I was watching The Book of Eli last night and thought the ending was a pretty good twist.
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Eli (Washington) is blind and the bible is in braille.
It got me thinking about what the best twist endings of all time are.
The Sixth Sense (I think everyone knows the ending anyway, but I spoiler it none-the-less)
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Malcolm Crowe (Willis) is a ghost the whole time.
Se7en
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
John Doe (Spacey) kills David Mills' (Pitt) wife so that Mills will kill him and become the final victim, wrath.
12 Monkeys
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
James Cole (Willis) goes back in time to save humanity from a deadly virus, but fails, getting shot in the airport as his child-self watches.
The Usual Suspects
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Kujan (Palminteri) realises that Verbal's (Spacey) story is made up, and as he leaves the police station it is revealed he doesn't have cerebral palsy.
Planet of the Apes (original)
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Taylor (Heston) sees the Statue of Liberty on the beach and realises he's been on Earth the whole time.
Fight Club
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
The Narrator (Norton) and Tyler Durden (Pitt) are the same person.
Donnie Darko
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
The aeroplane engine that hits Donnie's (Gyllenhaal) room at the beginning came from the future where it came off the plane that his mum and sister were travelling on.
Atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it. ~Christopher Hitchens~
also, Richard Strauss's opera Salome. Even though the story is well-known, the way he does it is extraordinary. The last scene is deluxe-sickly-sweet-lascivious-triumphant-glorious as Salome is kissing the severed head of John the Baptist. Only at the very end does a beam of moonlight reveal her to Herod - and he shouts to his men "Kill that woman!" - and they do so. Even though you know what's going to happen, the turnaround in the last 30 seconds is utterly shocking.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.
Found a clip of the end of Salome. Excuse the staging and camera work - it kind of sucks. But musically you'll get the point.
I think that language has a lot to do with interfering in our relationship to direct experience. A simple thing like metaphor will allows you to go to a place and say 'this is like that'. Well, this isn't like that. This is like this.
