The first time I saw The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, Martin Scorsese) I completely freaked over how crazy its ending was. I don’t even know if you’d call it a twist. But I didn’t see it coming. And dare I say it remains something no other art form can accomplish; that elusive quality theatre, books, or paintings can’t do. Something only cinema can do.
It’s the titular moment CHRIST is crucified and he gives into the temptation of SATAN: he marries and raises a family… this whole life. And then all of the sudden the movie cuts back to him back on the cross and we realize none of it happened, it was all in his mind. Was it Satan showing him the vision? Was it Christ imagining it? Was it the movie speculating it? Can we ever know? Does it matter? But so yeah as a dramatic device it’s pretty neat.
In Mommy (2014, Xavier Dolan) I fell for it again. There’s this impossibly rambunctious problem child whose single mother fights to raise him the whole movie without any signs of a peaceful life between them. It’s one hell of an emotionally hardcore experience. And the whole movie is framed 1:1, which is maybe the narrowest vertical aspect ratio of all time, right? Anyway, at the end there’s a montage where the kid grows up, graduates high school, everyone’s happy and everything all to “Wonderwall” by Oasis, and during this montage the screen broadens open to like a 1:85 widescreen frame. But then Mommy cuts back to the present, music stops, back to 1:1 frame, and we realize it was all in her head just like The Last Temptation of Christ. Pretty powerful, effective.
At the end of The Green Knight (2021, David Lowery) at the moment the hero finally arrives at the object of his journey, to receive a blow from the sword of the GREEN KNIGHT, there’s some dialogue and then he’s back home safe. Then there’s a Last Temptation of Christ montage. But, no. It’s cool and stuff, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t save a movie that was already hanging by a thread of coherence. And moreover it feels like another desperate attempt to borrow something too recognizable from another movie. What’s the point of it? Is he hero or coward? I can do with a movie that refuses its audience a clear resolution, but usually all that led to that moment makes it worthwhile. Not this time. And I don’t think that’s what they were going for. And the post title sequence only pours salt in the wound.
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