MovieChat Forums > I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) Discussion > Ending? I should have paid more attentio...

Ending? I should have paid more attention

posted 13 years ago by jpgr1
12 replies | jump to latest

So early on in the film it shows him about to get married. Then there were a bunch of scenes of him living the hippie lifestyle. Then at the end he's about to get married again and runs away.

My question is:

Did he run out on his wedding twice (or was the first time just him imagining it?)
I'm trying to figure out if he ran out to be with Nancy and then decided he didn't want her after all and wanted to get married, but realized he didn't want that either and just ran away to be alone OR if the first marriage scene was a fantasy sequence of him imagining it and when it finally happened he couldn't go through with it and ran away to be with Nancy.

I hope I made sense with my question. I need to watch this again because obviously I wasn't paying close attention!

[–] malichi6 13 years ago

Right after that last scene, I had this same exact thought: Was he just imagining the whole sequence? Unfortunately, I don't know if I have the answer. One thing that my GF pointed out was that everyone in both wedding sequences is wearing the same exact wardrobe, which to me, hints even more that it was all indeed the same ceremony and that he was just fantasizing the whole thing. I mean especially when you think of how absurd some of the things that happen after he runs out, one could easily see how it could it all be something he's just trumped up in his mind.

[–] Jakealope 12 years ago

My feeling was that he spaced out and imagined life as a hippie during the ceremony right to the bitter end, then at the last minute, decided to go that way rather than some tacky upper middle class married Jewish life.

Or indeed there were two separate wedding ceremonies, but they were too cheap to shoot it twice with different costumes and props so they reused the first set twice.

[–] drjukebox 12 years ago

They re-used the same footage for the second wedding.

So he ran away, twice. The open question is where he was running to the second time around.

[–] franzkabuki 11 years ago

"Where he was running to the second time around"-

He didn`t know. Seems like there weren`t too many worthwhile places to run to after both the life as a bourgeois lawyer as well as a hippy-dippy existence did not appear to be "it".

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] Tilyou1 8 years ago

"So he ran away, twice. The open question is where he was running to the second time around"

FWIW, that's my impression too. I never felt any ambiguity about the ending.

In a traditional romantic comedy, all's well at the end -- all who should be together are together, and birds in the trees are singing. This movie was practically radical in ending differently. Instead of order being restored, everyone is left still searching...

The movie was made at a time when the Hippie scene was already turning dark. Playboy gave the film a moderately positive review, but noted that the world it depicted was already mostly gone. The Woodstock festival of 1969 was still in the future, of course, and the free Altamont concert later that year is generally considered to mark the end of putting flowers in the rifles of National Guardsmen to show peace and love. But the shadows on the perhaps naive Hippy dream were already long by 1968, and movie reflects that.

[–] jnatch 8 years ago

he clearly ran away once

[–] eholzapfel26 10 years ago

Glad to know I wasn't alone in questioning the ending. I was convinced he'd imagined his hippie life... until he walked out a second time. When Joyce says, "I knew it!" that kind of indicated she had a feeling he was going to do it again.

My interpretation of the end was that he realized he didn't want the hippie life, nor did he want the "square" life. He still didn't know who he was, but wanted to find out... this time, on his own terms.

[–] Tilyou1 8 years ago

"My interpretation of the end was that he realized he didn't want the hippie life, nor did he want the "square" life. He still didn't know who he was, but wanted to find out..."

Exactly.

I would only add the movie expresses a kind of pessimism -- which was just starting (a major turning point in our culture). Harold Fine accepted the Hippies were on to something, rejecting conventional life -- but he found their alternative equally empty and phony. The movie raises doubt about whether there is an alternative.

Or as Harold says about the new Andy Warhol film: "teeth teeth... and yet more teeth! What a concept!"

Indeed.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (929) 3 years ago

Pretty much this. I think he knew both lifestyles were not for him, but didn't know what he was going to do outside those categorizations.

[–] ElectricKoolaidAcid 10 years ago

It very obviously was a fantasy sequence the first time; remember he was uber-high on magic brownies when his mom (also still high) called him up about ordering the green jello mold for the wedding... then it looks like his eyes space out and he goes into a trance mode... also near the end of his wild "hippie lifestyle, we are shown him hallucinating even further by seeing his mom and dad at the groovy last party scene magically turning into an old and hippie and an old flapper, respectively, just right before second wedding. He also hallucinates funeral-attire Mrs. Foley getting out of random hippie's sleeping bag with the mortician kissing her.... now who really thinks those two scenes WERE NOT IN HIS HEAD???

I won't even go into the pharmalogically incorrect notion that a magic brownie is even strong enough to be a hallucinogen- even in cooked form-even if one has no prior usage EVER... as opposed to the more realistic chances of hallucinating wildly like that would most likely come from ingesting some acid or shrooms instead, but who am I to impose?

Groovy movie BTW, usually I wouldn't be hip to this kind of ANTI-hippie propoganda, I myself declaring to be a newage-type hippie and proud of it, but I still think this was a VERY hip movie and I just SO digged it! ;)

[–] digitalzomby 8 years ago

BUT, maybe it actually did happen. Maybe he really did live the hippie life because remember he did say: "I've got pot, I've got acid, I've got LSD cubes. I'm probably the hippest guy around here. I'm so hip, it hurts!", so maybe he was hallucinating on acid.

So he was trippin on acid during that scene and it blew his mind. So when he comes back down to earth, he thinks maybe getting married to Joyce just might be the right thing to do.
Now he's standing there again about to be married, and thinks wait a minute I don't want this either!!! so he runs off to the ending we all know.

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[–] Quicksilver1900 7 years ago

I just re-watched the film and paused both wedding sequences. They were identical - the clothes, seating arrangements, props. I think the first one was a fantasy because he was already involved with Nancy by then.