MovieChat Forums > The Lost Weekend Discussion > I see a lot more benders in Don's future...

I see a lot more benders in Don's future, how 'bout you? (spoilers)

posted 19 years ago by pillfeast
15 replies | jump to latest

The dropping of the cigarette into the glass of whiskey is symbolic but it doesn't really mean anything. The big Hollywood rapprochement with Helen, that doesn't cure alcoholism, the idea that he's going to crank out one great book and be magically purified is just as ludicrous.

There's really nothing to suggest that five minutes after the camera is gone he's lost his confidence again and he's tearing the place apart looking for another hidden bottle. In my opinion Bim is right on when he pegs Don as the sort of guy who'll be back time after time.

I think Wilder beat the system and produced a "happy ending" with plenty of room for doubt.

Opinions?

It feels like an Arby's night.

[–] hodie 19 years ago

Yeah. I felt sort of cheated by the ending. Things don't happen like that.

[–] pillfeast 19 years ago

Alcoholism definitely doesn't just end like that, but movies do. It could have ended with him in the hospital screaming and clawing at his flesh, but that's necessarily any more realistic than the happy ending, and it sort of smells like a cheap scare tactic. Really, aside from the scare of one terrible weekend he's exactly where he was when we came it, sitting down ready to write "the big one."

As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?

[–] BillyFisher 18 years ago

I watched this for the first time yesterday, and thought it was a bloody great film. The ending initially left me disappointed, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see what Wilder had in mind. It could be mistaken for a "happy ending", but remember back to the last time Don decided to stop drinking and go write his novel (leaving Nat's bar). He had the same spontaneous enthusiasm and get-up-and-go, and he ended up drinking again. On the surface it's a happy ending, but in reality we don't know what's going to happen to Don. It could just as easily be another flash in the pan. No doubt there was pressure on Wilder to produce a hapy ending, and he was probably aware that the ending would satisfy the studios while actually leaving it ambiguous, even cynical.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] TrueFiendish 18 years ago

For Pete's sake, the film makes it clear that he does get the book written this time. Don says, "I'm gonna call it The Lost Weekend", and that it'll be about the weekend he's just had...and we're watching a film of the same name, with that very story--see? But it suggests he will need to stay on the turps to do it. The Don Burnham we see in the bar for the first time (the brilliant, talented Don on his burnished throne who just needs a drink) isn't going to go away. The hint is there that maybe he can control his drinking, even use it productively...

[–] noveltylibrary 18 years ago

Yes you put it well, that Wilder beat the system. You certainly think you've just seen a happy ending, but as Don narrates the last words, pondering all "bedeviled" alcoholics out there, you feel it probably wasn't going to last.

[–] wrfarley 18 years ago

I do know they changed the ending from the novel, which is bleaker. Does anybody know how the novel ends?

[–] flat6 18 years ago

Completely agree, it's a ludicrous ending, I kept hoping for a double suicide to finish things off with a bang... I kid, I kid... but I was still hoping, till the very end, that this wouldn't be forced into an abrupt happy ending. Leaving Las Vegas, there's a goddamn alcoholic's ending.

[–] hodie 17 years ago

<<Leaving Las Vegas, there's a goddamn alcoholic's ending.>>

LOL. Thanks, flat6 :)

It's an interesting psychological phenomenon.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] TheCinephiliac 15 years ago

I say the cigarette thing was a pure sign that he would go back to drinking and not the whole dropping it in his drink think but the fact that he still couldn't light his own cigarette without her help.

RIP Paul Newman 1925-2008. Words can't express how much you will be missed.

[–] Percivalx 18 years ago

True. For all we know, Don could just as easily fall prey to the temptation of the bottle next weekend, if not before that.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] HarlequinForestt 15 years ago

Well, if he were to someday stop drinking, why couldn't it have been that day?

[–] Jes' Sayin' (5960) 7 years ago

Tacked on, false ending because Hollywood demanded it back then.