The film doesn't need to be super complex or grandiose in order to be excellent. It's an extremely engaging and masterfully-constructed film. Even if it wasn't true what Teddy said, the fact that he does believe Teddy and is making himself forget about it to turn Teddy into his own John G. He doesn't want to be Sammy, a bunden with no ambition or goal and doesn't want to live with the fact that he was responsible for the death of his wife and also the death of the people that were never involved in his problems. He probably knows he cannot turn back due to his actions and knows they will no get his wife or memories but does it anyway because that's the only thing that he haves. Making himself forget everything and restarting it all over again. Will he actually be able to truly be happy even if he does get revenge and make himself remember it? Or will he just be unsatisfied with his revenge and end in this endless cycle where he will try to find a John G. The ending also really expresses this hopelessness for the main protagonist. That what you have been living were lies.
The movie does a pretty excellent job at expressing the idea of how our subjective perception and memories are unreliable, how we lie to ourselves in order to keep on living and to keep the beliefs we all want to keep as we have been so long with them and complete us in such a way that getting them debunked would cause this existential crisis where we have little to us and how information can be manipulated in such a way that we cannot even be sure on what sources or people to trust. Also, I think it haves the best monologue and quotes of any of his endings. It really goes for the emotions and also makes it very thought-provoking at the same time. That ending was genuinely very tragic and powerful. It is one of my favorite scenes in any movie: Īnother moment I consider to be impactful is definitely the ending of "Memento": įor me, it is easily Nolan's best ending. It's incredible how the film can make such a compelling villian in small amount of time.
Great acting, dialogue and characterization. Here's the final sequence from The Long Goodbye: Īs a contrast, here's the end of The Third Man: įor me, one of them is definitely the car scene of Se7en. Then we get the only piece of music in the entire movie that isn't a cool variation on the song "The Long Goodbye" (by John Williams!), the use of the old standard "Hooray For Hollywood!" -which drives home the movie's saddest point: That Marlowe has just had his heart ripped out because all the people closest to him proved to be actors rather than sincere. When he walks away up a long road, Altman paid-tribute to another cynical film, the great The Third Man, in the way that the protagonist and the female romantic lead pass each other -with Altman reversing the physical dynamics. I love the ending shots of Altman's The Long Goodbye, where Private Eye Philip Marlowe, after just having tracked down his best friend (who had faked his own suicide and used Marlow as a chump and a patsy) shoots him dead.
Here's something I was thinking about today: