To watch the best musical endings is to be convinced, albeit briefly, that every film must resolve in this way.
Photo-illustration: by Vulture; Pyramide Distribution photo
Federico Fellini may not be the obvious point of contact for an ABBA jukebox musical, but the end of Mamma Mia! Here we go again undoubtedly owes something to 8½. Listen to me: Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece ends with all its layers of reality, memory and fantasy crumbling into a circus, with everyone from the past and present of its main character – including his childhood – entering a ring. circus and holding hands for a sunny and messy ride. THE Mamma Mia! The sequence ends with the last of its many musical numbers, one taking place on a stage somewhere outside the limits of space and time where your ensemble, including characters who have died and some young people, can get together for a performance in cheerful costumes . These endings are absolutely one of a kind, opening their respective worlds to an ecstatic and impossible musical number. It is certain, however, that only one of them involves Cher releasing a cover of “Super Trouper”.
Musical sequences are one of those things that cinema seems to have been invented to show – alongside explosions, hot people and trains arriving terribly on the screen. They are the perfect way to end a movie, except when they are banal and cynical, which often happens. Still, watching the best musical endings is to be convinced, albeit briefly, that every film must end with a song and / or dance. In fact, it is not as limited a choice as it may seem. For the entire distance that exists between Mamma Mia! two and 8½, there is infinitely more space for variations between the culminating moments of music that unfold within a fictional universe and those that come from outside it. Some films build their use of music towards a powerful ending, and others include it just like a coda. Sometimes this is even better – as a show, musical numbers are capable of a purity that makes them even more spicy outside the genre for which they are best known.
Take along The last days of the disco, which is dedicated to the petty dramas and minor humiliations suffered by a group of 20-somethings in the early 80s. It ends with Matt Keeslar doing a little shuffling for a laughing Chloë Sevigny on the subway, as if the two could hear “Love Train ”, From the O’Jays, playing on the soundtrack, while in true New York style, no one else pays any attention to them. But then there is a cut and magically everyone in the car starts to dance, and on the platform too, and it’s so cheerful. Or consider the vertigo of “Always look on the bright side of life” at the end of Brian’s life. The main character, played by Graham Chapman, is among the crucified after several rescue attempts came to nothing. The music is expressed in an effervescent irony, everyone joining an ode to keep their upper lip rigid while waiting for a painful death – but it’s also simply exuberant, the gloomy context making the music’s irresistible nature even better, the figures on the screen trying any minimal choreography they can do while tied to the crosses.
The moment when the established reality of a film splits and gives way to something more grand or stylized can be electric. You don’t always need that break, however. Mads Mikkelsen’s closing cathartic dance number in Another round it’s perfect Why he exists within the universe, with his character, a depressive teacher, calling the jazz ballet classes of his youth for a celebratory abandon sequence while his friends and students look in awe. Robert Altman’s Nashville is a diegetic musical that causes most of its characters to cross paths at a gala concert that is interrupted by a shootout, and what follows – Henry Gibson pleading with the crowd to sing, Barbara Harris receiving the microphone – is satire the act of gathering in music, summoning the other side of feeling at the end of Brian’s life. The dance between Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett at the end of My best friend’s wedding it manages to offer some standard faintness from the rom-com while not at all standard rom-com, bubbling with bittersweet satisfaction while subverting the expectations of the genre.
Some of the greatest musical endings are found somewhere between the real and unreal worlds. Bong Joon Ho’s Mother opens with an absurd dance number, with Kim Hye-ja doing an impassive performance alone in a field while the credits roll. The film responds to this opening scene with an ending that takes place within the world of history, and this is simply brutal in its implication of maternal ties as a monstrous burden, its heroine trying to escape from what she learned about herself and the child she devoted his life to. Meanwhile, Claire Denis’s sublime conclusion Beau Travail it is a scene that can be a fantasy or a flashback, or the dream of the death of a man in the process of suicide. It is part of the film, but has no strings attached, with the French Foreign Legion soldier played by Denis Lavant alone in a mirrored nightclub, launching himself to the sound of “O Ritmo da Noite”. Your character, so blocked for much of the execution time, and so apparently disconnected from his own desires, suddenly seems liberated, and yet the sequence carries with it tremendous sadness.
The way it floats beyond the rest of the film and yet remains so central underlines the power of a musical number to convey emotions that cannot be articulated in normal scenes. There’s more there, in Beau Travailambiguous but intensely eloquent finale, which can be put into words. It’s an effect worth remembering, especially in the face of all the added endings that weren’t mentioned here – the kind that makes Minions dance “YMCA”, the characters from Shrek films coming to “I’m a Believer” (twice!) and “Livin ‘la Vida Loca”, and add up to a playlist worthy of a wedding reception in hell. They are worth resisting for the incomparable satisfaction that comes with a musical ending that they deserve. At the end of Ella Encantada, before the movie came out with all its characters singing a deeply unnecessary version of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, Eric Idle informs the camera that “you just can’t go wrong if you follow your heart and end with a song.” Obviously, you can, but Idle put it best in 1979 when, tied to a cross, he sang: “Forget your sin, smile the audience, have fun, it’s your last chance anyway.”