I was fortunate enough to catch “They Might Be Giants” with George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward on Netflix. Though flawed, I thought the movie overall was wonderful.
I don’t know how to do the spoiler thing I’ve seen people do, but I doubt I will spoil a 40 year old movie.
My question is the ending. It ends with Playfair and Watson in Central Park, near a tunnel, waiting for Moriarty to arrive. A rhythmic sound, like approaching hoof beats appears, and Playfair says “Let it be said they they found us very close together, in the light”. The rhythmic sound grows louder, a bright light seems to approach Playfair and Watson, the music swells and the movie ends.
The initial thought is that they were hit by a train, and Playfair was truly mad after all. However the park they were in has no trains, and there were no tracks coming out of the tunnel. The thought of a joint suicide makes the ending particularly bittersweet.
Another thought was they did not die, but Watson has now fully joined Playfair in his fantasy/delusion, and they will now live on as Holmes and Dr. Watson.
I would like to hear opinions of others who have seen this movie. Did they die at the end?
Have not seen it in over 40yrs, but the ending is still vivid.
Didn’t think to much about the meaning. Moriarty is real! It is all fantasy! Who cares…great movie.
I remember seeing this movie a long time ago. Even being rather young it had some influence upon me. I thought and still think that something wonderful happen next and let it go at that. Some things should be unknown, some questions should go unanswered.
This is how I remember seeing it so long ago, and just the once, I don’t remember a sense of dread at all.
I also think that Watson had come to understand Playfair’s delusion, and had in all likelihood joined him in it.
This is what I think. I saw it a few months ago and thought Watson accepted Playfair the way he was and knowingly joined him and his delusion.
Good to see some love for this movie. George C. Scott really sells it, it has a great supporting cast - like Jack Gilford, great dialogue, and again, I find the ending very haunting.
Now I really ought to look for it and watch again. I need to check my library, they have a lot of older DVD’s of movies.
After the climatic last scene you describe, and Scott and Woodard fade out after the brilliant light seems to engulf them, a “quote” or “adage” rolls on the screen that I think explains the mystery. It says (paraphrased), “The human heart can see what is hidden to the eyes, and the heart knows things that the mind does not begin to understand.”
Like most here, I didn’t think of suicide or any other dreadful thing - but rather that this last declaration confirms what one pretty much suspected from the beginning of the film: that this great jurist had not actually gone mad, but had apprehended the fact that the reality that he had understood as a reformer no longer gave him any satisfaction or personal meaning as a jurist, so he had to transcend it and become a different, mythic type personality - in his case, Sherlock Holmes. Failing this he really would have gone clinically mad!
Remember that Peabody, the archivist/libraian (Jack Gilford) is one of those normal sane folk that joins in the last scenes, living out his fantasy (along the lines of a Muskateer, I guess). Likewise, all the other non-corrupt, good hearted people in the film never hestitate to embrace Justin Playfair as “Holmes” - never once referring to him by his “real” name, and only the corrupt insist he is insane, even Blevin’s wife Daisy (Rue McClanahan) who loves him as he is. Only Watson - true to the Doyle’s original Watson - doubts him somewhat and repeatedly - even initally in the last scene, yet is the closest to him and loves him the most.
So I think the meaning is ultimately both subtle and yet obvious too: some of those (more than we like to think) that are categorized as “insane” or “out there” are really the way they are because it is the only rational approach to a corrupted and often loveless, meaningless world! (especially if you fall for a purely “orthodox point of view” 