My wife and having a debate about the ending. My interpretation is that he realizes he never going back to the house, understands that the renters won't be leaving, and dies so that in heaven he is at his house and with his wife. I also viewed the son leaving for a "big meeting" just before the final scene repeating the mistake the father made when he left his wife for the last time.
Loved the film.
Thoughts?
That's an interesting take...I hadn't thought of it like that. I saw it in a more literal way. I saw it as Abner coming to terms with the fact that he won't be going back to his home and having some final flashbacks of his wife and himself before leaving to go to this new assisted living place. I figured the home was empty because the Choats weren't able to make the payments and had to leave.
Any other interpretations?
He said something like "The Choats" will be settling in or something like that which led me to believe that they did not have to leave. After all Mr. Choat saved his life so I guess the son may cut them some slack. Other then that your take probably makes more sense. Don't completly understand the daughter leaving however. Any help with that would be most appreciated.
shareshe was tired of being beat....her mother gives her the keys to the car so she can escape allowing her daughter to make a break for a different life...and i think pamela is more aware of her father's faults than anyone: she says he's angry at himself, she also says she doesn't think his knife was stolen or that he was cheated out of it but that he lost it while drunk and gambling.
re the ending: i think the choats couldn't make the payments and they did leave; however, meecham realizes that even with them gone he cannot return to the house as w/o his wife it is no longer a home.
mz
ps saw this today in santa cruz, california. not sure why the nick picked it up but glad they did. as far as i know it did not play in san jose or san francisco for that matter. i could almost feel the humid heat in some of the early scenes.......
But Choat didn't rescue Meecham out of any selfless reason. He knew that if Meecham died in the fire he would be blamed for setting it so it was in his own best interests that Meecham not die. In rural TN forensics would not be part of the deal for an apparently open and shut case like this.
He was worried anyway about not being able to come up with the cash to buy the farm, and my take was that he and his wife had to leave.
I live just a hour from where that film was made, and I'm not the smartest man on earth, but I like to believe it was all literal. He realizes he's never going "home" again because his wife is gone. It took both my grandfather's years to begin moving on after their wives passed, and I honestly don't believe they ever did. I honestly believe these older men and women have something the younger generations may almost never have, because were too busy divorcing and running around on each other.
Mrs. Choate already said he needed to concentrate on the money before they lose what they had in the house, and he got bad about it. I figure'd then, they'd lose that house. Someone like that couldn't run a farm if he had $500 million dollars. That's the way farms work.
I liked the ending. Frankly, I found it completely believable. If that stubborn old man had given up that house, I would have walked out.
If ya'll like this movie, check out The Accountant. It's awesome.
I don't know if this is true or not, but for some reason I've always felt like older men have more trouble moving on after the death of their spouse than older women. Complete generalization on my part, but it seems to me that men struggle more with the loss and getting back to reality. Anyway, back to the movie...
I saw this movie first in the theater and now I've watched it on DVD and I'm noticing a few smaller things. At the end, when the flashback ends and we see Abner standing in the front yard looking at the house, he looks very sad at first but then it looks like just a hint of a smile comes across his face. I think it's at that moment, when he realizes that, as long as he has his memories of the home with his wife being there, he'll be as close to "home" as he could ever be. And that's when he walks away. Amazing moment.
My take on it was that it was literal also.
I think that choat rescued him from the fire because it was just what most people would do in that situation. choat may have been mad and a loser but he wasn't bad enough to let an old man fry in a fire.
I think the lawyer son did what his father wanted and got rid of the renters. and abner did what his son wanted and moved into assisted living...the difference was..instead of just shutting the door and leaving the house with all of the posessions he'd spent his life accumulating and then letting some idiot move in and use, like his wifes dishes and their furniture, he got the opportunity to sell or pack up all of his things and say goodbye to the house on his own terms, not his sons.
I totally felt for abner. To work your whole life for a piece of land and a home, to raise your family there, to bury your spouse there , just to come back one day and find a lazy piece of crap living there who hadn't worked a day in ten years...letting it fall to rack and ruin...abner could see ten miles down the road what was going to happen to his home if choat was allowed to keep the place and it wasn't going to be pretty.
abner needed to have some say in who was going to be the next residents of his home.
I think the final scene shows Abner "letting go".
At the beginning of the film he returns from the nursing home because the house and its contents were his link to the past, and to his deceased wife. But Choat's presence in the house defiles those memories. So when the sheriff and Abner's son make it clear that Choat has won the battle, Abner cleanses with fire all the mementos of his and Ellen's life in his bid to commit suicide and wreak vengeance on Choat. When that fails, Abner has no more physical links to the past and finally makes peace with the fact that the sun has set on that part of his life.
I don't think he died in that hospital bed. I think he just fell asleep after his son left, and the final scene is another of his dream sequences. This dream, however, is not one of the flashback dreams because it begins with the charred remains of the tenant shack. But even though this dream represents the aftermath, I don't think the empty state of the house indicates the Choat's have moved out, for they're irrelevant to Abner now. I think it just symbolizes how he has accepted that he's packed up and ready to move on. And so, after a final dance with Ellen, he takes one last look at their home and walks away...
I like your interpretation. Mine had been similar, but a bit more literal. And the way the scene is set up, with all the little flashes of the house and then back to Abner and Ellen, then to him walking away from the house and driving down the road, it does seem rather dream-like. Good call!
shareI don't understand why, at the end since the Choats were gone (obviously were never able to make the payments because neither of them would get a job), didn't Abner just live in the house and have a visiting nurse or caretaker once a day? It would have been a lot cheaper than him moving into a retirement community. He wouldn't have been able to run the farm but he could have lived in the house, especially if one of the downstairs rooms was set up as his bedroom so he wouldn't have to go up and down that steep staircase. Couldn't Paul have done that for him?
Overall, I loved the movie, and Holbrook's and Corbin's performances were fantastic, but I expected a bit more of a climactic confrontation between Abner and Choat at the end. I was thinking it was going to be like Eastwood's "Gran Torino."
He won the battle, but lost the war.
shareat the end i think abner was going to kill himself but also take lonzo down too. he told the neighbor that he thought his place might be burned down by lonzo & if it was to tell the police. but that ending. wow. letdown. everything up to that point was so good maybe that's why it felt really weak. as there was this way real take on the theme of being who you are (or were) vs. what you want to be but it was tossed out the back of the pickup & turned it too something way conventional & dull with some redemption hootenanny in the tidy twist of a finish.
Golf clap? Golf clap.
I was blown away by the abrupt ending. I thought it would show Abner settled in the retirement community and growing corn in his garden.
I think, however, that he finally realized he couldn't stay on the farm by himself. What if he fell again and there was no one to rescue him? Plus, he had a hard time getting around and going up and down the stairs would be too difficult. I think he paid one last visit to the house before going to his own cottage at the retirement community.
I also think the Choates left; the house was obviously empty. Even though Choate had saved Abner's life and the son COULD have cut him some slack about the payments, I don't think he did. I think Choate realized he couldn't make a go of the farm, just as his wife had told him earlier. Maybe the daughter's leaving was a wake-up call for him. Maybe he was questioned about how the fire started and got scared he would be blamed.
The OP is correct. He dies at the end.
In the last shot of him walking away from the house he fades away like a ghost. I'm surprised so many missed this.
I choose to believe that he wasn't dead, but I acknowledge the possibility. He did say he had a "weak ticker".
The short story the film is based on is open-ended, with Abner in the ambulance.