A friend and I sat across from each other, coffees in hand, and compared our experiences of the endings of a few films from the last weeks; there was Through the Olive Trees (#4), And Life Goes On… (#5), and The Spectacular Now (#6), all bound by the shared quality of blink-and-you-miss-it pivotal moments in their final scenes. The question at hand: were these conclusions purposefully inconclusive, achieving an intended ambiguity, or were the puzzle pieces just very subtle?
Some people excel at providing conversational space for their interlocutor to express an opinion openly, without the discomfort of their readiness to pull the trigger with a prepared counterpoint. I’m not one of these people. But I’m trying.
After some back and forth, my friend, one of the smartest people I know, said, “Are we just tiptoeing around the fact that I’m just too much of a dullard to see the subtlety?”
To be clear on the outset, I don’t have an answer. While of course I’m positive that the way I perceived each of the endings was the rightful story conclusion, that I clearly received the communication the filmmakers intended, I’m also aware that my subjective biases completely throw out any balance of judgement. I also take staunch opposition to viewing art as a puzzle to be solved — to the extent that I’d happily take a chisel to an art gallery and pry off the artworks’ explanatory didactics if I could avoid any ramifications. But then maybe this is just prizing the discovery for oneself over what amounts to a spoiler?
Speaking of, to avoid the certain SPOILERS, you may prefer to skip ahead to this week’s films.
Through the Olive Trees
Throughout the film a young man, Hossein — an actor in the film-within-a-film — propositions his young woman co-star Tahereh for marriage. She answers with the silence of apparent indifference. Hossein persists, entreating her that if she won’t accept, at least provide a verbal rejection. His persistent efforts approach a level of awkward absurdity, not unlike our old friend Pepé Le Pew — following her across the hills of Koker, up the zigzag path to the tree atop a hill, which has served as a geographic signpost through the trilogy, through the olive trees and off into the distance, where, in the film’s final scene, with the two reduced to not much more than dots on screen, one dot (her) stops and turns back toward the other (him), apparently giving an answer before continuing on.
The event transpires in maybe a second or two. The music shifts to a triumphant tone. Hossein bounds back toward the tree on the hill in clumsy glee.
Did Tahereh accept Hossein’s marriage proposal? I have to say she did. Kiarostami chose that as the last event we see. But he also chose to make it almost imperceptible. So much so that when I first saw the film, a nuisance talker in the cinema provided distraction at that precise moment; I needed to rewatch the film later that night. My coffee friend too did not see an answer exchanged. Nor is he alone.
And Life Goes On…
Our filmmaker protagonist spends the duration on a seemingly Sisyphean search for two child actors from Where is the Friend’s Home? in the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake in northern Iran. He encounters devastation, chaos and mourning. After finding one of the boys, he receives assurance from a stranger that the other boy is just ahead, just over the hill, walking with his brother and carrying an oil heater. The filmmaker drives ahead, indeed finding two boys carrying an oil heater, but these are not the boys he’s searching for. He presses on, his compact car struggling with the steep winding terrain.
In the final scene the filmmaker spots two figures on a distant ridge — probably children, but too far to tell if they’re carrying an oil heater, or to tell much about them at all. Are they the brothers, or did the stranger simply make a mistake of identity? How many pairs of boys could be carrying oil heaters along the same path? In showing these figures at such a distance, did Kiarostami’s intend on ambiguity? We’ll never know. But our hero continues anyway, his task mirroring that of the thousands of Iranians who continue to search the rubble for the unknown and perhaps unknowable fate of those dear to them.
The Spectacular Now
Convinced that it’s not too late for him, protagonist Sutter makes the trip to Philadelphia to reconnect with Aimee, the love interest he treated like garbage throughout the film. She sees him, smiles, but it’s not the beaming squishy-cheeked smile she’s had for him previously. It’s a polite smile. Then in the last second the smile drops and she gives a look I would describe as this fucking guy…
Persistent curiosity led me to the film’s production draft, which ends with:
Those lines aren’t in the film, but it’s clear the writing aims for ambiguity. Do we know what happens next? I’m not sure. But for me, that literal last second is what elevates the film to greatness.
Up until that moment we had an above-average coming-of-age story. Does he grow/change as a character? Compared to the entitled alcoholic jerk at the beginning, sure he does. He has a tearful embrace with his mother and makes an objective assessment of his emotional weaknesses. But when he arrives unannounced at Aimee’s campus and his voiceover states with familiar assuredness that “it’s not too late for me” has he earned that second chance?
