Head to Head
So, the ending to "Inception" was a little mind-bending, eh? You bet your GD boots it was.
You’ve seen Inception, right? Almost everyone has. If you haven’t, it means you’re wallowing in a pop culture void wherein you can contribute nothing to the many rigorously academic discussions about the film’s ending that go something like, “DOOD THE END F’ING RAWKED. AMIRITE!?” Dominick and I were having a similar conversation this week. Don’t worry, we won’t spoil the ending to Inception, but talking about it led us to think about other shocking endings to popular movies, and we’re sure as shit going to spoil those for you. So, this is obligatory:
(Warning: The following column has movie SPOILERS. If you are against SPOILERS or even the mention of SPOILING, read no further. SPOILERS.)
Specifically, we’re going to spoil the ending to The Mist. Then we’re going to talk about it. That’s what’s happening, people.
Dominick Mayer:
In discussing with Ryan the ending of Inception (or as I like to call it, WINception), I was moved to think back to a few other films with endings best described as a sucker punch. One that always comes to mind, at least for me, is the one from the criminally overlooked 2007 film The Mist. Frank Darabont (best known for his other Stephen King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, which I only learned recently is definitely NOT a pot comedy) directed this beefed-up version of one of King's novellas, about a group of people trapped in a grocery store by a thick mist, within which is something vague but extremely dangerous. Like King's best work, the terror soon reveals itself to be both inner and outer, as a religious fanatic (Marcia Gay Harden at her most enraging) incites faction warfare amongst those hiding in the store. And that's before the creatures of the mist begin to encroach on the store...
The film's ending is where the story really comes home, at least for me. David (Thomas Jane) and a select few others escape the store and voyage out into the mist to try and return home, or at least assess what's happening. What they find is far more horrifying than anybody inside the grocery could possibly have been. A gigantic alien monolith of some kind is strolling casually through the mist, and much of their town is covered in a sticky web, including the home of David and his son. His wife is trapped outside, dead. The survivors drive until there's no gas left in the car, and then are stuck. There are enough bullets in a revolver to kill all but one of them, so David bravely volunteers to stay behind and face the terrors. He murders everyone else, including his son, and abandons the car. Right then, the mist begins to clear and military personnel arrive to take hold of the situation.
For me the ending works on two levels. On the horror movie level, it's an incredibly effective final shot that wrenches the heart, and would elicit a laughing groan if it wasn't so damn hopeless. To have the hero survive after murdering everybody worth surviving for is a fantastic anticlimax, one that leaves the viewer simply muttering "oh..." as they solemnly shuffle out of the theater. (It's funnier if you imagine this happening in a living room, though.) On a human level, with respect to the film coming out in a post-Katrina cinematic landscape, there's something inherently uncomfortable about a film that depicts men and women driven to the most scraping levels of desperation, only to wait in vain for a rescue that comes just in time for everything to be too late.
Ryan Peters:
I have completely mixed feelings about the end of The Mist, in part because the conclusion to the film differs dramatically to that of the novella. In King’s original story, the survivors run from the grocery store to a car in the parking lot, drive until it is too dark to see, and take shelter in an abandoned building. David finds a radio, and through the crackling static he hears a whisper of just a single word: “Hartford.” In the morning, the survivors turn themselves toward Connecticut, and drive away into the mist.
...Certainly a more open ending than shooting your son and fellow survivors in the head moments before they would have been rescued. I think that’s something that initially made me react negatively to the film’s conclusion -- its finality. There’s no recovering from a gunshot to the face (unless, like me, you too have incredibly defined cheekbones that stop bullets / hearts.) When I first watched The Mist, I missed the uncertainty of the book’s ending: Do they make it to Hartford? Is there a survivor’s colony there? Do they decide that it’s not worth living in GD Connecticut and kill themselves anyway? King, who is a master at satisfying endings, let’s the reader fill in the details, which can either come across as brave or lazy, depending on the writer. In this case, I always thought it was the former.
But after repeated viewings --(Sidenote: Thomas Jane stars in the film, whom my roommate cannot tell apart from Aaron Eckhart. Now, my roommate couldn’t tell Spike Lee from Woody allen, but still, Jane and Eckhart look a lot alike, yeah? We’re they separated at birth? The only way I can tell them apart is to remind myself that Aaron Eckhart was in The Dark Knight and Thomas Jane does that penis show on HBO.)
...Where was I? Oh, repeated viewings, yes. I’ve seen The Mist many times now, and have come to significantly appreciate it. For one, Thomas Jane is great in the scene. I’m not sure how you prepare for that ‘one scene where you unknowingly slaughter your only child mere seconds before he would have been saved,’ but I’m sure Jane honed those acting chops by watching L.L. Cool J work while filming Deep Blue Sea. But more importantly, for an ending that involves unneeded mass mercy killing, it doesn’t come off as overblown or melodramatic--just powerful. And, if you didn’t know it was coming, the last scene was really shocking and unexpected.
Oh, but it doesn’t make for a good date. I learned that the hard way 3 years ago.
Posted by Ryan Peters on Jul 23, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
