mild endings

here's what i realize lately: that some endings are neither "live-happily-ever-after" nor "i'll-meet-you-once-every-ten-years" type but milder, more compassionate, a bittersweet kind like the 85% cocoa lindt chocolate i tried last week. but i find that this kind of ending could be just as beautiful. if "live-happily-ever-after" exists only in fairy tales then this one must be the second best choice available here on earth.

1. marie antionette (film) by sofia coppola

i fell in love with sofia coppola's previous film "lost in translation" (it's so beautiful i loses words to explain why - sometimes beauty could only be felt not explained) and since then i'm always after her works. my friend, who lent this film to me, said it's pretty boring and historical. i don't like history either except if it's in the form of story. and thanks to my history lesson in high school, i know the horrid account of french revolution and how they end up guillotine-ing the poor antoinette. if that's the story of the film, i thought, i don't think i'll like the film at all. i'm not in the mood for stories about poverty and revolution. true, this a grand theme and important too but it's just not me. in fact im NEVER in the mood for that. so i could simply skip this film but i don't think that a person who has delivered such a delicate "lost in translation" will betray her audience with the story of people marching, rioting, killing, and cutting others' heads.

and in fact she doesn't. her film features a story about a young woman who happens to be the dauphine and queen of France. but above all, she is presented as a human being with her doubts, worry, sadness, and jealousy as well as her spirit, joy, and struggle. life is not perfect for her but she does her best to live her life, she watches sun rise, she has fun with her friends, she even falls in love. i read critics who accuse this film lacking in the essential thing because it touches almost no politics at all but i don't think i will like marie antoinette as a political figure. this film presents her as a person with whom i could truly symphatize.

but the french revolution is of course inevitable. it comes at the end of the film but coppola somehow decides to end her story when antoinette was taken away from the Versailles with her huband and children in a carriage to be moved to Paris. history tells us that she would still spend a long time in Paris before finally guillotine-d. and i think coppola is very compassionate to end her story there. i don't think i could stand seeing antoinette being executed because throughout the film, i have symphatized and like her a lot. so antoinette looks at the palace she left from her carriage window and she said to her husband, "I'm saying goodbye." it's a perfect ending.

2. villette by charlotte bronte

i have avoided reading classic for as long as i can remember, thinking they are exhausting and i might not have the strength and intelligence enough to finish and i hate not finishing what i have begun. but after scouring almost all the contemporary cheap easy-reading novels in the library, i'm running out of choices and challenges. i turn to classics. starting with anne bronte's "agnes grey" because it's short. unexpectedly, i like the story and i like her writing style. i move on to "tenant of wildfell hall" by the same author which turns out to be so uncannily like a warning for me. and then comes the time to leave anne and acquaint myself with her elder and more celebrated sister, charlotte bronte. i choose "villette" because jane eyre is way too famous and somehow excessive popularity turns me off.

it's is exhasuting indeed to read "villette". i think classics are not supposed to be read all at once. it's just impossible. reading classic is like having a big three course meal where one has to set time aside, sit down, cut the food properly, put it into his mouth, chew and chew and chew and chew before finally he could swallow it and continue with the next bite. however, it does feel more fulfilling than the newer easier-reading novels i used to deal with.

the story is about a young woman, lucy, who is alone in the world and works as a teacher abroad in villette (supposed to be brussels, if we refer to her biography) and two other women, her student and friend, the selfish promiscuous Ginevra and the lucky pure Paulina. I suspect Charlotte has based lucy on herself, a plain woman who is lonely and in search of love. surprisingly, she is very generous with ginevra (paulina, the upright one, of course unquestioningly deserves everything - wealth, a handsome husband, happiness, etc and charlotte gives it all to her). I believe Anne Bronte would have punished Ginevra with a marriage to an ugly high-ranked man who makes her suffer terribly after her wedding; yet, charlotte allows her to elope with the good-looking and playful colonel de Hamal and though she is indeed troubled with debt etc in her later life, she never seems to really suffer and she always manage to get help in time. while for lucy, she is heartbroken once because the man she loves chooses paulina instead of her. then after a long and detailed process, she is in love again with M. Paul, another teacher in school - ugly but kind and generous man. Before he goes to West Indies, he provides a house so lucy can open her own school like her dream. and finally they confess their feelings for each other (after i read hundreds of pages). he is about to leave for 3 years for business and when he gets back, they're gonna be married. however, the last page tells us that on the day he sails back to england, there's a violent storm that wrecks the ships on the atlantic. Charlotte doesn't give a definite ending, though. I first thought she's really cruel for not even giving a chance for lucy to be happy but her words actually say [i quote it from the novel]:

"here pause. pause at once. there is enough said. trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again freas out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous repreive from dread, the fruition of return. let them picture union and a happy succeeding life"

let it be theirs, she allows generously. and somehow i think it is good enough.

3. peter pan (film) by P. J Hogan

peter pan decides not to grow up because for him, life itself is enough adventure. neverland is enough for him. but wendy wants to grow up and she must come back to her world. when they have to part, wendy says to peter: "you won't forget me, will you?" and peter says: "Im peter pan, of course i won't forget" i thought it's very sad but then for them, it's perhaps enough. they can't be together because they choose to belong to different worlds so remembrance alone is enough. if you still remember me then it's enough. and they just can't be together, anyway. for peter to remain as her angel, he can't choose to stay in the same world as hers. i find it very sad though.

later i find out that J.M Barrie, the original author, has devised that when they part, peter promises to come back every year to take wendy to neverland to help him with spring cleaning. well, i would be quite happy with this ending knowing that they'll at least meet again. but barrie has cruelly put the afterword saying that peter forgets and when he does come back, wendy has grown up and married and had a child. so after all, the ending of the film is still much better compared to the novel.

