After last week's highly successful post on great beginnings, Shift presents the corollary: The End!
What are your favourite endings from literature, music or film?
A great ending needs a great enough beginning and middle to make the trip worthwhile. Whatever it is, to be worth waiting for, that last word has to somehow take things up a notch, and, if it's really good, to do something absolutely new and surprizing in the process. That means the end has to be worth the means. The summation has to be the sum of its parts, and then some. Somehow, it all has to stop.
Leading from the rear
The Shift Team is happy to lead the way by showing you our favourites. We'll start with music this time. Today's show included many of our favourites, but here are three more:
Alison: Chopin's D Minor Prelude #24 (especially when played by the young Ivo Pogerelich:) Those last thundering notes can't be denied!
Tom: Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, Last Movement. After so much action and adventure, Brahms keeps a final burst in his back pocket and blows the roof!
Pete: Zager and Evans, In the year 2525. Not because of all the accurate predictions ("pick your son, pick your daughter, too, from the bottom of a long glass tube") but because it doesn't end. The modulations bring us back to the home key and it all starts over again.
Famous last words
Tom: Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
This is one of my favourite books, anyway, but I especially love how the entire story is created by what happens in the opening pages, and resolved by what happens at the end. When the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon is asked (in the packed Royal Alexandra Theatre, no less) who killed (future Lieutenant Governor) Boy Staunton, the answer is immediate:
"He was killed by the usual cabal: by himself, first of all; by the woman he knew; by the woman he did not know; by the man who granted his inmost wish; and by the inevitable fifth, who was the keeper of his conscience and keeper of the stone."
Pete: By the writer who has made it into the Shift pantheon for both a beginning and, now, an ending: TS Eliot, The Hollow Men:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
And, as the credits roll...
Coming up with great endings from film and television was easy. All of these came to mind more or less immediately:
Tom: The Italian Job (1969) In addition to having Noel Coward in the cast (as a crime lord) this great British heist/comedy/thriller boasts both a virtual and actual cliff-hanger ending. Spoiler Alert: Don't watch this clip unless you've already seen the whole thing!
Alison: Goodbye, Farewell and Amen (1983) - the last episode of the hit TV series MASH. The final moments aren't on YouTube, that I could find, but here is the crucial, devastating scene.
And, in closing, this:
Pete: The Planet of the Apes (1968 - of course!) The words "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" seem grimly appropriate.
The last word is yours
Over to you - what is your favourite ending, happy or sad, apocalyptic or hopeful, conclusive or in? Movies, music or books - which endings left you satisfied and wanting more all at the same time?