The End of The “Happily Ever After"

Painting by Mehdi Ghadyanloo

The 90 minutes you spent watching yet another Netflix original on are coming to an end, but you already know what is going to happen. The guy runs to the airport and gets the girl, the good guys win, and the bad guys get what they deserve. Despite your best knowledge, you’re yet preoccupied with the fate of the character, and when he or she finally gets to the ‘happy ending’, you might be just as happy as the character him/herself. Unless...the guy gets stuck in traffic, and the girl gets on the plane, good guys don’t heroically save the world, and you already feel this stinging feeling of euphoric fantasy being interrupted by reality. Realism in cinema is usually praised by the critics, while escapism is warmly welcomed among the fans. However, as the world, we live in changes and the movie industry evolves we might ask ourselves whether we need to get used to grimmer, but realistic take on film; and is there a balance? 

Unrealistic, but happy? Count me in.

It’s only natural that given everything that’s happening in the world, people crave the blissful feeling of immersion in life which seems to be just slightly better than the one we’re often facing. Despite the stigma of movies with classic, often predictable happy endings portraying an achingly unrealistic picture of the world, people are continuously buying in, even if they know that the ease of the movie’s lifestyle ends the moment the titles start coming up. Surveys show that the majority of viewers and readers still prefer happy endings to sad ones, and it doesn’t at all mean that majority are naive fools who expect their lifestyles to be a fairy tale. Rather, it’s our attempt at ‘taking a break’, and for an hour and a half. Life is hard anyway, why get reminded of it on movies?  

Watching movies and shows with painfully ‘unjust’ in our eyes endings feels so devastating precisely because we get reminded of life just as it is. Where not everything goes in our direction, and things are, more often than not...frustrating, and unfair. Because people miss each other by seconds, so many words that would have perfectly fit the “script” are left unsaid. Bad guys don’t always get what they deserve, and it just so happens, that neither do good guys.

Painting by Mehdi Ghadyanloo

Are times just getting harder?

In my mind, the times when theaters would be overwhelmed by ‘feel good’ films are subconsciously associated with a simpler, more untroubled world. Although this idea might easily be a fallacy, and movies which touched upon more serious topics were less spoken about, one can hardly argue that in the recent years, the movie scene gradually progresses into showing the darker reality we’re living in. As one crisis has been erupting after another and difficult topics that were avoided before are getting more and more spoken about, we can expect the movie industry to ‘catch up’ and soon reflect it on the screen. After all, art imitates life. The most recent example includes the 2018 film ‘The Hate U Give’, which despite attempting to showcase the painful reality of the ‘broken system’ we’re facing, was extolled by both viewers and the critics, precisely for that reason. And yet, touching upon difficult topics is walking on thin ice. While on one hand, we have movies which are simple to a point of being completely unrealistic, on the other side, there are works so raw and real, that they become unbearable to watch; so what’s left in the middle? 

A balance between two extremes.

 Sometimes we get struck with the examples of cinema which seem to get it just right. La La Land (2016), in my opinion, has perfectly portrayed the shining lights of the world sensational and beautiful, which, however, never gave us false promises of easy success and everlasting love. Spoilers ahead, the final scene would forever remain one of my favorites in the whole history of modern rom-com. Life is not a fairytale, it says, but it’s perfectly fine; and you keep living. Another examples, of which there are many, include ‘Jojo rabbit’ (2019), introducing us the new and intriguing genre of ‘absurd reality’, the visually stunning “Euphoria”(2019), and in general, all movies and shows, which manage to talk about difficult topics without, however, making them centric to the film and lives of the characters. While ‘Jojo Rabbit’ is set in the later stages of the Second World War, it’s not a war movie, but rather a satirical drama, which gets the grasp right. “Euphoria”, although occasionally ending up under waves of criticism, is not a show which glorifies addiction, but the one, which shows the chaotic beauty of being a teenager, hindered terribly, by an addiction. What these movies all have in common, it’s that they are as far from being realistic as possible, sometimes much more so than movies with traditional happy endings; but it only makes the serious aspects of such works more raw and real, and the effects of such scenes much more lasting.

Because in the end, fiction cinema is not made just, so we can observe the bitter reality once more through a lens of the screen. Rather, it’s a sweet, not long-lasting escape that taps into our fantasies, without, however, failing to remind us that life is not made of them. Instead of immersing us in a world so perfect, and then leaving us completely disappointed by dull reality, they leave us optimistic that life, despite all the hardships and lows, will get better.