My favourite movie endings ever! (Part 1)

Since I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire I´ve been thinking about how important and powerful an end scene can be and in this post, I wanted to talk about some of my favourite end scenes ever!

WARNING: This post is full of spoilers on the following movies: La La Land, (500) days of summer, Mommy, Portrait on a Lady on Fire, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Kill Bill Vol. 2.

La La Land, 2016.

La La Land is one of my favorite movies and many people agree that it was one of the best movies of the decade. Mia, Emma Stone, wants to be an actress and act in her own plays, and Sebastian, Ryan Gosling, wants to buy his own Jazz bar. They meet each other and fall in love but their relationship starts to break when they both start to fulfill their dreams. In the end, 5 years later, Mia, who has become a famous actress, walks with her husband inside a jazz bar, which logo she had designed years ago for Sebastian, when they were dating, and sees Sebastian playing the piano in his own bar, full of people, as he always wanted. They both share a smile and the movie ends. Kind of heartbreaking as their relationship didn´t succeed but also really optimistic as they both achieved their dreams.

(500) Days of Summer, 2009.

When we start watching (500) Days of Summer, we are told by Tom, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that "This is not a love story. It is a story about love" and that defines pretty much the whole movie. The movie shows us in a nonlinear narrative the whole Tom and Summer, Zooey Deschanel, relationship, and the reasons why it didn´t work out. They have some really cute and romantic moments but they also have a lot of fights and problems. In the end, Summer gets engaged to some other guy and Tom goes to an interview for his dream job as an architect were he meets a girl called Autumn. A pretty funny and good ending.

Mommy, 2014.

This movie by Xavier Dolan won the Jury Prize in the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and stars Anne Dorval as the mother of a kid who has ADHD played by Antoine Oliver Pilon. The whole movie shows the complicated mother-son relationship and how Diane "Die", Anne Dorval, struggles in finding a solution for his son's problem. The movie takes place in a fictitious Canada where there's a new law that allows the parents of troubled children to place their children in hospitals, without regard to fundamental justice. Diane ends up taking Steve to this Hospital and as soon as Steve realizes and starts to runaways, she regrets her decision, but there´s no turning back. In the end scene, we can see Steve being unstrapped from the straight-jacket by two doctors and we the scraps are removed, he starts running aways, Born to Die by Lana Del Rey starts to play and we can see Steve about to jump from a window. It´s kind of a bitter ending with the whole song being called literally Born to Die, Steve was born to live for Die, Diane, her mom.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019.

This WONDERFUL movie won both, The Queer Palm and the Best Screenplay award in last year´s Cannes Film Festival and is definitely one of the best movies of 2019. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is about the secret relationship between two women at the end of the 18th century. Half of the movie is just the main characters looking at each other and wanting to kiss each other but not doing it and in one of these scenes, Marianne, played by Noémie Merlant, plays the Presto from "Summer" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to Héloïse, played by Adèle Haenel. Some years later, Marianne sees Héloïse at a classical music concert. Sadly, Héloïse doesn´t see Marianne. Suddenly, the song that Marianne played for Héloïse years ago starts to play and the camera starts to get closer and closer to Héloïse and we can see all the feelings she has for that song and how strong her bond with Marianne was.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2019.

Tarantino´s latest film about an actor who is becoming an old glory in the Hollywood of 1969 was an absolute blast and had so many iconic and amazing scenes, like the Cliff Booth Vs. Bruce Lee scene or the Spahn Ranch scene but the end scene was definitely the best one. Most of the people who saw this movie expected the movie to be about the murder of Sharon State by the Charles Manson cult. However, the movie is not about that, and Sharon doesn´t end up being murder. Instead, a high Cliff, played by Brad Pitt, with the help of his dog Brandy starts fighting with 3 fucking hippies, and Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, ends up burning one of them with a flamethrower, one of the most Tarantinoesque scenes ever.

Kill Bill Vol. 2, 2004.

This movie is definitely one of the best movies by Tarantino and, at least for me, was much better than Kill Bill Vol. 1, as we could see more of the backstory of Beatrix Kiddo and her reasons to do what she does. Beatrix, played by Uma Thurman, spends the whole movie searching for Bill to, finally, kill him for what he did to her and she ends up finding him in Mexico with her daughter, who she thought was dead. Beatrix kills Bill with the Mei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique she had previously learned with master Pai Mei. In the end scene, we can see Beatrix and her daughter B.B and the credits start to show up with all the characters from Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Malagueña Salerosa starts playing. In the end, we can see B.B and Beatrix in a car, and Beatrix is named Beatrix Kiddo, AKA The Bride, AKA Black Mamba and finally AKA Mommy, and the movie ends up with a happy Beatrix with her daughter.