WAY TO WRAP THINGS UP

Article by Paul Preston

SPOILERS ABOUND for “The Abyss”, “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, “Captain Phillips”, “Nebraska”, “12 Years a Slave”, “Philomena” and “Saving Mr. Banks”

I was speaking with an editor friend of mine recently, who nailed the trend that has made movie trailers so awful in the last ten or fifteen years. Once upon a time, a trailer was a teaser, something to whet your appetite and get you excited for more of the film the studio was encouraging you to see. Nowadays, the industry is so paranoid that you might not fork out twelve (to TWENTY) bucks for their product, they’ll show you the entire movie. Most moviegoers have a problem with this, and rightfully so. “Fear not”, says the low self-esteem trailer, “they get together in the end – SEE? It’s OK to spend your money, you won’t be challenged.”

The end of a movie is a coveted experience. Especially when the film has been going great til then! Many’s the time I would pray to the Movie Gods that a film wrap itself up nicely, ‘cause I was certainly enjoying the ride, only to see the aliens wrap up all the plot points of “The Abyss” with their superpowers. And don’t even get me started on why I had to wait over nine hours and become engaged with a veritable bevy of interesting and fantastical creatures in “The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King”, only to have them take a back seat to a bunch of ghosts and a Deus ex Giant Bird who save the day.
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So it is with a big grin on my face that I announce that we ended last year on an upswing in good endings. Will that trend continue this year? So far, that remains to be seen. “Non-Stop” had a trite ending, where Liam Neeson had to literally walk around to all the characters one by one and wrap up his plotlines with them before they could all go their separate ways. But you can’t really count January-March, when nothing much is expected from a movie, but we’re right on the cusp of the summer films, so keep an eye on “X-Men: Days of Future Past” or “Edge of Tomorrow” to see if they can close the deal.

If you’re a Blu-Ray and streaming type of person, you’re in luck. “August: Osage County” stuck to its roots and delivered a slightly modified, yet still unhappy ending, and “Nebraska”’s finale conjured up another decidedly Alexander Payne screen moment, that echoed the simplicity of the endings of other films of his (Clooney’s masterfully laid-bare monologue to his wife that closed “The Descendants”, or Jack Nicholson’s overwhelming response to a letter from overseas in “About Schmidt”). When Woody and his son drive the pickup through Hawthorne, Nebraska, they are acknowledging and saying goodbye to the ghosts of that town, and there is great emotion in Woody and David driving away from them and putting them in the rearview, together. This simple ending caps a road trip that was all sorts of complicated.

New on Blu-Ray this week is Stephen Frears’ “Philomena”. Frears is a great director who has helmed films of all genres, never developing a style as someone like Oliver Stone did, or Woody Allen. This allowed him to work on projects as varied as “Dangerous Liaisons” and “High Fidelity”. So, with his name attached, and a script by comic Steve Coogan, I never would have expected the twists this film took, delivering important character information in a slow roll out and jumping continents as surprises unfolded, leading to another surprising ending that mixes bombast and subtlety.

But the biggest three quality endings of 2013 come gift-wrapped in the form of top-notch acting.

“Saving Mr. Banks” tells the story of tightly-wound P.L. Travers, as she goes through what seems like utter misery dealing with Walt Disney’s adaptation of her book “Mary Poppins”. Travers jibes, she snips and she disapproves through a scowl while a creative team of lunatics in Burbank make movie history. Then she watches the film. By this point, the film hadn’t won me over much. It was a little too self-aware and hokey. But as Thompson sees her story on screen and the flood of emotion not only for her work, but also for her father overwhelms her, it worked on me, too. Thompson won the game in the bottom of the ninth with that moment, a moment shared by a smooth Hanks, who leans in to comfort her. That ending saved “Saving Mr. Banks”.

“12 Years a Slave”’s story of Solomon Northup played out like an unpredictable river, with director Steve McQueen’s hand on the rudder. And McQueen rode that river with artistry, sculpting really artful scenes and making choices not found in duller films that cover similar “important” subjects. And such it was with the ending, which could have been an imperfect storm of sweeping score and pushed emotions, but instead was sublimely told. Northrup’s reunion with his family was expertly played out and wisely stayed true to Northrup’s true character. He was changed by his enslavement, but not beaten. He APOLOGIZED to his family for having failed them by not being around for a dozen years, and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s conveyance of that moment was a delicate, heartbreaking balance of control and straight-up truth.

Lastly, “Captain Phillips”, my choice for best film of 2013, had many great moments, and the one people talk about most is the final scene, and with good reason. Director Paul Greengrass is the ultimate authority on you-are-there filmmaking, and what Tom Hanks does at the end of this Somali pirate hijacking story is leave no doubt he was there. He was there. When he is questioned and treated by the nurse after his kidnapping ordeal, the last thing I expected from Captain Phillips was an outpouring of raw emotion that mixed fear and exhilaration. He seemed so strong in his intuition and bravery under such trying circumstances. But OF COURSE he couldn’t keep that up. The stroke of genius is that the film itself had such intensity to that point, we as viewers needed to “come down” off of that, too. So as Phillips releases his tension, so it is released in us. And in the middle, again, I had NO DOUBT that Hanks had just lived through everything he just experienced in the story. He was not an actor. He was not “doing a movie”. It was real, and fiercely effective.