The whole film was leading to the death of either brosnan or neeson, but at the end none of them die! WTF was that? The whole film was bout the hunt and then at the end its like "Oh I forgive you". I wish both of them or either one of them would die in the film, that would make it much much better. Anyone else agree?
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I thought the ending was great. As for the Gypsy part, in the "The Making Of" part they explain that she was suppose to play a "devil" type character. So it kind of made sence for me. Other than that, I thought the movie was great. First serious movie I ever seen where a guy jumps out of a horse. I damn near crapped myself when i saw that. Freakin fantastic
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I wanted them to walk over to Brokeback Mountain and apologize to each other nice and proper.
"When you throw dirt, you lose ground" --old proverbshare
I to thought that this was perhaps the best western I had seen in years (or at least since Open Range), In fact a friend of mine called me on the phone while I was watchign this movie and all I did was bragg about how good it had been (up to that point). but then without warning, this movie vered off into left field and went into that spiritual scene with the man in the waterhole, and then got even more wierd with the strange scene with Angelica Houston (I thought that Pierce Bronsnan's charactor was having a mirage,and My mind was trying to Poetically/Artistically associate the "would be" mirage and the cure all tonic she was selling as somehow being Peirce Brosnan's conscience telling him that he needed to make things right(hence the cure in "cure all")...... ...until she appeared to Liam Niesson too...then I realized that she wasn't a mirage, then I was like WHAT THE FKKK! It made no sense at all.
Then I thought it was going to end with the two men killing each other and no one would live. ....but No, they didn't.....they had the two men help each other up and walk off together as if they were best friends intothe desert sunset.....I was like.."What kind of Birg Bird, Burt & Earnie - Seseame Street bull crap is that?" ...the ending I was expecting where they both died would have been far more better, and even more poetic. yes, it would have been far more poetic and artistic to have had Liam Niesson kill Pierce Brosnan, but die in the desert as a result of his revenge run.(kinda like Captian Ahab in Moby Dick, only difference is that Moby Dick got away)...butmy endingwould have been far better
but at least the Horse corpse scene made this film worth watching for that alone(totally cought me by surprise- and very well done). And the chase scene at the begining of the movie when they are in the snow and along those white water rapids..that was good too(I actually felt cold just watching it)
Has to end with a bloody death or it's crap, ey folks?
I personally enjoyed the ending. I'm not against the preferred death ending to be honest, but I think what they did was much better.
Both of them dying would hav ebeen cliche for this kind of movie, it's what you expect. This ending was unexpected and well done in that way. I would not have been happy with them both dying seen it too many times. Thst said, the film was a little too long.
Space is Big, let's dump our crap there!
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Agree. I was rooting for Brosnan until the flashback, and then I didn't have a favorite. I expected them both to die because I've seen that clichéd ending a lot, so the ending did surprise me. (Not as much as hiding in the horse, though)
shareI agree with the last two posters. It was unexpected b/c lately it seems like there are more films with a depressing "death" ending than there are with a more uplifting feeling when it's over.
And I don't understand why the supernatural stuff is confusing so many people. I've seen crazier stuff in other films that so many people will try to find a reasoning to when it's really just a bunch of crazy bullsh!t with no meaning. People are really just making things harder on themselves by trying to figure out anything they're disappointed with.
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Neon Genesis Evangelion is the worst anime show ever created.
When I was watching it, I was thinking, "This can only end with both of them dead."
But I liked the ending - it was a nice compromise.
I was intrigued by the fact that they were both, essentially, willing to give up life to Louise (? Angelica Houston) in favour of something used for death.
Then at the end, they both offer their lives to the other.
But neither accept the other's offer.
I guess I found it more powerful than them just dying. Had they both just died, it would have seemed like no resolution was really found.
Well, it sure wasn't subtle.
The movie was pretty kick-ass until the end. And it, for lack of a better term, 'wussed-out.' It was plot driven, thrilling, and gritty. And then... magic realism and moralizing. Out of the blue.
Too bad. It was almost a classic in the JOSEY WALES tradition. Instead it was merely interesting and flawed. Which isn't too bad, but it reminds me of that Gore Vidal quote, which I'll paraphrase into "a story that tries to be great, instead of merely good, usually ends up neither."
I felt like it was a great movie until the ending.
