Yes! Great example.
The ending of Manchester by the Sea likewise subverts tropes.
The three films that Kenneth Lonergan wrote and directed – Manchester, Margaret, and You Can Count on Me – all cut against expectations, as they focus on people’s inability to overcome their own limitations and bridge their gaps with others. He’s a remarkably clear-eyed observer of human nature.
Then does that become the trope of his movies … “people’s inability to overcome their own limitations and bridge their gaps with others”?
It’s also a visually beautiful movie with great sound work. And that zither score.
500 Days of Summer, an anti-romcom, upends the manic pixie dream girl, boy-meets-girl/boy loses girl/wins her back tropes. It gives the female lead her agency while showing her exercising it ethically, and the young man grows by failing and then getting back up.
Similar to that is Mystery, Alaska. Small town whose culture is built around weekly pond hockey games, where being allowed on the team is the biggest honor the town has, gets a chance to play a televised exhibition game against an NHL team, on their home ice.
The game ends with a slo-mo shot of the game-tying shot by the local team bouncing off the post of the net, so they lose.
There’s a bit of a pay-off in one of the local players being given a spot to try out for the NHL team, but that’s it.
Spoilers inevitable, right?
The Last Of Sheila kicks off with a guy’s wife getting killed; he later invites people who were there that night for a week of puzzle-riddle personal-secrets game-playing, only to wind up murdered partway through. One of the invitees starts parlor-room sleuthing to figure out whodunit, only to back off right as the evidence points to his own wife — but she promptly confesses to both killings, explaining that she’d realized the sadistic point of the dead guy’s weeklong game was to eventually out her as the killer.
Now, from a tropey standpoint you’d maybe expect the puzzler who’s gunning for his wife’s killer to succeed, which he didn’t — but he kind of did, by setting things in motion. And you’d maybe expect the amateur sleuth to solve the crime — which he did, but with the unusual twist of concluding, too late, that he didn’t want that result. So, okay, two tropes toyed with, anyway.
The ending, though, reveals that, no, the guy who’s wife had been killed wasn’t gunning for his wife’s killer; he was just playing a game that had nothing to do with that. Also, the amateur sleuth didn’t actually succeed in solving that guy’s murder.
It’s the only reason anyone remembers that movie. Such an unexpected punch to the gut.
Let’s go with The Graduate. At the end of the movie Benjamin interrupts a wedding and runs off with the would-be bride, Katherine. We’d normally expect this to be a happy ending but as our couple rides off into the sunset on a public bus their happy expressions change and they seem to have no idea what’s going to happen next.
The Graduate is a film that is in the form of a romantic comedy with its awkward love triangle and hapless protagonist but instead of creating some contrived ending where everyone ends up finding happiness it allows Benjamin to be the obsessive, immature creep that he is, raised in a vacuous culture where the best wisdom a yo e offers him is “Plastics!”, and Mrs. Robinson forces Elaine into exactly the kind of loveless marriage that caused her to seek out a pointless affair with Ben. Elaine and Benjamin ‘escape’ by running out of the wedding and jumping on the bus only to realize that they are totally devoid of their own values and dreams, and have no idea what they are going to do next.
Anton Karas’ zither-infused is one of the most haunting scores next to Ennio Morricone‘s score for *Once Upon A Time In The West”.
Stranger
Those William Inge “passions on the prairie” plays always veer off from happy ever after endings. His characters start off either expecting happiness to somehow fall on them from out of the sky someday, or they’re making everyone around them miserable forcing happiness on their terms. In the end the protagonists go through character development and wind up with realistic contentment.
Well, that’s because they have nothing to do with each other. Might as well compare it to One, Two, Three.
I thought he did. I guess it depends on who you consider the amateur sleuth?
I don’t much disagree with your characterization of the film, but that “only moderately well-received” crack is hard to credit. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars, winning three, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. If it were a B-picture, then it’s the best received B-picture in movie history.
He ends up with somebody named Frank Lee, who is never even shown.
Duel in the Sun (1946) – Epic, anti-romantic Western has good girl Jennifer Jones falling for bad news Pegory Greck before they shoot each other to death while professing their love, an ending at least twenty years ahead of its time.
Vera Cruz (1954) – Anti-buddy film with mercenary pals Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster falling out during Mexican conflict.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – Scumbag PI Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) gets almost everyone he knows killed or kidnapped, never really has a clue about the case and is shot repeatedly by the femme fatale at the climax.
The Sword of Doom (1966) – Japanese samurai drama with psychotic master swordsman Tatsuya Nakadai going nuts. Consistently frustrating expectations, it features no heroes, no honor and an incredible (anti-)ending.
Chinatown (1974) – PI fails to wrap up case that spirals out of his control allowing evil to triumph.
Did you like it? I found it almost laughable melodramatic.
It has some great bits in it, including the opening sequence with Tilly Losch. Walter Huston is hilarious sin-killin’ Jennifer Jones. His over-the-top performance seems very knowingly tailored to the material and it is unfortunate the rest of the cast did not play at the same level. Despite flaws too obvious and numerous to mention, I do have some respect for the film primarily owing to Jones, Huston, its production values and especially the Russ Meyer-esque ending…but “like it” I do not.
Very reasonable synopsis. I concur, sir!
I’ve brought it up a few times on the Dope, but in terms of westerns Unforgiven does the best job of subverting tropes. In whole bunch of ways but what makes it awesome IMO is how it subverts the who “white hat” goodies vs “black hat” baddies. There are no “white hats” everyone is bad, but at the same time still being compelling characters, with reasonable non-evil motivations, we root for.
I loved that movie from start to finish, but when I got to that ending, I literally stood up and cheered.
Also it reminded me of a certain Season 2 Finale on Apple TV+…
I’d also give Zodiac an honorable mention as it uses Hollywood serial killer tropes to inject drama very skillfully into a fact-based narrative. You think the protagonist is in jeopardy as they are artfully mimicking a Hollywood serial killer trope, where the protagonist is about to be launched into a life or death struggle with the serial killer
In the same category you could put North Dallas Forty. They come back for a heroic win but the holder flubs the extra point and they lose as time expires.