****************SPOILER ALERT*************************
I can think of three works
where the protagonist
was on the brink of death,
the narrative demanded he die
and
an editor or producer or redactor
tacked on a happy ending:
Terry Gilliam's Brazil,
Blade Runner and
possibly, the Gospel of Mark.
From Turing:
ReplyDeleteAlthough in Brazil, the happy ending was clearly an escape into an imaginary world. It was made clear that in the real world Big Brother was still in charge.
I think it is more like the ending of 1984 where he finally learns to love Big Brother. The protagonist may appear happy, but the reader is left with a feeling of futility.
We went to see Brazil together here in Houston. You may not recall because some altering of state may have been involved. I like the movie much better in hind sight.
Your points about Blade Runner and Mark are well taken. The romantic in me still likes Blade Runner with that ending.
I was trying to think of other examples. The only one I can come up with is real life. Nelson Mandela surviving to freedom and leadership of South Africa does not seem like a real world possibility to me. I think someone re-edited the director's cut.
Reply to Turing:
ReplyDeleteThere were famously two edits of Brazil. Gilliam's original ended with
Sam tied to the chair, the Minister peering at him, saying "I'm afraid
we've lost him." The producer was furious and sent the film to
in-house editors. Sheinberg ended the film with Sam and the girl
driving off to a paradise. They still show the Sheinberg edit on broadcast TV now and then. I think they've all been cobbled together in a
massive DVD set.
I saw Brazil on Friday, opening night and dragged you guys to the Saturday show. I knew it was something special.
I suppose I ought to get a blog, but I know from experience I would check it every five minutes and it would take over my life and be the ruin of my career.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm writing for the desk drawer (or the Sent-Mail folder).
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In the penultimate episode of Monk, I immediately noticed "this is the plot of D.O.A.", the old Edmond O'Brien film: a detective's last case is to solve his own murder.
At the end of part 1, when he finally opens Trudy's Xmas present from twelve years ago, I thought "this is Harry Potter's Resurrection Stone--
'I Open at the Close'".
IMHO, the series would have/should have ended with the heroic death of Monk, who ascends to the heavens into
the welcoming arms of Trudy. Monk's name gets chiseled onto Trudy's tombstone. Everybody has a good cry,
then they pair off and get married.
In the happy ending, Monk uncovers a new Trudy, a long-lost daughter, whom he immediately overwhelms with affection. This can't end well.
Either he will eventually creep her out and she will reject him, which would destroy Monk or she will marry the first jerk that comes along, just to get away from her over-protective stepfather. The writers don't seriously offer marriage to Monk as a possibility.
There is the little unstated problem that she may not want to be a surrogate for her mother and
that Monk essentially killed her biological father, who murdered her birth mother. A good starting place for a Greek drama, but not an ordinary American life.
Virginia Madsen plays the new bride of Captain Stottlemeyer (and his reward from the writers/gods for seven years meritorious service).
Wedding bells ring all around, Natalie finds a new sailor, eerily like her late husband. Randy marries Sharona and becomes the police chief of Summit, NJ.
That held a personal resonance for me that the general audience may not have felt, having been born in that town. This direct connection caused a reaction much like at the ending of Days of Heaven, when the bereft heroine picks the first random doughboy off the troop train to be her new lover and protector.
The sense of generic anonymity the director sought is lost on me,
as I immediately recognized the soldier as Leo Kottke, the world's greatest living guitarist, which completely changed the tone of the ending for me, but for no one else in the theater.
This happy ending eerily completes the arc of the plot of Creator (1985).
ReplyDeletePeter O'Toole plays a microbiologist who harvested a few cells from his dying wife and dedicated his research career to cloning her.
He advertises for a egg-donor/host-mother, and many amusing things happen. O'Toole slowly discerns the paradox of cloning a loved one.
If he is successful, he will have not a wife, but a baby daughter. He will be cast in the role, not of husband and lover, but that of an elderly father. The best he can hope for is to live long enough to walk her down the aisle.
In the end, he has the good sense to dump the canister of genetic material into the sea and marry the young surrogate (played by Mariel Hemingway, much less annoyingly than usual).