endVac

Fate ripped my dreams into bits of paper and I, the fool, dance among the scraps as they flutter about. Every measly attempt to catch a piece, and salvage the remnants of hope, misses. By the time the whirlwind dies it’s just me, lingering in a vacuum. Rolling a full Moon between my fingers like a white bead, I have the night in the palm of my hand. It’s cold and bitter. A damp blanket protects me from chilling gusts of wind as I watch firemen fight a wild blaze with flamethrowers. Figures fly out of the inferno and circle above me in a ritual of affliction and divine mockery. “Hold me,” I whisper to the rag, an inanimate object composed of more grime than cloth, and press against the grating assurance even tighter. I wrap my arms around myself to pretend, if only for a second, that they belong to someone who cares, someone who isn’t lost. Why pray for a myth, an ancient deity to hide behind? Our audacious god is drunk off his own glory, floating in the blood rivers of history, headphones on, listening to Mozart’s forty-first. It comes back in flashes, memories of a distant past, a whole other life, another me. A believer in miracles, a follower of dreams, oh those dreams, those good old dreams. A toddler sits in a sandbox, Tonka truck in one hand, miniature shovel in the other. The child is stuck in an exclusive world with no sense of time. Layers of sand transform into mountains, ravines and valleys. The toy bulldozer is colossal, burrowing a trail through virgin terrain. And the child, utterly poised, is behind the wheel, shifting gears, leaving behind a pair of deep treaded tracks. The edge of the sandbox is a horizon, a beachfront facing the ocean of life, the blinding wisdom concealed in the sun’s corona.

Buried in the shadows of the night, its tires shine. The dark graphite metallic exterior of the car’s long-wheelbase form glistens beneath the streetlights. Rain runs through subtle valleys in the pavement, amassing into miniature streams alongside roadways before uniting in an extensive maze of underground channels. Prone, a man comes to and lifts his face from the abrasive parking lot. The car stands perched on its four wheels, offering no acknowledgment, no assistance. Time has announced the inevitable. Numb below the waist, something warm dripping from his forehead, the man crawls, as if to race his final minutes. Just out of reach, the car, his legacy, his dearest friend, is quiet, absentminded. This rain is a lifetime of forborne tears. All he has to do is climb inside and switch on the wipers. They’ll wash away the pain, help him see, again. With a fervent groan, the man grasps the door handle and swings it open before collapsing once more into a welcoming puddle. Looking up from his resting place, the man stares at a branded key fob dangling from the ignition. A high-pitched beeping mutes all other sounds. Finally, the car speaks, crying over the despair of its owner, sobbing that it can’t be driven, just once more. Or is it laughing? The man turns his head and sees a figure in the distance, a person running, towards him … how odd. At ease, he understands.

He crawls onward, etching his fingernails into a coarse, frozen, sand-like surface. This realm is devoid of light entirely, a perpetual vacuum of space absorbing every type of energy, consuming every wave of sound. As if trapped in a chamber of sensory deprivation, his brain emits flashes of intense visions, forgotten faces and misplaced memories. A heightened state of self-awareness carves away rationality with a knife forged in cold fear. Disoriented by the overpowering hallucinations, nerves on the verge of overload, he struggles forward, foot by foot, inch by inch. His throat constricts as subzero air enters with each breath, a decaying air delivering futility to the fibers in his lungs, weakness to the cells in his body. Anticipating the end, he tilts a heavy head, a contorted face, towards the abyss above. His jaw, prepared to unleash an animalistic roar, stands agape, but silent, motionless, attached to a form unable to lift itself up from the granular tundra. A floating ball of luminance materializes out of nowhere and grows in diameter as it bounces closer, its warmth stinging as fiercely as wisps of flame. The omniscient force encircles him and induces a feeling of weightlessness. Just as he begins to levitate, pain makes its grandiose debut, ascending from his hands to his heart, wrenching his insides and tearing them apart. A remote yet familiar voice starts to echo within his skull. Sweating blood, the throbbing in his chest becoming too much to bear, he smiles, numbed by the girl, somewhere far away, screaming his name, in vain.

E.T. should have ended when the alien died. Happily-ever-after has a right to please expecting audiences but there aren’t enough exceptions made, not enough writers take risks. Fairytales are a luxury in real life, which is why they’re satisfying. However, they’re also why films are a form of escapism. Endings sprinkled with ambiguity and uncertainties tend to linger in the collective psyche. Sometimes happy is either inappropriate or downright impossible. Imagine cheerful conclusions for District 9, The Hurt Locker or Moon, the three best films from last year. Stranger than Fiction acknowledges the feebleness of happy endings and how they sacrifice an opportunity to communicate something deep and powerful. There’s a clear distinction, at least in my mind, between depression inducing liberal preaching and a rewarding ending that demands my respect and admiration. There’s a difference between a memorable, practically flawless ending (e.g. Seven or Seven Pounds) and one that serves guilt on a silver platter. I have enough depression in my life as it is, thank you very much. Some films may be an accurate reflection of harsh realities but they’re also movies and as movies, they fail to serve a purpose. Speaking of poor conclusions, all too often there’s a moment during the climax that’s so cheesy and see-through that when the situation is predictably resolved, it comes as no surprise and actually ruins what might have been a decent picture. Turns in a plot should play into the natural progression of the story and its characters, not against it. Conclusions are supposed to carry the audience halfway, to a place where there’s no clear resolution, to a place where happily-ever-after doesn’t exist, a place that audiences can relate to. It seems that every other film teases a really good ending and then, as if forced to do so, transitions into a recycled celebratory orchestra score, smiles all around … roll credits.