Pretentious,outrageou s ending!

The end is only disastrous if you accept it as an ending, which I certainly don't, despite Kiarostami's intentions. The film clearly ended (and ended beautifully) in the previous scene, with him laying in the hole. The "ending" is, by my interpretation, more of an addendum -- like a "behind the scenes" special feature that just happens to be tacked on to the end of the film.

I similarly dislike when directors do things to remind us that it's just a movie. Seems almost disrespectful to the art itself to me. Like yes, I know it's just a movie, or just a distraction from my reality for 2 hours, but for 2 hours I am invested in your movie and characters and want to take something away from it when its over, but not this time though however which was kinda sad especially since it got real interesting after his panicked visit to the taxidermist after he just dropped him off.I don't like when directors decide to leave it up to the audience to decide the ending. I guess there intent is to not tell us what to take away from the film but for us to decide what we want to take away but...like I said I'm invested in your characters and I want to know what happens to them. Even some films with ambiguous endings kinda give us a direction to lean in ("Broken Flowers" comes to mind), but not this one...to me at least.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that out of the 3 possible notes on which the film could have departed - a) he kills himself, b)he doesn´t, c) we don´t find out, the last one is most appropriate. After all, it is the argument that is important, not the outcome (which would also have been unnecessarily forcing us towards a fabricated "solution"... as if film could do such a thing... at least in regards to such a matter). Plus, I found the measured transition from the dark night to a colorful day aesthetically very pleasing. It´s my first Kiarostami and fortunately turned out to be a pretty great film, despite the glacial pacing and abundance of talk over the most existential of matters, it somehow was always compelling and poignant. Stripped down simplicity can be darn powerful when done right. 9/10.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

it's a very risky ending, i'm sure the director knew he would disappoint alot of people with that ending





so many movies, so little time