Storytelling rules or existential nonsense?

Regarding the discussion here on happy endings versus tragic ones, it all depends; I mean, there's no hard-and-fast general rule that you should almost never use one or the other, since it all depends on what works best for the individual movie in question. I do get any bias people might have against happy endings on principle, since Hollywood shoved those down our throat all the time back in its Classical era, but that's more of a problem with the endings feeling forced, like the abrupt upbeatness at the end of the studio cut of The Magnificent Ambersons; it's just as possible to force a dark ending, even if it "fits" the general tone of its movie, like the pointless, nihilistic conclusion of It Comes At Night.

And on the flip side of that, sometimes endings work because they clash tonally with the rest of the movie in question, like the way that Ripley's moment of peaceful slumber at the end of Alien feels like the most well-earned happy ending ever, after such a bleak, disturbing experience (which I think works better than the original proposed ending of the Xenomorph killing her), or vice versa, like the way that Futurama's "Jurassic Bark" is a typically hilarious episode of that show, only to end up with one of the biggest emotional gutpunches in TV history. It all just depends, you know?

Right you are. I guess to me it’s the not winning the lottery/making it to the hospital one that feels forced, is all. Plenty of films manage a not-happy, not-tragic ending where there’s a certain final ambivalence (Coherence, Enemy, etc). I’ve come to think this most accurately matches the tone of life/the natural world order, I suppose, whatever that means.

I cited Brazil because when people talk about happy endings, its infamous discordance between what the director intended and how the audience reads it just always sticks out in my mind. A discordance that was so great the studio felt the need to release the movie with a different ending that could be read as happy (I've never seen the "happy" ending version). It also often serves as the flipside of the read in what happens with AI: Artificial Intelligence when its ending comes up .



I don't know why Inland Empire came to mind (but once one's mind goes to Brazil, I guess there isn't that much of a jump); and someone I knew went to a Q&A with David Lynch and in response to one of the questions/comments from an audience member, he pointed out that Inland Empire ended with the forces of light winning (the question revolved around the framing of the forces of darkness and of light in the human condition in his movies, and how after a point, there was a trend that darkness kept winning out). It gels with my reading of the film, and given the dark nature of the film, also runs against the implied tone of what happy endings are like that, 'This probably ties in quite a bit with the “no respectable film has a happy ending” concept' would imply. Granted, I don't think anyone bats an eye at happy endings to courtroom dramas (keep in mind, those are usually a point of catharsis for the audience after seeing a great injustice done to a character). I don't know how respectable those are these days, but that might indicate it's going to break down genre to genre.

I cited the pitch from The Player earlier because

I presume you mean Cate Blanchett. Going off-track, what was so grisly for me was the vet sewing her up without anesthetic & no clean surroundings. I wasn’t surprised she survived. Once she took the drugs in the pipe the old woman offered she was just fine. Give Americans drugs & they’ll survive anything.

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Yes, that was brutal. I did think at one point that this had so many opportunities to go badly wrong, infection etc. but was very well-done, a very memorable scene. I think I was slightly misled, as I’d read a review which made it sound (or perhaps I misinterpreted) like we weren’t told for sure if she survived. Hence was pretty surprised.

And, well, I’m a huge coward about all things medical without drugs, so I think this isn’t just limited to Americans

Kenneth Burke wrote of narratives having conflicting "curves." For the emotional curve of the story, the Deus Ex Machina may be fitting, even if it defies the logical/syllogistic curve of the plot and vice versa. Narratives have different and often competing functions. Indeed, part of the fun is watching the tension between what will probably happen and what should happen (morally/emotionally) play out.



At any rate, I think you're on the money, although I never thought of ALIEN as having a "happy" ending.

It's certainly happy within the overall context of the movie, especially since they literally considered