wanted to be ambiguous, yet also to indicate the possibility of Tony's death in those final moments, he could have shown any number of suggestive things to establish this possibility (e.g. revealed the man in the Member's Only jacket to be carrying a gun; played a sound of gunfire over the cut to black without showing who, if anyone, got shot, etc.). Rather, he showed a guy entering a restroom, Meadow entering the restaurant, Tony looking up, and 10 seconds of black leader. No gunfire, no death. Just a vague sense of the imminent threat that constantly surrounds Tony.

Even though Chase has remained relatively quiet about the series’ ending, refusing to explain it or discuss it at any length, the few things that he has, in fact, said about it have been used to justify the opinions of both those who believe the ending was meant to convey Tony's death and those who believe it was meant to represent Tony continuing to live. However, one comment that stands out (not for explaining what happens in the final scene, but for discussing what it is about) is this: "there was a clean trend on view... whether it happened that night or some other night doesn't really matter." Exactly. The point isn't that Tony dies or doesn't die since he, of course, will certainly die some day (in the world of the series, if not in the series itself). Rather, it's that, getting back to the two scenes that Chase references in the Belzer interview and the theme that they share, Tony will not “hear it coming” when “it” finally does happen. That's the more important thing to take from the final scene: the not knowing. Tony will never know when he will die and neither will we. That information is (deliberately) not presented to us.

In summation, Tony doesn't die at the end of The Sopranos because Chase doesn't show it. He doesn't live after The Sopranos because Chase hasn't/can’t show it. Whether Tony dies in our imaginations the night at Holstens or the next night at Vesuvio (or gets shot and survives the encounter for that matter) is beside the point (though there are indeed many "points", themes, and ideas being communicated in those final five minutes, not to mention the previous 55 minutes of the episode): these things are outside of Chase's comments and, much more importantly, outside the visual frame of the episode. Tony neither lives nor dies. He simply ends because the series does.

JE: Bravo! Beautifully said. On a very simple level: As somebody who participated in the genesis of Julia Sweeney's androgynous character Pat back in the early 1990s, I found it baffling that people actually assumed there was the answer to the question: Is Pat a man or a woman? (Even Oprah asked Julia the stupid question!) Pat didn't start out to be androgynous -- Julia was simply trying to play a male character who was an amalgam of a couple men she'd worked with. But from the very first sketch she did at the Groundlings it was clear that the very simple idea was that Pat was somebody whose gender was unknown, and unknowable to anybody but Pat. Answer the question of Pat's gender and Pat's true identity ceases to exist. In art, in comedy, there is no answer to the unknowable because the unknowability is itself the answer.

I think there's a danger in assuming that those who dislike ambiguity are literal-minded. Being ambigurous is not objectively a good thing. It's a device, and that is all it is. In film like Lost in Translation or NCFOM (which I think is ambigurous as the entire film is open to numerous interpretations), the ambiguity works. However I don't think it works in The Sopranos. In that case, I think it's annoying and pretentious.

The frustration that audiences have with NCOM (a frustration I share, incidentally), is not that the movie is ambiguous. Rather, it's that film has a language, and all of the language of film led us in the beginning to believe that Sheriff Bell was our narrator--the guide to our story and its moral heart, and Llewellyn was our main character, whose story we were following. For 95% of the film, this continues to be the case.

But in the last 5% of the film, the tonal language changes. Llewellyn's death occurs off-screen, and suddenly everything in the filmic language shifts. Llewellyn is no longer the main character--or even a character at all. And instead there's a vignette/coda about his wife.

I would contend that had the Coen brothers shown Llewellyn's death on screen, then allowed everything else in the movie to proceed as it did, nobody would have complained about the tonal shift, just like nobody complain's about the tonal shift in Psycho because we see Janet Leigh's story end.

What audiences are complaining about is not the ambiguity of the ending, but rather the fact that there doesn't seem to be an end at all, because all this time we've been following Llewellyn's struggle and we never see it resolved.

You hate ambiguous endings? Try thinking about Andy Kaufman. There's a real zen koan for you.

Which might lead one to realize that maybe what such literalists are lacking is a real sense of the spiritual.

Which now leads me to wonder what those college guys would do to show what happens after those pesky last words of the Bible.

To Jason and Jim,

"In summation, Tony doesn't die at the end of The Sopranos because Chase doesn't show it."

If I stare out my kitchen window out unto the front lawn, and a dog sniffs and circles a small portion of the grass and squats down, and then I turn away, did the dog not take a sh-t on the lawn?

Isn't nothing as gruesome as what you picture in your own imagination?

Initially I felt, like a lot of people, that Chase was just messing with us, giving us all the finger. That's the "write your own ending" theory. While the ending does allow the viewer some rorschachian wiggle room, the real ending is there if you want to see it. Actually, you have to want NOT to see it in order to miss it.

Besides, Tony's death IS on the screen. It's established with carefully composed POV shots, edits and simple film language:

Chase creates a telltale pattern that puts Tony's death on screen, just not in the way you would expect to see it. A bell attached to the restaurant entrance rings whenever a patron enters or exits. When Tony hears the cowbell ring, he looks up at the door. When he looks up, we see what he sees. This happens four straight times. In the final seconds, we hear the bell. Going with the pattern, we should then see someone entering or exiting the restaurant. Instead, we see and hear nothing. The scene goes pitch black. There is no sound. This tells us that Tony's POV is pitch black with no sound, dead as a door nail. Never saw or heard it coming. The pattern is logical and actually quite simple, once you notice it.

The cut to black is not a fade to black. The cut, the silence on the soundtrack, the delay before the credits roll, are all as significant as a line of dialogue or the sound of a gunshot. No other explanation for the 10 second black screen fits. Tony's death is all there on the screen, Chase is a genius.

