Final Lines

@themax

You got it. An innocuous joke, at that, a "Fargo"-esque stereotyping of Americans. I love that line and that entire dream at the end has such a sweetly sad feel to it.

Let me note No Country as the exception. I played the last line in that through my head for months. But otherwise you are right. They usually end with jokes of some sort.

"What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?"

If you're familiar with the Coens at all, you know they're never funny just to be funny. That's pointless and a waste of time and film. That's more like the Wayans brothers than the Coen brothers.

Hi is dreaming. We see his children and grandchildren entering from the point of view of Hi and Ed. In a dreamlike and poetic (i.e., idealistic, therefore unrealistic and diametrically opposed to Hi and Ed's reality) manner, his voiceover describes the scene: "But I saw an old couple being visited by their children and all their grandchildren too. The old couple wasn't screwed up and neither were their kids or grandkids. And I don't know--you tell me--this whole dream... was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do? But me and Ed, we can be good too. And it seemed real. It seemed like us. And it seemed like, well, our home. If not in Arizona, then a land not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capable. And all children are happy and beloved. I don't know... maybe it was Utah."

As Hi waxes poetic, we get carried along on his dream-like vision of a land that doesn't exist, save only in dreams. But a dream that isn't too far out of our reach if only we aspire to be better, like he claims to. A dreamland, if not in Arizona, where he exists, then maybe... Oz? Nirvana? Cloud 9? the Land of the Lotus-Eaters? Lake Wobegon? Nope. Utah. His dream shuts down abruptly (and not really surprisingly) in reality, for that's as far as Hi's limited (real) intelligence can carry him, betraying his poesy. It's a sudden and unexpected juxtaposition of the extraordinary with the ordinary. It has nothing to do with the physical distance from Arizona to Utah (and certainly nothing to do with Mormons). It could just as well have been any other real and mundane place instead of Utah. It's a tried and true comedic device, as old as the hills--those mist-laden hills on a distant horizon, drawing us ever on with the sweet siren-song of untold happiness and endless joy. Those far off hills of... Utah?

I thought the endings of Raising Arizona and No Country... were quite similar (having watched both lately). I was pondering the meaning of both endings for weeks afterwards.