Scenes From A Movie: 9 Great Film Endings

An ending can make or break a movie completely. Here are nine endings that wrap up the film satisfyingly.

Yesterday, I made a list of seven brilliant opening scenes from movies that I liked. Now, I’m looking at nine great endings from movies that hit hard before the credits.

A viewer will forgive a film for a slow beginning, even a bad beginning, but they will never forgive a bad ending. Psychologically, we seem to remember how something finishes than how it started— something that fans of TV shows know only too well, as shows that started off well undid a lot of goodwill with their fans by the time it ended (hello Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, and Dexter season 8!¹).

Endings are difficult. It has to tie up all the story threads satisfyingly and know when it’s time to stop for maximum impact. The following nine films— listed in the order of the year it was released— do exactly that.

(Note: Wherever possible, I will try to attach a clip of the opening for your viewing pleasure. If it’s not available and you haven’t watched, I highly recommend you get a copy of the movie and check it out. Also, this goes without saying: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS, SO PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Brief Encounter (1945)

Directed by: David Lean
Written by: Noël Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Based on: Still Life by Noël Coward

Before David Lean made literal epics with films like Lawrence of Arabia, he brought that same sense of scale to the love affair of Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) in this British romantic tragedy, about two married people who are attracted to each other but don’t act on their feelings due to the mores of their middle-class values. The entire story is told from Laura’s point-of-view, as she recounts in voice-over how it all happened. The voice-over might seem a lazy device but in Brief Encounter, it is Laura’s confession, telling her husband what she cannot bring herself to say. Yet, in the final moments, even he has deduced Laura’s anguished state. Does he guess the cause? Maybe. Maybe not. If he does, however, all he says is this: “You’ve been a long way away. Thank you for coming back to me.” It’s an ending that is both beautiful and sad simultaneously.

Notice how Lean breaks the 180-degree-line after Laura’s husband gets up and approaches his wife, signalling a shift. Watch the interplay of shadows and light across Laura’s face as she stares out, lost in her feelings. Observe the camera slowly pushing in on the couple as the husband crouches beside her, pausing in a medium and keeping only the two of them in the frame, before pushing again into a close-up as the music rises and the scene fades out. David Lean was a master at telling a story in visuals, whether it’s in a small-scale story like Brief Encounter or sweeping vistas like Doctor Zhivago decades later, finding the epic even in the smallest moments.

Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

Written and directed by: Robert Bresson

It’s hard to write about this without getting emotional, and I’ve never quite forgiven Robert Bresson for it. Throughout the entire film, the patient donkey Balthazar is mistreated by everyone except the kind Marie, who also suffers throughout the picture. Ultimately, Balthazar gets shot one night after he is illegally taken to transport contraband across the border. However, he manages to flee his captors, and the morning finds the donkey in a field, bleeding from his wound. He goes and sits down, and a flock of sheep come and surround him. Balthazar quietly sits, his eyes close. He lies down on his side and dies, released at last from his long years of burden.

This isn’t one of those cutesy Disney stories with animals. Bresson instead observes his animal star, simply letting the camera watch. It reminded of something I came across around the time that The Banshees of Inisherin was released— which also had a donkey in it— that I think about:

Donkeys are fabulous animals. They’re lovely but because really nobody gives them much attention, they know nothing. A donkey is a donkey is a donkey. For many years, they were used as just a working beast, and they were never taught how to learn. They existed and led a life where they just did their job and that was it.

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Directed by: Bob Rafelson
Written by: Adrien Joyce
Story by: Bob Rafelson, Adrien Joyce

