The ending of POA (2001) differs quite a bit from the original film’s ending.
Oops! I missed the year for POA as the 2001 version. Geez, has it really been that long since the remake?
Deckard. Yes, he is a replicant.
I’d nominate Ghost World - exactly what did the bus mean? (I don’t think that’s spoiling anything). Although it was a good ending, it didn’t really tie things up nicely, which I think was the point.
“So, a priest, a rabbi and a Zen monk walk into a karaoke bar…”
Both the movie and the short story it was based on made the ending pretty clear.
It certainly is ambiguous.
In Campbell’s story the ending certainly is clear. Lancaster’s script, however, extends the end beyond the story’s, and it certainly is ambiguous. Is either of the two survivors a Thing? Are they both? If either is, then the humans have failed.
I find conclusions based on whether the viewer thinks he/she can see anyone’s breath unconvincing.
The director made it clear that the ending of the movie is true to the story including the missing glasses.
Just don’t play the video game sequel. It reveals the resolution. Not that it counts for anything, but it does show it.
Likewise, there’s always Watchmen.
Yes. Yes. Nearly all of it, except when he is specifically manipulating Leonard’s condition. The former, as Teddy said.
At least, it seemed pretty clear to me at the time. Otherwise,
killing Teddy is not the great ending that it is. It is not both the final break with the truth and the (entirely misunderstood) resolution to Leonard’s ordeal.
Minority Report
Blade Runner
Total Recall
Pretty much anything by or based on Philip K. Dick is going to wind up ambiguous.
“No one will ever believe you.”
…I should have known.
Nice call, Harvey The Heavy!
Yeah – although Philuip K. Dick specialized in the blurred reality game, Holywood has amplified this far beyond what Dick himself actually did. The films made from his novels, short stories, and novellas generally make much more of this “is it live or is it Memorex?” than Di ck’s original works. There’s really no hint of ambiguiity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (filmed as Bladerunner or Minority Report. And they’ve changed We Can Remember it for you Wholesale so much (whole sale, in fact) that it’s almost irrelevant how accurate that part of it is. In the story, it’s pretty clear what’s real and what isn’t, since it’s about memory, whereas in the film it’s changed into something like a virtual-reality game.
They actually did get it right with A Scanner Darkly and Second Variety (Filmed as Screamers; some have argued that it might have served as inspiration for the “flash forward” sections of Terminator). They fortunately left it out of Paycheck. But the REAL Dick “blurred reality” stories – Ubik, for instance – haven’t been filmed (I havebn’t seen The Adjustment Bureau, so I can’t comment.
I suspect that Hollywood is wired for the “real or false” imagery by the very nature of the business, and they can’t help injecting it , the thing for which PKD is best known, into his stories even when it’s not really there.
*Of course, I admit, they had to change it. A movie about someone simply remembering things, without showing those memories, would be damned dull, and it’s always better to how “real time” rather than flashbacks. I’ve long maintained, by the way, that the bulk of the original film was a rip-off of Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization.
I’m having a hard time with 2001 as “ambiguous.” Yes, I’ve read the book, and seen the movie many times, and I understand what happens. That’s not the point.
To me, an ambiguous ending would be one that makes you say, “Did she or didn’t she?” or “Was he the guy or wasn’t he?” But an ending that makes you say, “What the fuck just happened?” isn’t ambiguous.
Unless there’s an ambiguity to the end of 2001 that I’m missing.
Does Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid count?
You keep using that word. I do not think that that word does not mean what you think it does not mean.
Sounds like it fits, to me. Unless there’s something I’m misunderstanding.
I skimmed that 5-minute video. Can you summarize what makes it such a good ending?
Henry Fool is the example I thought of. In the end of the movie, the main character is either going to be the coward he’s always been, and flee the country; or he’ll finally grow a backbone and accept responsibility for his actions. The final shot shows him running frantically, but it doesn’t show his destination. Well-done, in my opinion.
But my favorite ambiguous ending is Pan’s Labyrinth. True, Guillermo del Toro says that of course everything in the movie was real, and I think there’s at least one or two events in the movie that don’t make sense as fantasies, but the movie works best, I think, if the ending is ambiguous. Certainly we had a lot of conversations (over a lot of stiff drinks) about what the ending meant.
Made even more ambiguous by the identity of the kid in the car