I don't care if the Indian was supposed to represent good and the cure all was supposed to represent evil or whatever they were going for. That didn't make sense, this wasn't a supernatural movie. It just seemed tacked on.
The ending didn't work for me either. Liam really forgives Brosnan towards the end of the movie? Didn't he just kill 2 of his henchmen for the opportunity to get to Brosnan in the last couple days? Then he just forgives Brosnan?
I think this movie was trying to do more than it should have. I still liked the movie though, because until the last 20 or 30 minutes it was great.
I appreciate what they were trying to do with the ending. Or at least what I THINK they were trying to do.
The DVD dwells on the destructiveness of war. And both of these characters were scarred and warped by the war. However, Carver did not realize that Gideon had come to his house hunting him personally. Although it does not spell it out in the script, I got the impression that Gideon felt Carver was responsible for the death of his two sons.
However, when Gideon realized that he was accidentally responsible for the death of Carver's family....he had been assured that the house was empty....he was so remorseful that he took off his gun belt, and I'm sure his uniform, and headed west to live his life alone. What weapons he had were for food and defense, not war.
However, when pursued by Carver, whom he did not recognize (odd, if he blamed him for the loss of his boys), he was not willing to die.
What I don't know is if Carver ever realize why Gideon had come after him to his home. That is a crucial point when one gets to the ending.
I think the ending was the recognition that both had been grievously harmed by each other and by the war and their willingness to let it end.
Hence, the ending shows them leaning on each other, then walking off.
First they walked off together. Then it shows them walking apart from each other, symbolizing going their own separate ways.
Whether they survived or not, well let's get a little "Sopranos" here and I guess the writer left it up to the viewer.
anyway, that is my take on the whole ending.
However, I think they got way too "artsy tartsy" and it would have been more effective after the rip roaring reality western that preceded the ending if they had been more literal and less symbolic!!!
Gideon didn't blame Carver personally for the death of his sons. He was there with his troops looking for a cannon that Carver and his men had and that's what he was questioning him about before the house accidentally caught fire (after they set fire to the barn to get him to talk). Carver said he and his men had disbanded and he didn't know where the cannon was -- that the war was over for him.
sharePicac is right...he did not blame Carver for the death of his sons. I rewatched part of the movie just to check on that. I was wrong.
However, the death of his sons is surely to blame for why he pursued Carver after the war was over. He no intention of harming his family, he was just after Carver.
Unfortunately the other Yank soldiers also had scars from the war and they did not care if his family was harmed or not. As the same soldier who knocked over the lantern was also the one who said "they are just Rebs." That soldier saw them as sub human, whereas he himself was the one who had lost his humanity.
On rewatching, I realized they were both having the same nightmares, but both dealt with the horror in different ways.
Carver became a vigilante justice seeker and Gideon removed himself from society.
I've seen the scene a couple of times and I'm not even sure the war is even over, or it's just at the tail end of the war and it's over for Carver who has decided he wants to be home and has disbanded his men or right after the surrender. Either way, weapons would have to be rounded up as the North was an occupying force after the war. I don't think Gideon was even especially after Carver. Carver was a Col. he had men and a cannon under his command and the cannon was missing. Gideon wanted to know where it was, that was part of his duties as an officer.
I agree that some of his men were careless and dismissive of the damage they caused because it was "just rebs" and to them still the enemy. They didn't see them as a family. Interestingly, that soldier's loss of humanity is what then in large part happens to Carver and the way he treats others in his single minded pursuit of Gideon.
I really liked the sharing of the nightmares. It revealed what the characters had in common, what was torturing them in different ways, as well as being a little bit metaphysical. Maybe in the end they were also sharing hallucinations in the dessert.
I was thinking it would end with both of them shooting the other and then showing them both laying dead nxt to each other in the middle of freeking no where...
I think that ending might have made more of an impact the old "i forgive you lets go live out lives like this neevr happened"
But thats just my opinion.
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Good points. At then end, when the two men walked off, disappearing like mirages in the desert heat, it did not occur to me whether they died or lived on, although they were both obviously near death. A friend of mine who turned me on to this movie said the only thing that didn't seem to make sense was the supernatural weirdness at the end. After watching the movie and taking a few moments to think about it, it made some sense.
Indeed the story line is about post-Civil War revenge - clearly a variant of Eastwood's classic, Josey Wales. Here is my view of the ending of Seraphim Falls. Nearly dead, both men have spiritual experiences. Hope of living on disappeared. They were beyond being mortally famished. Dying of thirst, fatigue and wounds, the men transcended our animal instincts of hate, revenge, and willingness to kill one another, in a spiritual moment of passing. This is a significant message to me, because with humans, it basically requires at least such transcendental effects to get humans to treat each other with due respect. One of the things that disgusted Josey Wales so much was that men couldn't learn to live without butchering one another. I think Brosnan's character made one of the highest ascensions a human sould can make when he handed his nemesis the gun and said "Forgive me." Others may see that as 'wussing out'; I see it differently, and I am not a particularly religious person.
I too thought that was a great scene when Gideon handed over the gun to Liams character. What an option; kill the man he's hated for so long and die slowly, agonizingly of his wound in the hot desert sun. Or kill himself and get it over with. Very good scene.
sharegideon says before he thinks he's about to be shot quotes jesus: "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword"
i thought that was pretty obvious
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The scene is set in the fall (leaves and trees) which backs up Carter's comment of the was had been over for months.
shareNo, the death of his sons had nothing to do with going after Carver in the first place.
Gideon was a captain in the cavalry (he even wears the yellow double bars on his shoulders). He was given orders, likely by his colonel, who in exchange got them from some general, to search for a Rebel colonel who was last seen in the possession of a cannon, which is generally not a good thing.
Now in the military, such orders are followed, which is what Gideon did.
I didn't expect it to end the way it did, but I thought the ending was great. It was unpredictable and definitely untraditional as far as westerns go. In my opinion, the bottom-line statement the story writers were trying to make was about forgiveness (like the old saying, "to err is human, to forgive divine). Everyone makes mistakes and does bad things in this world, and none of us are perfect. The way I saw it was that despite the awful past they have with eachother, deep inside the core of both of the men, they were essentially good people which is why neither of them could kill the other, and they chose to go their separate ways. I'm not sure if the writers were trying to hint at biblical themes by choosing to end the story the way they did, but it definitely could be construed that way.
Just my opinion
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uk6strings-1 said: "I can't help but figure that people hate the ending because it required them to think about what they had just seen during the film's first hour+."
Seriously? Not trying to troll you here but that "You just didn't get it" line is so worn out. The film is not that deep or intricate. In fact, the theme is quite simple and has been done ad nauseam.
The ending was completely non sequitur and despite its attempt at being deep it was a total cliche and felt tacked on. After viewing this film, I was left with the impression that the writers did not have a clear idea of how they wanted this movie to climax and this was the best they could come up with. Unfortunately for me, this movie failed big time in its treatment of the last 20 minutes, starting with the idiotic mystical waterhole guarding Indian. Thematically it fit, but stylistically it did not. This for me will always be a movie that could have been great but was only good, simply because of the stylistic deviation at the end. To imply that people who didn't like the ending are intellectually inferior to you is both arrogant and incorrect. I mean come on, it isn't like this was a David Lynch film!
I was also disappointed with the ending.
I got the feeling that the gypsy woman was the devil or some sort of demon, but I thought it didn't really fit the movie at all. For more than half the movie it was a straightforward, but suspenseful, hunter/prey scenario set in the wild west. And then all of a sudden it gets mystical/philosophical/religious at the very end. It was a poor direction to go in that ruined what could have been a fantastic movie.
I think the movie should have ended during the scene where he jumps out of the dead horse. I'm not sure exactly how I would have ended it, but it should have involved brosnan apologizing for his actions but also accepting that he doesn't deserve to live. Perhaps as Brosnan was on his knees staring at Neeson's gun he should have asked Neeson if he would be permitted to take his own life with his knife. And Neeson lets Brosnan cut his own throat or stab himself in the gut or something (without ever knowing Neeson had no bullets left).
I was also very disappointed by the end. But unlike a lot of viewers I assumed they both died. I mean they were out of water and the Liam character had been just shot in the gut I thought. I don't imagine as exhausted as they were that they lasted long. I did'nt like the Angelica Huston character. If it was a mirage I could buy it but when they both saw it hmmmm. I also thought the climax should have been when he jumped out of the horse. After that it really ran too long for me, I lost interest.
shareShort answer? No, Long answer? No, I wasn't disappointed with the ending.
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