Going back a bit but the closing scene with John Wayne in 'The Searchers'.
I love some of the endings mentioned, The Usual Suspects, The Long Good Friday, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and (my favourite film ever) Zulu, but the ending for The Searchers is just great. Great choice.
Can anyone help me understand why Usual Suspects is so popular?
We find out that everything we’ve watched before the end was a lie. We’ve no idea if any of it actually happened. At most we know that there’s a bad guy called Soze and he killed a bunch of people to protect his identity, but not necessarily in the way that we saw. In fact we know that at least half the people - and potentially 90% of them - didn’t exist. That’s not a plot twist that’s... lame!
Bryan Singer said “there’s no right answer” and I’d say that’s because the writing wasn’t smart enough to have one. Just a gimmick ending. Unlike, say, Inception where Nolan insists there is a definitive answer to whether or not Cobb is in the real world.
It's a film. They're mainly all "lies".
It's a great film.
Guess I asked the wrong person.
Meaning?
Why do you like an ending that doesn’t make any sense?
Makes perfect sense to me too. Have I missed something that makes it NOT make sense?
The end is gimmicky and the film doesn't hang together as a result, on any level. It doesn't make narrative sense. It's the total opposite of a great ending. With a twist like Sixth Sense or Memento, we find out that there stuff going on with a purpose that we didn't know existed, and a rewatch will reveal we hadn't noticed the real drive behind certain elements. This ending renders the previous 90 minutes ot have been utterly irrelevant.
A rewatch of The Usual Suspects is pointless, because nothing happened. It's just a yarn being spun by a guy who doesn't want to get recognised...
The entire crux of the movie is super-genius criminal mastermind Keyser Soze killing the only man who could ID him. A complicated scheme (and we don't know if any of it happened in the world of the film anyway, nearly every character was taken from a piece of stuff in the cop's office so we can only assume he made them up). And the finale to his master plan was to... sit with the cops for a few hours and run away before a fax comes through that identifies him?
He could have left the police station any time he liked (a character says so) but he sticks around to tell a pointless story that only covers his tracks for 30-45 seconds after he leaves the room? And the cops are now VERY familiar with what he looks like?
It's slick, well acted, nicely directed nonsense, with an ending that makes no sense whatsoever. It's blindingly exciting the first time you go through it. The second time... you should start to wonder, what the fuck? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us think this film made any sense whatsoever!
I always viewed Usual Suspects as a film about story telling and how to manipulate someone when doing so. Verbal taps into Detective Kujan’s already clear dislike for Keaton. It’s just a story within a story.
Actually, one that stayed with me with was Schindler's list. The scene with the actors and the survivors putting stones on Schindler's grace was very affecting
Going back a bit but the closing scene with John Wayne in 'The Searchers'.
I love some of the endings mentioned, The Usual Suspects, The Long Good Friday, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and (my favourite film ever) Zulu, but the ending for The Searchers is just great. Great choice.
Can anyone help me understand why Usual Suspects is so popular?
We find out that everything we’ve watched before the end was a lie. We’ve no idea if any of it actually happened. At most we know that there’s a bad guy called Soze and he killed a bunch of people to protect his identity, but not necessarily in the way that we saw. In fact we know that at least half the people - and potentially 90% of them - didn’t exist. That’s not a plot twist that’s... lame!
Bryan Singer said “there’s no right answer” and I’d say that’s because the writing wasn’t smart enough to have one. Just a gimmick ending. Unlike, say, Inception where Nolan insists there is a definitive answer to whether or not Cobb is in the real world.
It's a film. They're mainly all "lies".
It's a great film.
Guess I asked the wrong person.
Meaning?
Why do you like an ending that doesn’t make any sense?
Makes perfect sense to me too. Have I missed something that makes it NOT make sense?
The end is gimmicky and the film doesn't hang together as a result, on any level. It doesn't make narrative sense. It's the total opposite of a great ending. With a twist like Sixth Sense or Memento, we find out that there stuff going on with a purpose that we didn't know existed, and a rewatch will reveal we hadn't noticed the real drive behind certain elements. This ending renders the previous 90 minutes ot have been utterly irrelevant.
A rewatch of The Usual Suspects is pointless, because nothing happened. It's just a yarn being spun by a guy who doesn't want to get recognised...
The entire crux of the movie is super-genius criminal mastermind Keyser Soze killing the only man who could ID him. A complicated scheme (and we don't know if any of it happened in the world of the film anyway, nearly every character was taken from a piece of stuff in the cop's office so we can only assume he made them up). And the finale to his master plan was to... sit with the cops for a few hours and run away before a fax comes through that identifies him?