Much to Shailene Woodley’s credit, there’s a mountain of information communicated in that last look — her character is more mature, more capable of setting personal boundaries, she has gained a sturdier sense of self-respect. She’s grown, and maybe outgrown him. In just that slight look Sutter’s life makes a sharp turn; for the first time he’ll face the consequences of his actions.
Are any of the above observations correct? Obviously correct is incorrect terminology. The frames are there in the films, you can pause/rewatch. Which would suggest subtlety not ambiguity at play. I knew a film theory lecturer who would say, “It’s there to be seen,” which is also the sort of thing that people who think Kubrick helped fake the moon landing and hid the clues in The Shining say. There is something to be said for a deft touch, but maybe the choice to make these moments so slight that for some/many viewers they slip through undetected is itself the intention, one that makes multiple films exist in the minds of the audience.
Here I defer to my friend: “I don’t accept the premise of the question.”
The films I’m watching this week…
Walkabout
(Nicholas Roeg, 1971)
When I was a kid, my siblings and I religiously watched an Australian TV show called Bony, which I’ve since learned lasted only one season and from all accounts was actually terrible. The show focused on Det. “Bony” Bonaparte, a white man who was either raised by or had previously lived with Aborigines (I don’t think the show ever made this clear) and now used this knowledge to solve crimes.1 Bony also frequently needed to consult Uncle Albert, an Aboriginal elder played by Burnum Burnum. The show portrayed the Australian land as a mysterious and dangerous place, not unlike the Zone in Stalker, where the white outsider required an indigenous guide to safely lead them. I grew up on the outskirts of suburbia, where it met with the edge of bush, so this view of Australia connected with something that took root in me as a kid — that this country is a place where we’re just hanging on at the edges, ignorant of the vast interior, and perhaps necessarily so.
Last week it was the surreal images of a suit-clad pre-MAGA-capped Harry Dean Stanton trekking over the Texas desert (#7). This week it is Nicholas Roeg’s dreamlike trek over the Australian desert, which the BFI lists as one of 50 films to see by age 15 (also feat. Where is the Friend’s Home?) and considering I’m over twice that, this is a priority.
Career Opportunities
(Bryan Gordon, 1991)
Given my documented concerns about fragmentation of shared experience, it should be no surprise that I’m a fan of internet radio. The best of this is inarguably NTS, such a slick operation at first I assumed I’d soon hit a paywall. But no, it’s just an excellent worldwide community radio station. On NTS I discovered Jen Monroe, and her recent episode of high-drama extra slinky synth pop, featuring a song that by all rights should have been a recurring role on the real radio when I was growing up, but of which I had no memory, Martin Page – “In the House of Stone and Light”. This delicious discovery led me to this fan-made montage of that song and Jennifer Connelly being adorable in Career Opportunities.
It should be noted that “In the House of Stone and Light” does not feature in the film at all, and the meet-cute the video presents is about a thousand times cuter than how the characters meet in the film, and that John Hughes did attempt to have his writing credit taken off this film, but, like, what kid doesn’t want a clandestine night inside the department store with the prettiest girl from high school?
The Wind Will Carry Us
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)
I’ve never liked the idea that every frame of great cinema ought to be like a painting. No, actually that’s a lie. This is something I espoused as a teenager. But I grew out of it. It was a phase. Because, you know, the Kuleshov effect is a thing. Take, for example, this shot I always remember from the Apollo 11 launch sequence in First Man:
And I’m not alone. A lot of people I talk to remember this errant cutaway to a screw. During the exhilaration of that sequence, it lingers in mind. Atop a gargantuan rocket, with the 45 million pounds of pure thrust2 beneath them, the astronauts locked inside a shuddering steel pod, this small glance reminds us that the ship is/was only held together with nuts and bolts.
What does this have to do with The Wind Will Carry Us? Not much, except to say that that the images of this film really do look like they could hang in a gallery — so much so I thought there might be some visual FX at play. Nope, that would be silly. It’s all the world and within-the-world here.
That which remains in mind…
I will almost definitely rewatch First Man (which, incidentally, was partially shot on 16mm).
The devastating reveal of the final painting in The Painter and the Thief (#7).
How many of the BFI’s 50 films to see by age 15 did you see by age 15 and if this number is lacking, is it right to blame your maladaptations on this?
There existed Bony in the 90s and Boney in the 70s, both TV shows based on the same character. The 90s version was criticised for making the character a white man raised by Aborigines, meanwhile the 70s version featured a biracial Aboriginal Australian man raised by Catholic nuns, played by a white actor in blackface. No comment.
My own estimate.