The Redemptive Ending
JA
March 02
A while ago I posted a brief review of John Hillcoat’s adaptation of The Road, however held back on commenting on the ending because I didn’t want to spoil it for those still wanting or deciding to see it. Well, it’s been a few weeks and endings are still on my mind, so I’ll begin with the obvious spoiler alert: this post will touch on The Road, Atonement and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, so if you’re keen to read/see any of the above, check in afterwards.
The idea of the redemptive or uplifting finish is something that we see in all art forms – plays, novels, poems and even, dare I say it, blog posts. This isn’t necessarily the clichéd ‘happily ever after’ syndrome, but rather a moment or sentence which pulls the narrative threads together and gently coaxes them towards something hopeful, cathartic or renewed. Of course these types of conclusions can often be exactly what the novel calls for, precisely wrought and satisfying, but it is not always the case. And yet there seems to be some sort of looming pressure for stories to end, if not completely happily, then at lease with some promise of salvation.
According to Jenny Diski of the London Review Blog, some ‘creative writing schools in the US teach that a poem needs to have what they call “redemption”: something at the end which lifts the reader up’. Aptly sarcastic, she goes on to add that readers need this because ‘they’ve bought your book, read your poem, gone to your movie. And because you have left them feeling really warmed, endorphins tingling, they are ready to purchase more of the same’. This is an impulse that Hollywood has many times been unable to resist. The famous adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s saw Holly and Paul shared a romantic kiss in the rain over a comically bedraggled cat, a marked departure from the book, where Holly does in fact leave for Brazil and is never heard from again. Not to mention the countless Disney remakes of much darker children’s fairytales such Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (in brief, she doesn’t get her prince).
But to get back to The Road. McCarthy’s novel ended with an oblique, nostalgic reference to the natural world that had since been lost; a simple, pristine image of trout in a cold mountain stream, ‘a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again’. Likewise, before that, there was the knowledge that the boy, at least for now, was safe. He had been found by one of the ‘good guys’ and taken with them. There was the suggestion of a little boy and a little girl, but the last paragraph sees him meeting only the woman. Yet in Hillcoat’s film, we meet the family in full. We recognise that their little boy is in fact the same one the main character glimpsed earlier in the film (not a figment of his yearning imagination as it might have been in the book), and that not only are they the ‘good guys’, they are also so good that they have managed to care for and bring along the family dog. Ampersand Duck sums it up on her blog like so:
The one thing that did disappoint me was the ending.... It was the way John Hillman centred the ending on the nuclear (ha!) family, including dog(! in a world where animals are gone! I know it was a symbol that these were good decent humans who wouldn't eat their pets let alone other humans, but still...) and not about the natural world that was lost, which is how the book ended.
I know I’m being fussy about tone here, but why the need to make the ending just that little bit more uplifting/favourable? Did Hillcoat feel that the film was so bleak and so terrifying that the audience would feel short-changed by an equally grim end? I do think that adaptations should be free to chop and change endings when necessary, but I’m not sure I can see a reason for it here, save for the belief that anything too depressing will defeat audience expectation and therefore lose them.
This desire for some kind of salvation is something that Ian McEwan plays on expertly in his novel Atonement (as does Joe Wright in his adaptation). As soon as we are given the happy(ish) ending, with Robbie and Cecelia united again and Briony promising to try and clear his name, it is wrenched away by an abrupt change of point of view. The narrator reveals the artifice of her book, written not as truth but as a final act of atonement for a childhood lie. We have our happy ending, but we also have the falsity behind it, and our reliance on resolutions and happy dénouements is laid bare.
Lovers and their happy ends have been on my mind all night long. As into the sunset we sail. An unhappy inversion… It is only in this last version that my lovers end well, standing side by side on a South London pavement as I walk away. All the preceding drafts were pitiless. But now I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my reader, by direct or indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicaemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station. That I never saw them in that year…How could that constitute an ending? What sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader draw from such an account? … I like to think that it isn’t a weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end.
