I remember listening to the Tobolowsky Files, which is a fantastic podcast were character-actor Stephen Tobolowsky shares stories and epiphanies from his life with us, and hearing Mr. Tobolowsky talk about the weird notion of films and their conclusions. I don’t remember the exact episode, or even the exact wording of how he said it, but I do remember the idea went a little like, “movies give us an weird feeling of closure with its ending but the strange thing about it is that life never works like that, where movies end life continues and we are in a constant state of motion in that way that movies have never been able to truly convey”.
Tonight, as I just finished revisiting 50/50, I can’t seem to shake this notion. Films, at their very core, are these vehicles which take us on emotional and narrative journeys from points A to B (some have a C,D and even an E at times) and then they just end. Very few times do we make it to the end and ask the, what some would call silly, question of “so now what?”. Do we care? Do we even think about this?
Yes our male lead does get the girl, but do they work out? Is it because we see them together at the end that we have to just assume that if we were to pop in on him again twenty years from now she’d be in his bed still giving him a foot massage? Or is this, just like scenes which are allowed to represent moments that just exist, a slightly more notable chapter in our protagonist and antagonist’s life?
I guess why this idea seems to have me slightly bothered right now is that we’re forced from our hero’s side while he/she’s at their high point usually and it leaves us just unsure of where they will go from here. This is where the idea of the sequel I’m sure would come into play, but we all know how that ends up most times.
Why 50/50 happened to bring this up for me is that while it manages to take us through a few plot lines from A to B it knows that at that very point our protagonist is about to start a whole new journey and is left with the notion of “what now?”, and I love it for that. It doesn’t disguise it’s own limitations as a 100-minute film that can only take us so far and no further. You’re left wondering whether this will be a fulfilling journey and asking why we’re not allowed to be a part of it (other than budgetary constraints and the fact that the world isn’t really ready for the real-time 72-hour long film), or is that it isn’t fulfilling and that’s why we aren’t allowed to see it.