Can Bobby (Jack Nicholson) change? As Five Easy Pieces arrives at its final moments, it tentatively holds out hope that maybe— just maybe— he and his partner Rayette (Karen Black) can make it work out despite all their past tensions. At a gas station, they stop to refuel. Rayette steps inside and Bobby goes to the men’s washroom, and studies his reflection in the mirror for a long time— the camera doesn’t push in, it just observes him. Then outside— shot in a wide— we watch Bobby hail a truck driver parked near the building while in the right corner, we see a man working on his car. We don’t hear the dialogue, but we can guess what is happening when Bobby climbs into the truck’s passenger seat. Inside, the driver offers him a spare coat but Bobby declines and says tonelessly that he’s fine. It’s almost as if he’s punishing himself by refusing any clothing that will keep him warm. He keeps telling himself he’s fine, as it cuts to another wide shot of the truck turning and driving in the other direction just as Rayette climbs back out and looks for Bobby, but Bobby is running away again, just as he ran away from home, just as he seems to always be running from himself. There’s no music whatsoever— any music would ruin the scene. And your heart sinks, because just for a moment, you hoped it wouldn’t be so. But in real life, unlike the movies, people don’t always change before the end credits. In real life, most people are like Bobby. Sometimes, change eludes them, and they’re running, always running. And poor Rayette is still left standing alone at the station, thinking Bobby is still in the bathroom.

The Karate Kid (1984)

Directed by: John G. Avildsen
Written by: Robert Mark Kamen

Did you realize that The Karate Kid moves from the climax (Daniel scores the winning point) to the credits in 30 seconds? That makes it one of the fastest, if not the fastest, endings in a film. Strangely, it wasn’t the planned ending; what became the beginning of The Karate Kid Part II— Mr. Miyagi beats Kreese in the parking lot in front of his Cobra Kai students— was meant to be the actual ending of The Karate Kid. Yet it seems that Avildsen and the team realized early that finishing on Daniel’s moment of triumph was the best place to stop. In under two minutes, we watch Mr. Miyagi quietly exhort Daniel to get up. He does, and assumes the crane stance. The ref gives the signal, Johnny Lawrence charges— and Daniel kicks him, scoring the point and winning the championship. Bill Conti’s score crescendos, Ali rushes Daniel along with his mother, and the rest of the crowd. Johnny gives Daniel the trophy, tells him he’s alright (liar, this moment is the foundation for the entire Cobra Kai spin-off!) and Daniel is hoisted into the air. He looks for Mr. Miyagi, who’s still watching from the side, and the film freezes on Mr. Miyagi smiling for the first time. The cymbals clash, the picture fades out, and the sea of music washes us into the credits. It’s the best example of knowing when to quit while you’re ahead and going with the ending that serves the film’s rhythm best. I watched this film as a kid, and it is still magical.

Witness (1985)

Directed by: Peter Weir
Written by: Earl W. Wallace, William Kelley
Story by: William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, Earl W. Wallace

The case is over. Captain John Book (Harrison Ford) has brought the killers to justice, and the boy Samuel, the film’s titular witness is safe. And now it’s time for Book to say goodbye to the Lapp family who took him in and kept him in their Amish community. The hardest goodbye he has to say is to Rachel (Kelly McGillis). Both are attracted to each other, but Book knows that either he has to stay, or she has to leave her community to be with him, and neither option would work in the end. The parting of the ways is inevitable. But what is there to say in such a situation that doesn’t sound forced or trite? Originally, the script had the two characters explaining their feelings to each other but director Peter Weir wisely decided not to shoot it, choosing instead to let the two actors communicate their feelings with their emotions and looks. He trusted that the audience would get it. With Maurice Jarre’s score, you can believe they got it. Goodbyes have never been more heartbreaking and sublime at the same time.

The Dead (1987)

Directed by: John Huston
Written by: Tony Huston
Based on: ”The Dead” by James Joyce

How do you top James Joyce when you adapt his work to film? In the case of The Dead, you don’t. John Huston’s final film is remarkably faithful to the short story of the same name, but it’s the ending that is really sublime— just as Joyce wrote it. After hearing the strains of ‘The Lass of Aughrim’, Gretta (Anjelica Huston) is struck by past memories and is pensive all the way back to the hotel. When her husband Gabriel (Donal McCann), who has been hoping to have sex with his wife, finally asks what is bothering her, Gretta tells him about a lover from her young days, who used to sing that same song and died, apparently, out of love for her. Later, she cries herself to sleep and Gabriel, deprived of both sex and depressed that he has never felt love as powerfully as his wife’s dead lover, watches the snow falling outside their hotel window as his thoughts drift. The ending is nothing flashy; if anything, it’s a risky way to end because it is entirely a monologue, but one that more or less entirely lifts Joyce’s final paragraphs, especially the last lines from which the story— and the film— gets its title.

