la_belle_laide (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
la_belle_laide) wrote2006-09-15 08:35 pm
la_belle_laide) wrote2006-09-15 08:35 pm
Entry tags:
Shallow Grave ending
I 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. ^_^
