My Vision of the Ending
I know a lot of people had problems with the ending, and I thought I'd share my experience while watching it because it just seemed so odd: I had this vibrant vision in my mind's eye of Julie laying her newborn on her sick son's chest and him being completely healed.
Before the scene where we see her pregnant, I panicked and thought, 'well, it's obviously been transferred, the healing magic, to her belly, and the new life within. I just hope the child lives the nine months until the next one is born'... and that's when we see her very much pregnant, and Nick still very much alive.
I also noticed when Julie was singing to her boy in the hospital in those last scenes, that the camera stayed on her hands for a long, long time, as they fluttered over and over the boys chest. As if she had imbibed some of his healing talent, by virtue of the fact that she carried the next healor inside her.
She had told her husband that she inexplicably felt like Alexi "needed her". Alexi himself told Julie she was "really special", much to the consternation of the other beautiful blond woman who jelously guarded him in Poland. She obviously loved him as well, but it was not reciprocated. Perhaps I am painting him too much the saint when I say this, but I would like to believe it is because he was so "tired" that he came to Canada to release himself from the burden of healing by passing it on through this "very special" vehicle that was Julie...
When Alexi speaks to his mother at the wedding about her worry for the future... I felt like he worried too, but for less so for monetary reasons. I felt his worries were those of no mere mortal, but instead, that with the end of his own life, the end of his gift of healing would also be inevitable. He'd looked so forlornly at his friends as they wed, watching how family could become one's future; pointing out that which he lacked. When he asks her if she just loves him because he healed her son, is that perhaps why he knows in his heart he cannot stay with her after he passes his gift along?
But where the healor has now gone, I'm not sure. I picture him back with his mother, earning a meagre living doing something simple and sweet to help her into her old age, secure that his offspring is now safe. He was so selfless in so many ways, is it really that much of a stretch to believe he created a situation whereby Julie's husband himself, even if the new child was not his, is swayed to make a selfless decision to continue to love them all enough to re-inspire Julies' faith in him? As if Alexi had healed Julie's ability to love as well?
It's a bizarre analogy I know, but perhaps because I'm an optimist, I will also add here that the crows seen at the end are not always symbols of death, but have historically also been linked to 'sheer magic and transformation.' And healing the sick through touch alone certainly falls under that category. The film was more about this magic than about death, thematically, so perhaps I just prefer to see it this way?
Ahh... Imagination is a wonderful thing, isn't it?