MovieChat Forums > Ma mère (2004) Discussion > The ending was funny?

The ending was funny?

posted 14 years ago by laikaisdead
3 replies | jump to latest

I apologize, but I do not see what was so funny about the ending. Are people so immature as to finding masturbation and screaming "I don't want to die!" ...funny? For me, the movie was summed up perfectly by the end. I don't think it would be what it was without that ending. Don't start arguments about me being stupid or pretentious, I'm just saying I didn't find it funny. I also don't think this movie is for everyone... seeing as most people find it sick? It's actually one of my favourites as I am able to look past the incest and more into how incest has even come about. How we are restricted of doing things just because it's not smiled upon society. Just an opinion, don't shoot.

And do you know what my very first words were? New York Herald Tribune!

[–] samuelloveshuppert 14 years ago

I love the ending. The next scene after that would have had to been one of shame. He would have felt ashamed, and thus given the film a theme of shame. If he was ashamed at the end, maybe he woyld change. He would have regretted all that he had done in the film. Instead we cut before that.
We are not left with a feeling of shame. Thus making his actions in the film all the more powerful.
No?

[–] wooodenelephant 14 years ago

Yes that's a nice angle on the end. I think a theme of the film is the proximity of sex to death (and birth). After Philippe has busted so many tabboos with his actions, it seems like there's nowhere else to go but death (as it also did with Helene). Cutting it at this point of panic is more powerful than a scene of depression/degradation/shame which would show how he deals with suppressing (however negatively/destructively) this feeling of panic.
Also, after so many years of watching American films tie up loose ends and wind down, it's great to see a film like this which just cuts and so gives the audience the task of resolution.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 12 years ago

Even if not a laughing out loud moment the ending was perversely funny. Playing The Turtles' Happy Together as Pierre confronts his mother's corpse and desperately masturbates as though this might prevent him from death. It was a distressing and ugly moment that the director cleverly made palatable using a juxtaposition that would make someone laugh.

I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl