Shallow Grave ending
Sep. 15th, 2006 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_belle_laideI was going to say that I had no idea what brought this to mind, but I do. This morning on the way to work I was listening to a CD I made a few years ago which has the song "Happy Heart" by Andy Williams on it, and everyone who is cool knows that song from the spectacular ending of the movie Shallow Grave. I get chills listening to that song only because the ending of that movie always plays in my mind during it, and during the little musical interlude I always have to say David's lines the exact way he said them in the movie: "Oh yes. I believe in friends...." and the rest of it.
So that movie was on my mind again (I wish I knew more people I could show it to who hadn't seen it already; I love to watch their reactions through the movie and have another excuse to watch it again.) Anyway, so there is a huge controversy about Alex's (Ewan McGregor) fate at the end, and until I'd read all the fights and flaming and nonsense over it, it had never even ocurred to me that it might be something other than what I had thought.
But suddenly I realized tonight that it was exactly as I'd always thought, and here's precisely why: Alex is alive, because he and David were stabbed at around the same time, the cops discovered them at the exact same time since they were next to each other, and David is long frozen in the morgue while Alex is still pinned to the floor. It's as simple as that, really. Most people who argue that Alex is dead do so because they think he bled to death and because the inspector doesn't answer him when he says "Hello, inspector," and mostly I guess because the cops and crime scene photographers are all just crowding around him taking pictures instead of trying to keep him alive. They argue that Alex speaking and grinning like a madman after his death is artistic license, because after all, David is still narrating after his death. To me, the aristic license is that there aren't paramedics swarming around Alex. He's a sleazy journalist; it's only right that people should be all up in his grill when he should be getting medical attention, for example., and that he should be grinning through it all. He has completely won the entire thing, after all. Simple, if you think about it. Mystery solved.
Anyway, I felt this was blogworthy, as it is one of my alltime favorite films and I now feel like I totally understand the ending. ^_~
And here it is, one of the handful of images that inspired an entire series of novels out of me. ^_^
So that movie was on my mind again (I wish I knew more people I could show it to who hadn't seen it already; I love to watch their reactions through the movie and have another excuse to watch it again.) Anyway, so there is a huge controversy about Alex's (Ewan McGregor) fate at the end, and until I'd read all the fights and flaming and nonsense over it, it had never even ocurred to me that it might be something other than what I had thought.
But suddenly I realized tonight that it was exactly as I'd always thought, and here's precisely why: Alex is alive, because he and David were stabbed at around the same time, the cops discovered them at the exact same time since they were next to each other, and David is long frozen in the morgue while Alex is still pinned to the floor. It's as simple as that, really. Most people who argue that Alex is dead do so because they think he bled to death and because the inspector doesn't answer him when he says "Hello, inspector," and mostly I guess because the cops and crime scene photographers are all just crowding around him taking pictures instead of trying to keep him alive. They argue that Alex speaking and grinning like a madman after his death is artistic license, because after all, David is still narrating after his death. To me, the aristic license is that there aren't paramedics swarming around Alex. He's a sleazy journalist; it's only right that people should be all up in his grill when he should be getting medical attention, for example., and that he should be grinning through it all. He has completely won the entire thing, after all. Simple, if you think about it. Mystery solved.
Anyway, I felt this was blogworthy, as it is one of my alltime favorite films and I now feel like I totally understand the ending. ^_~
And here it is, one of the handful of images that inspired an entire series of novels out of me. ^_^
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Date: 2006-09-16 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-17 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-17 12:17 am (UTC)Of course, now I must guess which series of novels this inspired...
*thinks*...
Raptor Crest? Specifically, the character of Sahrek Harkinian?
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Date: 2006-09-17 12:51 am (UTC)Sahrek, IIRC (whose last name got changed to Tamret) was originally inspired by Nicholas Lea, or rather the character he played on X Files, Alex Krycek.
But thank you for remembering. :) It's that entire new, redone series that got lost in the recent hard drive crash. It's nice to know that someone out there still thinks of them once in a while. :D
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Date: 2006-09-17 12:57 am (UTC)That reminds me, I've nearly finished re-reading Hero 5. I need to decide what to read next, and convert them (which unfortuantly takes a while to get all the formatting sorted, as I have to do most of the work by hand).
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Date: 2006-09-17 01:28 am (UTC)I often wonder if it'd be worth it to make a web page or something when (if) I ever get my butt in gear on the novel I'm working on now to tell people what's up with it. I converted some of the old characters (or at least, kept the first names because I liked them,) for it, and I know that some people out there still think that was a decent series. A lot of the ideas are the same (time travel and stuff like that.) It's just a geeky fantasy novel about this kind of thing, but my overall voice and the way I do characters hasn't changed too drastically, so I sometimes wonder if people would be interested.
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Date: 2006-09-17 10:57 am (UTC)BTW, are there any more chapters to Seer of Kakariko II? The copy I've got only has up to chapter 6.
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Date: 2006-09-19 01:24 am (UTC)\Im really glad to know that people are still interested. I hope that interest might someday carry over to an original novel (if I ever get my hard drive back and get off my ass.) I never did finish Seer of Kakariko, though, but some of those ideas and characters will be in the future original stories. You know, if I ever get that hard drive back. And get off my ass. (Though actually its more a matter of getting ON my ass, since my ass isnt in teh computer chair half as much as it used to be.)