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Comments
02 Mar 10 at 10:12
Thanks for the post.
I'm yet to see the film adaptation of ‘The Road’, but I felt this way about the book. I was very disappointed by the ending because it avoided its inevitable conclusion. I would argue that the book itself has a redemptive ending as the father does find some [shadow of] salvation – he can’t go on, but his [and the world’s] legacy will because his child has found a home. Thus, still some hope for humanity.
Meanwhile, I kept thinking: what’s the point?
So if McCarthy did that in the book, I can only imagine the film would make it more explicit – and truly awful, by the sounds of it.
I always preferred Capote’s version of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, the one where Holly gets freedom. In fact, I can’t think of a cinematic adaptation where they changed the ending and I thought, there’s an improved ending.
...02 Mar 10 at 10:42
I felt the film's ending destroyed the integrity of what preceded it. A nuclear family - plus uneaten food source, aka pet dog - is precisely what is unsustainable in the world of The Road. Yes, there's a glimmer of hope in McCarthy's ending, but it turns sickly sweet and literally incredible in the film adaptation. With Atonement, both the novel and film play - as you point out - on our culture's obsession with neat and positive conclusions to stories, both giving satisfaction and taking it away. Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir Eat Pray Love would never have become a worldwide bestseller if she had not bumped into her next beau - now husband - in Bali. And what do you know, that's the final section of the book. An extremely happy ending for readers going on her journey, which began with a very painful divorce.
...02 Mar 10 at 11:41
I really liked the film of 'Attonement' and the way it which it resolved this whole dilemma. I'm yet to read the book. I also like the way redemtion is handled in an old classic like 'Pickpocket'. I didn't like the way in which redemption was dealt with in 'Gran Torino' as it was so clunky and unconvincing, but check out something like 'Animal Factory', a prison film, and the redemption of William Defoe's character is a beautiful thing.
In short these things can be done very well and the redemptive streak doesn't have to be a collape into Hollywood cliches.
...02 Mar 10 at 12:30
The chilling non-redemption of Clint Eastwood's character in 'Unforgiven' through brutal acts of violence, is a great case of getting this right too. It is tempting to think he has been able to redeem himself through hard work (and rough justice and revenge?), and although he goes on to live his life he remains a killer of women and children. Just like Travis in 'Taxi Driver', what appears as redemption is not.
...02 Mar 10 at 17:21
Thanks for the quote!
I feel very passionately about the way Disney (and others) ruined the end of the Little Mermaid, so I have to admit to snorting that you brought it up in this context. Of course, while the Little Mermaid lost the man, Anderson did manage a bit of a redemptive ending, since she managed to attain Heaven through her sacrifice and selflessness. Original audiences would have found it tragic but satisfying; it's only in the last fifty years that getting the man is seen to be more redemptive than saving your soul... personally, I would have kept my pagan self safe in the water, but what sort of story would that make?!
...02 Mar 10 at 17:25
Cheers for the feedback all. Jacinda and Chris - you're right about redemptive endings being about a level of degree and preference. I wasn't bothered by the ending of The Road (the book) because to me this felt like it was just redemptive enough without overstepping the mark to appear tokenistic. I think this was mainly because one thing that struck me while reading was the transience of luck/happiness. Just because the boy was okay for now didn't mean that he'd be so forever.
...02 Mar 10 at 20:57
Interesting post. Stories have to end with a bang - the money shot, as it were. However writers want to do it, whether it's catharsis or a door left ajar, there has to be a fullstop at the end of a sentence. I loved the book version of The Road; was less fond of the film version. But I do know a number of people who crumbled into tears when they saw that ever so brief shot of the dog in the final scene. For me, despite the Hollywood device, it was the only moment in the movie when I fell to bits. And from observing others in the audience I wasn't the only one. And if this isn't a film in which it's okay to fall apart, I don't know what is.
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