Death scenes make for potent drama, right? There's the death that causes one of the characters to rage against the heavens (as seen in many of these clips from The Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars series)...
There's the quiet passing and whispered goodbyes (this also from The Lord of the Rings at the request of my younger daughter)...
And then there are the scenes where the filmmaker shows us the quiet moments before death and lets the audience make the logical and emotionally wrenching conclusion about what will happen (like this scene from Titanic that always kills me)...
Why are so many of our stories filled with death? For one thing, it's a way to bring the story to a close. When the character dies, his or her story is finished. (Spoiler alert: Unless you're Gandalf.) It ties up a loose end in the plot and gives us greater insight into the characters, although that last bit comes very close to sounding like The Dark Knight's Joker. ("You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?") I do think that it's somewhat true to say that at the end of your life, when there aren't any more personal consequences for what you say or what you do, you can really be yourself.
I guess that cinema mortality provides us with a safe space to contemplate our own inevitable demise and by extension what kind of person we want to believe we are, which is why a film like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is so watchable. In it, everyone is faced with imminent doom so there's a reaction in there for everyone to identify with. (Warning: spoilers throughout.) There's suicide, assisted suicide, anger and rioting, no-holds-barred partying, denial, extreme denial through survivor mentality, hopeless resignation, and a final search for purpose and meaning. Somewhere in the film there's got to be a scene where people in the audience could say, "That's what I would do."
Maybe we'd have a series of reactions as we grieve for ourselves. We'd go through all of those stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - at our own pace and in our own order, but I think that all of us want to believe that when we finally come to our own end that we will have made it to acceptance. That's what kills me about the Titanic scenes - the acceptance. I know watching the movie from a historical perspective that nearly everybody on that boat is going to die; that some of them could find acceptance and peace in their final moments is the kindest blessing we could wish on them. So to see that blessing granted is almost like witnessing a miracle.
The end of Seeking a Friend similarly had me choked up. As Penny (Kiera Knightley) and Dodge (Steve Carell) lie in bed facing each other waiting for the meteor to collide with Earth and end all life, Penny is still bargaining. She doesn't think it's fair that she just found love; she just wants a little more time. This reaction elicits both empathy and tension from the audience. We have come to expect that love through adversity is rewarded in cinema. We want them to have more time together too, but at the same time we realize that the meteor is unstoppable. We tensely await the moment she accepts her fate because to leave her trapped forever in our minds in a state of anxiety is just too cruel.
It's Dodge who brings about a feeling of catharsis for both Penny and us. He brings her to accept both of their deaths. He reassures her that their destinies only came together BECAUSE they had so little time left - that the end of their lives also brought them the thing they had both been seeking: true love. Perhaps that sentiment is corny, but it is the other aspect of cinema deaths that we personally crave - meaning.
Our fiction is very good at providing meaning. Everything in a book, movie, or TV show is there for a reason; it has a purpose. And the deaths in these stories are imbued with meaning. They happen for a reason. That person's life and death had an effect on the universe. Someone was there to mourn them. Someone was there to shout, "NOOOOOO!"
And I think we all crave that for ourselves - the comforting knowledge that we had an effect, that we mattered, that someone else cared, that our lives had purpose and meaning. Cinema deaths allow us to experience that vicarious death. We are both the dying and bereaved. And we cry at movies, not just because a character that we have come to appreciate is leaving us, but because we are leaving them. But we leave knowing that we will be missed, which is really all we can ask of life.
So we continue to watch sad movies really because they give us hope for ourselves. As we vicariously experience the end of the character's lives, we too prepare ourselves to face death. Watching them meet their finality with grace, dignity, and acceptance, surrounded by people whom they have impacted, gives us faith that such a thing can happen for us to. That, in our final moments, we too will receive that kindest of blessings.
Next up: Something less morbid: Neil Young whips his hair back and forth.
