How it Might Have Ended: Ambiguous Endings

A Start Writing podcast Discussion

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Why

Why do we have an ambiguous ending? Why are they written?

We will cover this in two parts: audience, and story style.

The risks:

The audience can feel dissatisfied or even betrayed. We’ll talk about how to avoid this by identifying your audience, and the style of stories that make it work.

Audience Expectations & Knowing Your Audience

First is audience expectation. If you are expecting closure, and don’t get it, it might frustrate you.

Some audience members don’t look for closure in a story, or a happy ending, they are interested in catharsis (Rudy), or just observing the journey, more meaning to the journey (Inside Ilewyn Davis)

Some audience members find that too much closure feels unreal, and so it is less satisfying.

How to know what type of audience you’re dealing with?

Read the reviews. Go through the top book in very niche genres and see what people say about the endings. This will tell what type of ending they like.

Let’s break it down by style and example.

An Ending that Mirrors the story being told:

Some ending mirror the story being told and in so doing create a very fitting ending.

Nothing in the story is certain, so neither is the ending….(The Thing 1982)

The story is about an alien creature discovered in ice, that inhabits and takes over its host, then tried to either infect or kill off the competition. The movie is about the group possibly turning on each other and killing each other, or the alien killing them off one by one. In each encounter between two people you never really know if one is alien or not, or just two paranoid humans turning feral.

The ending is two men facing each other. One is the sole survivor of the carnage. The other wasn’t there because he said he went out into the blizzard to try and save another scientist. The camera pulls out. We don’t know what happens. Is one alien, one human? Will two humans turn on each other out of fear? We don’t know. It has been the question, and premise, ti has been the whole movie. It fits because it mirrors the entire story.

And end to make everyone happy

You can never satisfy every audience member with the ending. There will always be a group that wanted it to end differently. Enter the clues, but not the finish ambiguous ending.

In psychology we have a concept that is called confirmation bias; essential people look for evidence that supports their existing beliefs and ignore or forget evidence that does not.

Some ambiguous ending leaves a trail of clues, or rather different clusters of clues to provide evidence for different types of endings. So, when an ambiguous ending is given each member of the audience not only gets to choose how they think it actually ended after the last page, but they have evidence to support it. This can also create arguments, because everyone has evidence for different endings.

We see this in Inception. In the early part of the movie, Decaprio’s character tells us the clues used to identify the dream from the real. In the final moments of the scene there are clues to both, and then, of course, the spinning top and that final sound. Did it stop or did it just continue to spin? You choose, both your evidence and your ending, whatever makes you happiest.

This approach has more appeal once you realize just how many people don’t want simple happy endings.

Catharsis:

In a cathartic story a   is trapped by some life event or emotional baggage and they need something to overcome, so they can move on. Part of these stories' success is in making the audience take on this burden as well.

In Rudy, we experience the life of a young man bound by his father’s influence, and the death of his brother. This emotional burden drives all of Rudy’s choices most importantly his need to play football for Notre Dame. The moment that dream is realized we know Rudy is free. He can finally live his life on his terms. 

Rudy is not the best example of an ambiguous ending, but many cathartic endings are. Part of the reason for this is how well crafted the final moments are. It ends with a grand celebration, and the team carries him off the field, but it could just have easily had one more final scene.

Rudy in the stands looking over the field after graduation.

His friend asks him, “What now?”

He replies, “I spent my whole trying to play for Notre Dame, and I did. What now? I don’t know.”

The reason I wanted to talk about Rudy is that the difference between the happy ending and the ambiguous ending is a single scene. If we follow the story one step further we get ambiguity. Other stories that end in ambiguity might have happy endings if we just cut them one scene short, like Life of Pi.

Something to make them think, and talk, and consider

Some endings are meant to make the audience think, and reflect.

My particular selection falls both into and ending to make you think, but also a mirror of the story itself.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was designed to make its audience think from beginning to end.

The story about two people who fell in love then fell out of love and walked away bitter and sad from the experience. But that’s is the back story. A new technology has been developed that allows people to have certain memories erased, specifically romances that have to end and you just don’t want to remember anymore.

Joel and Clementine have both erased each other from their minds. But then they meet again and start to fall in love once more. An event at the company leads a disgruntled worker to mail out all the recordings that detail the complaints about partners, the stories when the relationship went back. In a single afternoon, Joel and Clementine learn all the terrible things they will eventually do each other. All the pain they will eventually experience. And they have a choice, do they try it again. Try this thing that feels new because they can’t remember it?

That is the ambiguous ending. But the question is not about Joel and Clementine it’s about our relationships. If we knew all the terrible things would do to each other, all the faults and shortcomings that would emerge, would we still pursue them because it just feels that good it the moment or would we walk away?

A Definitive Experience That Requires Ambiguity

The movie Doubt is about a priest suspected of molesting children. One nun is certain, the other is investigating and in the final moment she states simply, “I have doubts.”

The story is about encountering someone who is certain without proof while having your own doubts and uncertainty. The point is not to tell the audience if the man is guilty, the point is to see if the audience can be persuaded by nothing but the woman’s conviction, despite the lack of evidence.

The story ends in ambiguity because it was about a certain type of experience.

Sources:

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/ambiguous-endings