You seem to downplay Chase's own words. Here they are to judge for yourself:

Richard Belzer: I was working with Steve Schirripa [played Bacala] recently, we were judging “Last Coming Standing” for NBC and we were talking about a lot of things and he was saying he heard all of these theories for the show that had nothing to do with your intention and wasn’t anything the actors thought, like little hints along the way, like a word, like when Tony and Steve are on the boat at the lake and they say “‘you never know its gonna happen” or “you never know its gonna hit you”

David Chase: That was part of the ending.

Richard Belzer: Oh, it was? see, what do I know? Were there other things in previous episodes that were hints towards it?

David Chase: There was that and there was a shooting in which Silvio was a witness, well he wasn’t a witness, he was eating dinner with a couple of hookers and with some other guy who got hit and there was some visual stuff that went on there which sort of amplified Tony’s remark to Baccala about you know “you don’t know its happened” or “you won’t know it happened when it hits you”. That’s about it.

Richard Belzer: That's what John Kennedy said.

Those two scenes discussed by Chase corroborate the point of view pattern which proved that Tony didn't hear the gunshot. The audience shared his POV in that final moment. Tony doesn't hear the gunshot and neither do we.

It's fine to ignore Chase's words or even his use of POV in the final scene. However, if one follows the story to where it's actually going, instead of where one wishes it to be, then the way is clearly marked.

Jim, I urge you to take a look at the ending again and then google the wordpress blog about that ending that explains all of this a lot better than I did.

JE: Chase's words, though, are not on the screen, and neither is Tony's death. That's all that matters. What you see out your window is not a movie -- it exists independently of your observation. Yes, we all remember those "hints" about what getting wacked is like (we also remember "Pine Barrens," one of the most famous episodes, with the Russian mobster... who never showed up again), but Chase decided not to go any further than that last look on Tony's face as the bell on the restaurant door jingles. Cut to black. THAT's the end. That's as much "closure" or "resolution" as he chose to give the series. The "Don't Stop Believing" lyrics say life goes on and on and on and on. But does it? Chase doesn't explicitly make that choice for you because he didn't want to. He wanted to end on a question mark, not a period. The scene is transparently constructed for suspense -- with the shifty guy at the counter, Meadow's lateness and frustrating parallel parking attempt, etc. -- to make you think SOMETHING is going to happen. And the show ends with an abrupt anticlimax. Of course, you can imagine what happens next: Tony is gunned down; Meadow comes in and eats her own onion ring; the entire family gets slaughtered; Tony realizes he's made a mistake choosing Journey when he meant to play the Tony Bennett tune just below it on the juke box; Tony's mother returns from the grave and has a tearful reunion with her son; an asteroid smashes into New Jersey... But what's there is what's there, and what's not is not. That's all that's "real."

"but Chase decided not to go any further than that last look on Tony's face as the bell on the restaurant door jingles. Cut to black. THAT's the end."

No, that's NOT the end. The last shot is not "the last look on Tony's face" but ten long seconds of silent black screen before roll to credits. David Chase wanted 30 seconds but HBO talked him out of it. It is not simply a cut to black and roll credits. That is an important and critical distinction. Given the point of view sequence in the scene the 10 seconds of black screen replace what should be Tony's view of the door. Instead, he sees nothing. It may be the most haunting death scene in history but we'll have to agree to disagree.

JE: Yes, I think it is a masterstroke -- precisely because of its deliberate ambiguity, the avoidance of the obvious -- and I know Chase wanted a full 30 seconds of black & silence. (You're right that the black is the "last shot" -- didn't mean to dismiss that.) He builds up to the expected payoff -- and then doesn't give it to us. Brilliant. I thought my cable had cut out -- and so did a lot of other people. Remember, though, this isn't just about the character of Tony Soprano. On a meta-level this was his way of pulling the plug on the entire series. Put another quarter in the jukebox and it all starts playing over again from the beginning... Tony (and Chase) chose the note on which to end it all -- "Don't Stop Believin'":

Workin' hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win
Some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on...

Cut to black.

My problem with the ending for "No Country for Old Men" was it ended WAY too soon. Some people complain about movies being too long; that movie was not long enough.

I can understand why some fans of the show were frustrated with the ending to the Sopranos. I don't always mind ambiguous endings in film and some of them I really like but they tend to bug me in TV series. Maybe its because I invest so much more time watching a show then watching a movie but I tend to prefer clearer endings to tv series.

The main problem I see people have, especially evidenced by these comments, is that they are unhappy about Llewelyn's sudden death (which is off-screen too) because he is the "main hero" or "main character" and we never see his "struggle" resolved.

But the thing is, Llewelyn isn't the main character. Ed Tom Bell is - he's the good guy and Chigurgh is the bad guy, and Llewelyn's just the guy stuck in the middle.

Responding to Mitch, about Llewelyn's death off screen.

Here's how it hit me. You've been following Llewelyn through the movie, and suddenly he's just one of the anonymous dead bodies - one more of those people that have been randomly shot and left covered in blood throughout the film. To me, it's making the point that all those others were people, too, with lives and stories that we just didn't happen to follow in this particularly movie. It emphasizes the horror of all their deaths.

Yeah, exactly, lesliet. I mean, that's what I thought was the point they were trying to get across, as well as what Ellis says, "you can't stop what's coming."

To be completely honest, the thought of "wow the guy we've been following just died, this should annoy me/might annoy others watching this" didn't even enter my mind when I first watched it. I was just like "Oooh he's now dead, this'll be interesting, I wonder how it turns out." Who knows, maybe I just have too much faith in the Coens.