"i think the movie should of ended with julie leaving her apartment with the papers to see olivier. that would of been a perfect ending. instead it was very weird and confusing."
I totally disagree with this. The last minutes are among the greatest film endings of all time. There is no reason to trouble yourself trying to find the meaning of the scene. The images are beautiful, the music is choral is outstanding, the result is poetic.
However, if you're so deep into american movies and you believe that every single moment in a film must be perfectly clear and far from confusing (I wonder what your opinion on Tarkovsky would be) there is a certain reason why the film ends this way and not in the "perfect" ending you are suggesting.
When Julie first decides to co-operate with Olivier in the finishing of her husbands work, he tells her he hasn't done anything about the finale. She stands up, goes to the library, opens up the New Testament and mentions that the hardest part of the play will be the Greek choral. Later on, just before she goes to Olivier's place for the last time, we see that she is the one who will compose this finale. So, it is quite reasonable that we should listen to the finished result since we were given several excerpts of it throughout the whole movie.
This greek choral isn't meaningless. It's not a bunch of stupid voices, I don't know if anyone cared to translate it on the version you have seen it, but it's words have everything to do with the movie. The text is taken from St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.
I suggest you read carefully the text
(in http://www.petey.com/kk/docs/kiesdis3.txt you may find a very nice essay on these exact last minutes) and then watch the film's ending again. I am sure you will realise that it far from "weird and confusing". It's outstanding.
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bananacharlie
16 years ago
The ending seemed to me to be a bit lazy actually. People on these boards seem to hold the opinion that the union of image and music in the film were outstanding, however I found that while the music was beautiful, and so were the images most of the time, the two were inappropriately matched and did not blend to enhance the film in any way that I could tell.
Similarly, I thought that the music playing in the final minutes was fantastic, and also that some of the images were quite beautiful both aesthetically and in terms of meaning, however I could not see why the film was ended with a montage of the characters. It seemed as I said to be a little lazy. It was as if the director decided to have a cool montage of all the characters and what they were doing at that point because he couldn't think of a less cliched way to end the film. Why show the mother watching television? To what point or purpose? Why show the hitchhiker who witnessed the car crash?
If someone can refute this without blaming it on the fact that anyone who disliked the film is "so deep into american movies" I would appreciate it. That's right dimitris_verras, I'm mocking you. You're pretentious.
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Errington_92
12 years ago
where was julie having sex with olivier?? against a plate of glass or something??
You have not seen the symbolic significance of the scene. It resembled a womb as Julie was being reborn into a new life after moving on from her isolated state.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
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