“Like everything around me, this solid world itself, which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving. Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lays buried. Falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

The Age of Innocence (1993)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
Based on: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

For a film without blood or violence, The Age of Innocence is one of Martin Scorsese’s most violent films— that is, about the violence of passion. In Scorsese’s films, violence comes with a price, and so it does here, too. Newland Archer (Daniel Day Lewis) loses the opportunity to be with the woman he really loves, Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), thanks to the subtle scheming by his wife May (Winona Ryder). After May dies, his adult son reveals that she told him that Archer gave up the thing he wanted most when she asked him to. After absorbing this, Archer corrects his son: “She never asked me.”

And then, even after the son arranges for Archer to meet Ellen again after so many years, Archer finds that he cannot go through with it. The passion of their unconsummated love affair has taken a toll on him, and he slowly walks away instead of going up to her flat to see her. It makes you want to reach through the screen, grab Archer by his coat front and scream in his face, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

But this is the appropriate ending. It’s the same one that Edith Wharton wrote, and just as devastating. Wharton writes why Archer chose not to see Ellen again: “It’s more real to me here than if I went up”.

Archer fell in love. Then, bound by the codes and strictures of his time, he did the dutiful thing by staying with May. For that, the price he paid was to give up his happiness— and ultimately, the best years of his life.

And not a single shot was fired. Some types of violence don’t need bullets to do the job.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Directed by: Sam Raimi
Written by: Alvin Sargent
Story by: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Michael Chabon

“Isn’t it about time somebody saved your life?” That’s the question Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) puts to Peter Parker, after ditching her fiancé at the altar (how positively soap operatic!), to tell him that she’d rather be with him even if his alter-ego puts her in danger— the reason behind his choosing to avoid being with the woman he’s loved since forever. But the romantic kiss is cut short by the sound of police sirens. For a moment, Peter is torn. But Mary Jane tells him to go and out he goes in costume, swinging through the buildings as she watches from the window. It’s grand! It’s amazing! But that’s not the image Sam Raimi chooses to end on. He ends it on Mary Jane’s face, as if the reality of her choice is sinking in, compounded by Danny Elfman’s sombre final notes. The last shot is actually a callback to the opening shot— in the film’s first image, Peter sees Mary Jane on a billboard, like some sort of goddess forever out of reach; in the final image, we see the real flesh-and-blood woman. An ideal turned into a person, and all that accompanies it. The visual effects have dated (the CGI helicopters really give it away) but between the emotion built up to it, Elfman’s score, and that last shot, Spider-Man 2 sticks the landing like few superhero movies do.

It Was Just An Accident (2025)

Written and directed by: Jafar Panahi

The entire film builds towards answering the question that it has been asking all along: is the man tied up in a box in the van really Eghbal the prison guard who tortured several captives in an Iranian prison— or not? After the main character Vahid finally gets his answer, he chooses to let his former tormentor go instead of killing him as planned.

But the next day, as Vahid is preparing the van for his sister, we notice a white car approach, similar to Eghbal’s car. We stay with Vahid as he re-enters the house… and freezes when he hears the dread squeak of Eghbal’s prosthetic leg. Vahid doesn’t move. Is Eghbal going to turn him in? The camera stays focused on Vahid’s back. All we hear is the sound of the prosthetic leg, moving closer like some dreaded beast. And then, it seems to recede. Or does it? The sound continues as the credits begin to roll and we’re left in ambiguous suspense. Was that Eghbal’s way of thanking Vahid for sparing his life and taking his pregnant wife to the hospital? Or was it a warning that he knows who Vahid is and where he lives? Whichever way you cut it, the fact of the matter is that director Jafar Panahi builds up Hitchcockian levels of suspense using only the power of sound, and it is NERVE-RACKING.

What are your favorite film endings? Please share your answers in the comments.

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Long live the movies!

D.L. Holmes

1. Until it earned back some of its goodwill with the revivals, Dexter: New Blood and Dexter: Resurrections.