He could have left the police station any time he liked (a character says so) but he sticks around to tell a pointless story that only covers his tracks for 30-45 seconds after he leaves the room? And the cops are now VERY familiar with what he looks like?
It's slick, well acted, nicely directed nonsense, with an ending that makes no sense whatsoever. It's blindingly exciting the first time you go through it. The second time... you should start to wonder, what the fuck? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us think this film made any sense whatsoever!
I don’t think Baz “Jimmy Film 85” Norman is a fan somehow.
You see, there’s the problem. It says “some like it hot” but it’s a well known fact that most people prefer it mild or cold, so the whole premise of the film is built on a tissue of lies.
Sharks are just not known for random attacks on humans, especially when they’ve already eaten two or three people over the course of a few days and have just climbed aboard a boat to gobble a man down whole.
It’s all lies I tell you. Can’t have a film based primarily on lies, even if they do accidentally manage to catch a real life shooting star in the filming!
Sharks are just not known for random attacks on humans, especially when they’ve already eaten two or three people over the course of a few days and have just climbed aboard a boat to gobble a man down whole.
It’s all lies I tell you. Can’t have a film based primarily on lies, even if they do accidentally manage to catch a real life shooting star in the filming!
So what you’re saying is, you don’t understand how storytelling works?
Going back a bit but the closing scene with John Wayne in 'The Searchers'.
I love some of the endings mentioned, The Usual Suspects, The Long Good Friday, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and (my favourite film ever) Zulu, but the ending for The Searchers is just great. Great choice.
Can anyone help me understand why Usual Suspects is so popular?
We find out that everything we’ve watched before the end was a lie. We’ve no idea if any of it actually happened. At most we know that there’s a bad guy called Soze and he killed a bunch of people to protect his identity, but not necessarily in the way that we saw. In fact we know that at least half the people - and potentially 90% of them - didn’t exist. That’s not a plot twist that’s... lame!
Bryan Singer said “there’s no right answer” and I’d say that’s because the writing wasn’t smart enough to have one. Just a gimmick ending. Unlike, say, Inception where Nolan insists there is a definitive answer to whether or not Cobb is in the real world.
It's a film. They're mainly all "lies".
It's a great film.
Guess I asked the wrong person.
Meaning?
Why do you like an ending that doesn’t make any sense?
Makes perfect sense to me too. Have I missed something that makes it NOT make sense?
The end is gimmicky and the film doesn't hang together as a result, on any level. It doesn't make narrative sense. It's the total opposite of a great ending. With a twist like Sixth Sense or Memento, we find out that there stuff going on with a purpose that we didn't know existed, and a rewatch will reveal we hadn't noticed the real drive behind certain elements. This ending renders the previous 90 minutes ot have been utterly irrelevant.
A rewatch of The Usual Suspects is pointless, because nothing happened. It's just a yarn being spun by a guy who doesn't want to get recognised...
The entire crux of the movie is super-genius criminal mastermind Keyser Soze killing the only man who could ID him. A complicated scheme (and we don't know if any of it happened in the world of the film anyway, nearly every character was taken from a piece of stuff in the cop's office so we can only assume he made them up). And the finale to his master plan was to... sit with the cops for a few hours and run away before a fax comes through that identifies him?
He could have left the police station any time he liked (a character says so) but he sticks around to tell a pointless story that only covers his tracks for 30-45 seconds after he leaves the room? And the cops are now VERY familiar with what he looks like?
It's slick, well acted, nicely directed nonsense, with an ending that makes no sense whatsoever. It's blindingly exciting the first time you go through it. The second time... you should start to wonder, what the fuck? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us think this film made any sense whatsoever!
I always viewed Usual Suspects as a film about story telling and how to manipulate someone when doing so. Verbal taps into Detective Kujan’s already clear dislike for Keaton. It’s just a story within a story.
Yeah that’s a fair way to view it, I guess I just don’t think one of those stories works, it’s sacrificed for the sake of the other story!
Comments
At least, that’s what Jimmy 85 told me!
Sharks are just not known for random attacks on humans, especially when they’ve already eaten two or three people over the course of a few days and have just climbed aboard a boat to gobble a man down whole.
It’s all lies I tell you. Can’t have a film based primarily on lies, even if they do accidentally manage to catch a real life shooting star in the filming!