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The Ending -- and Miles' Novel (SPOILERS)

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
4 replies | jump to latest

"Sideways" ends only after its protagonist, Miles, seems to have hit rock bottom: drinking his most precious bottle of wine in a fast food place; aware that the wife who left him is successfully, married and pregnant and that he is alone and unloved. (His "friend" Jack, seems to have disappeared from his life.)

And then he gets a letter -- via lovely voiceover -- from the beautiful Santa Barbara area waitress , Maya, who once loved him but rejected him -- not for his looks or his problems, but because he lied about his friend's cheating ways -- and she is interested in finally seeing him again. The movie ends with Miles knocking at Maya's door -- but we don't see what happens next. The end.

The "Sideways" ending is even more ambiguous than the "About Schmidt" ending in the movie that Alexander Payne gave us previously(hell,its the "Sopranos" ending, isn't it?)...but we can figure that Maya will be there, and will open the door, and that Miles has at least a CHANCE at some sort of relationship with Maya(friends? lovers? marriage?).

But here's something I think about the "Sideways" ending: Maya writes to Miles and offers a reconciliation because...she read Miles' unpublished novel manuscript, and it moved her with its autobiographical elements about Miles himself. And to me, that's sort of "the moral of the story": Miles could never sell that book for publication, but it is a good thing he wrote it....because MAYA read it ,and the book changed her mind about Miles.

Everything is worth doing...and what it WILL get you is sometimes a surprise. Miles writing that book is the proof.

[–] BeaSouth (3554) 2 years ago

Nice post ecarle. I never thought about it this way. He was so bitter and disappointed about the repeated rejection of that novel and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him

[–] daveyh (640) 2 years ago

There's a theory that the ending is a fantasy as Miles commits suicide. I can't take credit for this one - think I saw it on Reddit. The reasoning:
He has his most precious bottle of wine as part of his "last meal".
It ties in with Jack's comment earlier about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Duncces and how he only got published and became well known after his suicide.
The unusually well behaved 8th graders reading a passage about the narrator feeling like they're at their own funeral.
The message from Maya comes out of nowhere and seems awfully long for a voicemail. Even if she was allowed unlimited time for her message, it feels like if Maya had that much to say, she'd wait until a time when he answered so they could talk.
And if you really want run wild with it, Miles climbing the stairs to her apartment could be interpreted as him ascending into the afterlife - like I say, it's a stretch.

As with BeaSouth's reply, I hadn't thought about that before either - although the book didn't get published, it did get him into Maya's good graces again. So some good did come from putting his book out there, and maybe even from Jack's lie that they were celebrating Miles' book deal!

I guess the ending is open to interpretation, which is why they didn't show what happened after. It was also a way of bookending the story - the film starts and ends with a knock at the door.

[–] roger1 (4026) a year ago

As with BeaSouth's reply, I hadn't thought about that before either - although the book didn't get published, it did get him into Maya's good graces again.

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As the OP here, that's how I interpret the ending because I think so much of life DOES happen that way. Something that seemed to be a waste of time or effort pays off in ways you don't expect.

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So some good did come from putting his book out there, and maybe even from Jack's lie that they were celebrating Miles' book deal!

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That too. Jack got a lot of mileage -- and laid -- with his lies.

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I guess the ending is open to interpretation, which is why they didn't show what happened after. It was also a way of bookending the story - the film starts and ends with a knock at the door.

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I forgot that about the knock at the door "bookend." Excellent observation.

As to whether or not Miles actually kills himself at the end and "ascends," well, I didn't see the movie as operating at this level but...its an open-ended ending so...any interpretation is possible.

[–] Ranb (11190) a year ago

Miles appears in the sequels to Sideways; the books Vertical and Sideways 3 Chile. So no suicide.