Ending - Niagara, Niagara (1998) Discussion

Not into the falls. He jumps back down and walks away as the credits roll.

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The ending confused me. It has him narrating a letter he wrote to the old man, saying that the girl is well, and hints that she is also pregnant and he is working on Wall Street. Because the girl was shot in the head, I'm guessing that he wrote the letter just to make it seem like everything was fine because he didn't want to upset the man.

Then it shows him standing on the edge of the lookout at the falls, and he jumps. Now I'm pretty sure it shows the ground on the side closer to the camera, and he jumps off the opposite side into the water. But, it then shows his feet landing on the ground and he walks off. I was thinking that this could be along the same lines as I thought the letter about the girl was leading to. They wanted to make it seem like he was still ok with him too, instead of ending things sadly.

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[–] jenword 18 years ago

that was my take on the ending as well. I think the letter is the tip-off. They clearly show him jumping off onto the WATER side. Then it immediately jumps to his feet landing on the ground?? Similar to the letter, I think it shows the happy ending, when we all have just been shown the 'real ending.' It actually makes the ending all the more sad and disturbing in a way. At least, I thought so. But, yeah. I think he jumps and kills himself. The movie just ends leaving the audience with the false impression that everything is fine, like in the letter. But it's all up for debate, isn't it? I guess you'd really have to ask the director about the ending to find out for sure. And who knows, they'd probably just smile and say "what do YOU think it means?" Grrrrr....

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[–] hobbes0022 18 years ago

I think he jumped as well. Maybe if you want, you can believe that she really didn't die, and that she was rushed to the emergency room and she got better. And not only that, but the shot to the head cured her of her turrets syndrome, and everything is all peachs and dandylions, and everything in the letter is absolutely true. However, she did get shot in the head, and that usually kills people. And he did jump off the rail into the falls. When they show him landing on the ground, everything seems a little foggy, like dreamy, so i say he killed himself.

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[–] Narthumpulous 18 years ago

That's a really interesting theory. I've never really taken that possibility into consideration before. It gives me an entirely different perspecitve on the movie. Good times.

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[–] RZKB 18 years ago

He writes the letter to Walter for giving him false hope. He fell in love with Marcy, went on the run for various robberies and what does he have to show for it? Marcy got shot. Walter seemed like the first fatherly figure Seth had and so he lied for someone's respect. His real father couldn't care less about him and so Walter did care for him.

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[–] hanazdad2 16 years ago

I found the whole movie confusing and your right even with seeing the end it was wierd. I never thought he was actually killing himself but some posters see it artistically this way. Excellent. The first time I watched it, I was a bit disappointed he did not jump. But looking at the film as they see it and with Seth struggleing helplessly for air as he dies it seems more artsy and a better ending.

One thing I found interesting was the shooting scene. The movie shows the officer discharge his handgun and you see the muzzle blast. Then seeing Marcy's face up to the point the bullet smacks her temple forehead. A chunk of something can be seen dislodging from her head or brain and falls down past her face. It appears silver or white and in true speed I thought it represented her skull or a bit of grey matter. A entrance wound hole appears at the point of impact at the same split second, accompanyning a slight change in Marcy's expression. But an impact entrance wound would not blow bone matter out at the moment of impact. It would be forced inward into the brain itself. Subsequent heartbeats may force blood bringing bone matter with them out thru the entrance wound, but not the plug of skull the shape and size of this particle appeared. And it dislodged upon impact. Perhaps this was a special effects device used to make the head entrance wound appear. That's what I thought it really was. I liked this scene there was that look in her eyes as Seth (Thomas) looked at her in shock that changed as she shifts into death.

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[–] pentacleman 14 years ago

What you saw (rather perceptively, I might add) might have just been another appearance of that old budget-rate special effect technique for mimicking bullet wounds: take a tiny yet sturdy disc of some sort (a small button works best; clear buttons or red buttons are ideal), tie a thin translucent string to the disc, place the disc on the skin where the faux bullet wound is going to appear, slather the button and the surrounding skin with a thick or pasty variety of fake blood, then blanket the whole thing with a layer of flesh-colored latex. Exceptionally gory bullet wounds may require you to fashion a pocket or cavity (with the button inside, along with a copious amount of fake blood) out of the latex. And if your bullet wound shot is an extreme close-up, it may be necessary to add fake pores to the latex first; gently pressing a coarse-grade sheet of sandpaper into the latex should do nicely.

Then, once your bullet wound apparatus is in place and the camera's filming, someone standing off-camera takes the string and gives it a good, hard yank. The button comes popping out of the latex and an amount of fake blood comes popping out with it, giving the appearance of an unseen bullet blowing out the skin and inflicting a wound. It's a cheap and useful special effects technique, like I said, but it does have that drawback where alert watchers can see the "plug" of button and latex flying away from the site of the bullet wound. Of course, this can be mitigated by giving the string a very quick and powerful yank, but then you run the risk of the entire bubble of latex coming off of the actor's skin, especially if the latex isn't sealed and pressed into the actor's skin very well.

Ahhh, the things you learn from reading Fangoria magazine. Anyway, I hope this helps. :-)

I was able to contact Bob Gosse through a series of emails back when I was a member of the Robin Tunney Fan Club on Yahoo Groups (back on the sunny slopes of the late 1990's), and he admits that he and the Shooting Gallery filmed Niagara Niagara on a very tight budget. To wit, I asked him about that scene where Seth and Marcy break into the drugstore, the pharmacist's store alarm goes off next to his bed and we get a clear view of his "wife," who's actually just an inflatable sex doll.

I'm not joking. IMDb has the entire movie on video at the top of their Niagara Niagara page. Go watch it again.

So anyway, Gosse informed me that the Screen Actors Guild had wanted him to pay something like $2,000 for some live minor-league no-name actress to fill that role, a role which consisted entirely of her waking up and asking the pharmacist "What is it?". $2,000 for someone who wouldn't even have been onscreen for five seconds, saying three words. Yeah. So Gosse basically said "Hell with that," told them to keep their bit-part actress and threw in the blow-up doll instead.

So between the cheap bullet wound and the blow-up doll, Niagara Niagara definitely wasn't a mega-budget production. But that didn't stop it from being a great arthouse film, did it? :-)

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[–] spystyle 16 years ago

The ending was completely st00pid - the girl could NOT have snatched the cop's gun up like that! They are snapped in their holsters and designed against that - otherwise it would happen all the time. It's impossible. Ridiculous. That ruined the whole movie for me. You can't just grab a cop's pistol right out of it's holster - who could believe such foolishness?

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[–] paultagonist 13 years ago

You poor dear. If such a small thing can ruin an entire movie for you, it must be difficult indeed for you to enjoy many movies.

The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery. -Fred Alan Wolf

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