(Be sure to read Part 1 of my review first)
Finally, the ending. I think the director really dropped the ball on this. Here we have a man who is so despondent he's going to throw himself in front of a train to end his life. He takes his dog (you know, the one he supposedly loves sooooo much) to the park, and then walks away and leaves it behind while some children he doesn't even know are playing with it. (We might have assumed that the children will adopt the dog and care for it, except that the filmmaker precedes this moment with a scene whereby Umberto gives Flike to a little girl who is thrilled to have him, but her parents force her to give him back. So the director has taken care to set up the notion that Flike cannot be given away to a child, and then moments later he expects the audience to forget that scene and accept the notion that a different child WILL be allowed to adopt Flike?)
Flike tracks down Umberto before the train arrives, and so Umberto decides it would be best if he ends BOTH of their lives! (that is, his own life and the life of Flike, you know, the dog he supposedly loves sooooo much). Standing next to the tracks, the uber-intelligent Flike senses what's about to happen, wrestles free from Umberto, thus sparing both their lives (Well, not exactly. Flike runs clear of the tracks to save himself, but makes no effort to stop Umberto from carrying out his plan, such as tugging on his pant leg or barking incessantly. Gee, what a loyal dog.) On a side note, I must mention there is a spectacular shot of the train rushing past Umberto while a gush of dusty air blasts him in the face, temporarily blinding him. It's quite an arresting image and remarkably gripping in its realism.
Here is where the filmmaker almost won me over. Umberto stumbles away from the tracks towards Flike, who is now distrustful of Umberto. Flike hides behind a tree and avoids coming near Umberto, despite his best efforts to coax the dog with a pine cone to play with. This could have been a very "O. Henry" type of ending that would have resonated with me for a long time.
Imagine this ending: Umberto wants to end his life because he has nothing to live for, wanting to take the only thing he really cares about (Flike) with him into the afterlife. But his plan is foiled by Flike, making Umberto realize he DOES have something to live for, changing his whole perspective on his life. BUT, the one thing he is willing to live for (Flike) has now turned his back on Umberto, because he betrayed his trust. And so we end with Flike returning to play with the children, looking for a new, more trustworthy master, while Umberto shuffles off down the path, dejected, a man who has lost the only thing he really cared about and now TRULY has nothing worth living for. Where will he go? What will he do? And what will become of him? Now THAT would have been a powerful ending that could have literally salvaged the first 90% of the film.
Instead, Flike begrudgingly returns to his master's side, does a trick to show him that he's not really that mad at Umberto after all, and off they go together, trotting playfully down the boardwalk. Roger Ebert pointed out the Chaplinesque quality of that shot, and I agree, but he also feels that it's a sad ending, not a happy one. "Yes, they're alive and headed off into their future... but where are they going? And what will happen to them?" Roger asked after the screening. Still, it's an ending that's hopeful, which offsets the emotional wallop that had been set up in the preceding scenes.
In closing, I should also mention that the audience I saw it with (composed entirely of true film buffs), was somewhat fidgety during the movie, which is only 90 minutes long but feels like it's about 2-1/2 hours due to the sluggish pacing. There was a smattering of polite applause at the end, but hardly what you would expect if the general consensus had been that this was truly a "great movie". Yet some people did have tears in their eyes, which I found strange because I'm a huge animal lover (I'm even a vegetarian), but I didn't even get a little misty at the ending. The film just doesn't build an emotional arc effectively, and so the ending felt contrived and mishandled, rather than inevitable and heart-wrenching as it should have been.
Finally, the ending. I think the director really dropped the ball on this. Here we have a man who is so despondent he's going to throw himself in front of a train to end his life. He takes his dog (you know, the one he supposedly loves sooooo much) to the park, and then walks away and leaves it behind while some children he doesn't even know are playing with it. (We might have assumed that the children will adopt the dog and care for it, except that the filmmaker precedes this moment with a scene whereby Umberto gives Flike to a little girl who is thrilled to have him, but her parents force her to give him back. So the director has taken care to set up the notion that Flike cannot be given away to a child, and then moments later he expects the audience to forget that scene and accept the notion that a different child WILL be allowed to adopt Flike?)
Flike tracks down Umberto before the train arrives, and so Umberto decides it would be best if he ends BOTH of their lives! (that is, his own life and the life of Flike, you know, the dog he supposedly loves sooooo much). Standing next to the tracks, the uber-intelligent Flike senses what's about to happen, wrestles free from Umberto, thus sparing both their lives (Well, not exactly. Flike runs clear of the tracks to save himself, but makes no effort to stop Umberto from carrying out his plan, such as tugging on his pant leg or barking incessantly. Gee, what a loyal dog.) On a side note, I must mention there is a spectacular shot of the train rushing past Umberto while a gush of dusty air blasts him in the face, temporarily blinding him. It's quite an arresting image and remarkably gripping in its realism.
Here is where the filmmaker almost won me over. Umberto stumbles away from the tracks towards Flike, who is now distrustful of Umberto. Flike hides behind a tree and avoids coming near Umberto, despite his best efforts to coax the dog with a pine cone to play with. This could have been a very "O. Henry" type of ending that would have resonated with me for a long time.
Imagine this ending: Umberto wants to end his life because he has nothing to live for, wanting to take the only thing he really cares about (Flike) with him into the afterlife. But his plan is foiled by Flike, making Umberto realize he DOES have something to live for, changing his whole perspective on his life. BUT, the one thing he is willing to live for (Flike) has now turned his back on Umberto, because he betrayed his trust. And so we end with Flike returning to play with the children, looking for a new, more trustworthy master, while Umberto shuffles off down the path, dejected, a man who has lost the only thing he really cared about and now TRULY has nothing worth living for. Where will he go? What will he do? And what will become of him? Now THAT would have been a powerful ending that could have literally salvaged the first 90% of the film.
Instead, Flike begrudgingly returns to his master's side, does a trick to show him that he's not really that mad at Umberto after all, and off they go together, trotting playfully down the boardwalk. Roger Ebert pointed out the Chaplinesque quality of that shot, and I agree, but he also feels that it's a sad ending, not a happy one. "Yes, they're alive and headed off into their future... but where are they going? And what will happen to them?" Roger asked after the screening. Still, it's an ending that's hopeful, which offsets the emotional wallop that had been set up in the preceding scenes.
In closing, I should also mention that the audience I saw it with (composed entirely of true film buffs), was somewhat fidgety during the movie, which is only 90 minutes long but feels like it's about 2-1/2 hours due to the sluggish pacing. There was a smattering of polite applause at the end, but hardly what you would expect if the general consensus had been that this was truly a "great movie". Yet some people did have tears in their eyes, which I found strange because I'm a huge animal lover (I'm even a vegetarian), but I didn't even get a little misty at the ending. The film just doesn't build an emotional arc effectively, and so the ending felt contrived and mishandled, rather than inevitable and heart-wrenching as it should have been.