MovieChat Forums > White Bird in a Blizzard (2014) Discussion > Anyone else disappointed in the ending (...

Anyone else disappointed in the ending (SPOILER)

posted 10 years ago by RynoII
6 replies | jump to latest

When Kat suspects her Mom might be in the freezer, she looks but she is not there. But then it turns out that she use to be there, but was moved, and the Dad got drunk and confessed to murder, pretty much right after she left.

However, I find this ending to feel very tacked on. Like they couldn't come up with a very interesting way for the truth to be found out, so they decided to have a false alarm, and then have it be found later, over narration, just by a convenient confession while drunk. It just felt anticlimatic for me.

Also when the Mom catches the Dad with Phil, I felt this was also tacked on because we never get any scenes of the Phil with the Dad, prior to this. You can argue that it makes it more of a shocking surprise, but it also feels short changed as a result too. The movie seems to rely more on misdirection than climatic build up. What do you think? Is it me?

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Gino_Strabliggi 10 years ago

I was just as surprised as you were by the ending but it eventually worked for me. I think the main subject of the movie is not the disappearance or the crime itself, but rather the mystery surrounding it and how it affects Kat while she's growing up and becoming an adult. The final twist just feels like a convenient way for Kat to finally make peace with her mother and move on with her life. I thought the last scene was very moving and melancholic, Gregg Araki totally reached his goal here in depicting Kat's state of mind.

IMO Chris Meloni and Eva Green's characters on the other hand are voluntarily depicted in a superficial manner, they're not necessarily realistic or believable, they're just shown as Kat perceived them by that time, i.e. Chris Meloni's character as a weak/dominated husband, and Eva Green's character as a seductive/terrorizing housewife. Kat ultimately understands that she got it all wrong about her parents and that her mother was the true victim, that's what makes this ending so beautiful. It reminds me a lot of Twin Peaks in that regard, nothing but compassion and forgiveness.

[–] RynoII 10 years ago

Okay thanks. I haven't seen Twin Peaks. However, Mysterious Skin is one of my favorite films of all time, and I just might put that in my top 10. This movie however, I found to be very average by comparison but it does have similarities.

The lead character has a flamboyant friend who I found to be very similar to the homosexual flamboyant friend in Mysterious Skin. Both movies start out in the last 80s and move into the early 90s, and both have very similar music.

But Mysterious Skin has a great ending where that was built up to naturally. This ending I felt there was no build up and it felt tacked on for me, and it pails in comparison.

But that's just how I saw the ending. If the parents were not presented superficially, then maybe I would feel different. But that's just what I think.

[–] hannahbtcgte 9 years ago

I really liked the plot twist but I felt that overall the ending seemed rushed.

[–] chilone (18331) 3 years ago

I was hoping for some kind of confrontation between Kat and pops. Even if it was when he was in jail. I felt kind of robbed.

[–] stickman38 (3439) 3 years ago

***SPOILERS***

The ending didn't bother me that much, I thought it was a decent film overall. It's not great or anything... but it had a few interesting moments. The ending was about right too because throughout the movie we learn that Kat is very similar to her mother, in that she wanted to sleep with a strong alpha male type (the detective) which is what her mother seemed to have wanted but had to settle for a lesser version of that (Phil), her father was seen as somewhat of a beta male by both the mother and by Kat. Then we find out that in addition to Phil and the dad being beta males, they're also homosexual or at the very least, bisexual. lol..

So, it all made sense but I'm not sure that making Phil and her dad gay lovers was the best move but it did explain a few things about the movie. And in the end, we finally got an answer to what happened to her mother.

Not a bad movie, I would give it a 6.1 out of 10. Not sure if I really cared about any of the characters though. In fact, the most likeable characters are probably her two hometown friends, Beth and Mickey. They had some pretty good lines in this movie. And they seemed to represent a kind of symbolic allegory to what was happening in Kat's life. So yeah, interesting movie.