"you won't forget me, will you?" and remembrance alone is enough

the unhappy endings

when i was younger, i used to believe in unhappy endings. the stories that i wrote then always ended in mysery and when my friends protested, i simply said that it was indeed the ending that made the story beautiful. my theory: when it leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth, you tend to remember it better and then it will become a classic. that's just how this world works. romeo and juliet won't be quite what it is now if in the end shakespeare decides to marry them both and let them live happily ever after. it will slip into the category of another cheesy fairy tale. but, of course, one shakespeare can never do such a mistake. so, i wrote tragedies in his footsteps and punished my characters mercilessly. but then something happened in my life, i had always had a secret dream that i kept locked in my heart. it was an impossible one so that i didn't even have the courage to hope it might come true one day. but, unexpectedly, it did. in the most miraculous way that i could never figured out how until today. and then i started to change. i started to think differently. i started to believe maybe not all endings had to be unhappy ones.

still the fascination lingers. i read books, see movies, and find how some unhappy endings make the stories beautiful, perfect, sublime even. i collected these in my mind, ranked them, and these are the best three i ever encounter:

1. the english patient by michael oondatje. when i read this novel, i knew i was in an extra sentimental mood. perhaps that affected my impression of this book. i was in love with someone but we had agreed that what we had then was nothing but "a sandbox" moment. i knew the playtime would soon be over soon and then we had to get out of our sandbox and get back to real life. it was our agreement since the beginning. he kept it, i didn't. i read the english patient sometime after we made the deal. a task from the uni. i was supposed to analyse the issue of nationalism in the novel but i got more absorbed with the sad love story, perhaps because i thought it mirrored mine somehow. but it was the ending that really broke my heart. after the war, the man had to separate with the woman he loved (i can't remember their names now) but until years later, he could always see her. he saw flitting images of her - like he suddenly had a sixth sense. He saw her hair getting longer, saw her laugh, saw her grow , saw her with her children, with her friends. he couldn't hear her though, only images. and i knew exactly what he felt because, i thought, that 's how i would also feel soon - to miss someone so much, to be able to see that person from time to time but knowing that our chance had passed and would never come again. that kind of pain ... and then i cried. i cried until i couldn't breathe and i phoned him in his office and told him that i had just finished my book and how the ending made me feel terrible. i didn't remember what he said but i remembered calling him, i remembered telling him that, and i remembered feeling much better after talking to him. despite it cruelly foreshadowing my own (inevitable and obvious and stupid) unhappy ending, it remains one of the most beautiful endings i have ever read.

2. brand new friend by mike gayle
this one is more recent. i read it perhaps last month. it's a light easy-reading novel. a man moved from london to manchester to live with his girlfriend. he had a real (exagerated, i should say) hard time making new friends there. it seemed that no guy in manchester suited him. finally he met jo, a girl who's crazy about dirty dancing film. they immediately got on well together and decided to be friends. they hung out together in the pub, went to the movie, talked about music and films, until they fell in love with each other. somehow this guy was still very much attached to his gorgeous girlfriend and loved her to death. he couldn't understand his feeling to jo, thinking it must be a feeling that was not covered in english language. in the end, they decided not to meet each other again and separated. jo moved to london and became a writer. the last chapter of the book is about jo who, 2 years later, had published her first novel based on her own love-friendship story and answering questions in a book launch and talk. the last question came from a man who sat at the back, who, of course, turned out to be her ex lover-friend. he said his wife bought the novel for him as a father's day gift on behalf of his baby daughter. and he asked: "you create a happy ending for the two friends who fell in love in your novel. isn't sad ending more realistic for them?" and jo answered: "at first i planned to do so but then i thought this was my novel and my characters. i could do whatever i want with them and i think no one deserves to have a happy ending more than them." when the talk was over, jo tried to find him but he's already gone - apparently not wanting to meet personally. no, i didn't cry this time even though this obviously disturbed me and made my mood gloomy for days. it was really bitter. no one deserves a happy ending more than them - how much more ironic this life could be. I begin to think that some writers are totally cruel to their characters (forgetting that i used to be one of them, perhaps still am)

3. pirates of the caribbean - at world's end
talking about writers' cruelty, this is the latest in my collection and immediately boosts up to the top three. having experienced the adventures, fights, misunderstanding, etc, etc, elizabeth swan and will turner finally got married in the middle of the pirates' war only to be separated several minutes later because will is stabbed and cursed to be the captain of a ghost ship. so, he should roam the ocean for ten years (i was not clear why but my friend told me that he inherited the task of the previous captain, which was to help the souls of the dead make their journey to heaven or something) and then he could come to the land for one day. it's unbelievable!!! what's their fault that they are doomed to wait for ten years and then are only given a day to be together? it's totally unfair. how much crueler a writer can be? what's more disturbing is that, of all the people i watched the film with, none finds it as disturbing as I do. they are more fascinated by jack the monkey, the pirates, and the visual effect while i went home and had bad feelings for the next 48 hours. i wonder if sentimentality is perhaps out-of-date now.