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Post by Pavan on Jul 25, 2023 13:35:18 GMT
Not to be the one to cry “but the book doesn’t matter,” because that’s a whole different debate. But when it comes to the women and how poorly their characters are developed in the film…does the book really matter all that much? I do realize this is supposed to be an adaptation of real life events. But if it’s underwhelming in the movie, then it probably means the original source material is underwhelming if it’s truly a faithful adaptation. My point being, I don’t care how faithful it is to the original source material. What we got in the film, when it came to the relationship with Kitty and Jean, basically amounted to very little for me. Their relationships on screen felt like they were there simply because “well, these things happened, which means we have to put this in there.” Well I’d say the book matters in terms of where people are looking to lay the “blame” for the character writing. People taking issue with Kitty and Jean are quick to shit on Nolan because obviously he has a history of being criticized for his female characters (and I won’t defend him in that regard), so he’s an easy target here as the person who wrote the screenplay. I just brought up the book merely to suggest what you said about how the original source material might be “lacking” in its coverage of Kitty and Jean, so maybe we should cut Nolan some slack here for just making a faithful adaptation (unless people were expecting him to take more creative license with the female characters). Nolan, knowingly or unknowingly has been addressing the criticisms aimed at him, starting from Interstellar. We might see a female centric film from him soon.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 25, 2023 13:41:07 GMT
Re-watch:
The first two hours are still riveting even on rewatch but having the known twist, the last hour dips a little but still holds pretty well considering how well it is edited. Also features his best character work since The Prestige- Dark Knight days. I reaffirm my earlier comment that this is top-tier Nolan indeed.
The only nitpick on my 2nd viewing is, the scale of the bomb itself, somehow it felt small and lacks punch. The buildup to it was super intense and i liked the silence but i thought CGI would've produced better visuals? I support Nolan's interest in practical effects but sometimes he is too stubborn and unwelcoming of things he doesn't trust. In short the explosion should've been in CGI or at least enhanced by CGI.
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Archie
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Post by Archie on Jul 25, 2023 21:38:03 GMT
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 25, 2023 22:11:13 GMT
Nolan wishes he could write like that
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 27, 2023 5:37:02 GMT
Nolan’s JFK indeed... only better.
Man, this was A LOT of movie. It’s such a full-course meal, you’re left kind of exhausted and drained by the end (but not in bad way). Definitely the most thematically rich film Nolan has made in a while, and probably my third favorite of his overall after Memento and The Dark Knight. It gave me just about everything that I wanted to see in a biopic about this man... and in the way I wanted (and even predicted) to see it presented on a broad structural level.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that the last third of the film is weaker than the rest, but I sort of thought the opposite and felt like the film got better as it went along. It actually took me a while to settle into the movie’s rhythm during the first 30 mins or so, which seemed almost Malickian with its impressionistic editing. Nolan has often used quick cutaway shots to evoke the feeling of memory in his earlier films, and this felt like a radical expansion of that technique. While the rapid editing is well-suited to the thriller/courtroom drama elements later in the film, it’s somewhat jarring up front when we’re being shown Oppenheimer’s early life and are introduced to various characters. But given that the film uses the 1954 security hearing as a narrative framing device in which Oppenheimer is shown recalling events throughout his life, it makes sense for that initial part of the film to play out like a series of fragmented memories, especially since the film’s color sequences are intended overall to be a representation of Oppenheimer’s subjectivity.
This approach to telling Oppenheimer’s story is the obvious defense for how “underwritten” the supporting characters are. We’re only meant to know these people through Oppenheimer’s perspective. So in the case of Kitty and Jean, for example, the film portrays them much like Oppenheimer probably viewed them – secondary and largely absent in the world he saw “beyond what others could see.” The fact that Kitty’s alcohol problem is just something “that happens” to her with no progression is perhaps indicative of Oppenheimer’s negligence in recognizing his wife’s emotional needs, so it comes across as “sudden” from his POV even if that maybe wasn’t the case in reality. Not only are we experiencing events through Oppenheimer’s limited perspective, but we’re also seeing them as moments that he remembers most in his stressed state of mind as he recalls his life story during the security hearing... shards of memory swirling around in his anxious mind like the atomic particles that haunt his dreams (the film, like Memento, also touches on the idea of memory’s fallibility – how we can’t be certain that things happened the way we remember them or what exactly we said in the past). All that being said though, I can’t say I wasn’t wanting a little more for Blunt to do, just so we could understand the relationship between Oppenheimer and Kitty a bit more. Going into it, I knew Blunt would have limited screen time, but I suppose I was expecting more concentrated doses of her instead of mostly just brief scenes with her scattered throughout.
In the Tenet reviews thread, I made a post just about the opening shots of Nolan’s films, and if it weren’t for Memento’s (“everything fades”), I think this one would be my favorite. After the (purposely imo) pedestrian opening shot of Tenet, we’re back to starting with something symbolic or narratively significant: raindrops falling onto water and making ripples. Not only conveying the natural beauty of the physics of the world (later contrasted with the horror and destruction of the bomb), but also serving as an external representation of Oppenheimer’s interior visions. It’s a poetic image that, together with later more horrific images, captures the tragedy of this story of a man who wanted to turn his visions of a beautiful world beyond our own into reality, but instead turned them into a nightmare.
And my God, the score. It is doing so much work here. While watching, I kept thinking about how certain scenes wouldn’t have been half as exciting without the music, which is just constantly present... moreso than in any other Nolan film I can think of. I didn’t have a problem with it, but I can understand how some would find the film to be overscored, especially early on. At times, it really reminded me of Jonny Greenwood’s score to There Will Be Blood (which is to say it also sounds like Ligeti), with some Philip Glass, Zimmer, and a tiny bit of Tenet mixed in.
And that ending... fuuuuuuuck
In my Tenet review, I mentioned how I wanted Nolan’s next project to be something other than sci-fi and also less focused on spectacle at the expense of character, so I’m glad he gave me exactly what I wanted by making this deep-dive character study while still doing it on the largest scale possible. I also just love that he followed his least serious, loosest, goofy, nonsensical Bond movie with arguably his most “serious” and adult film to date. Since The Prestige, every other film he’s made has been sci-fi, so I wonder if he’ll keep the pattern going or if he’ll break it and go in a different direction genre-wise.
Updated Nolan ranking:
1. Memento – 10/10 2. The Dark Knight – 10/10 3. Oppenheimer – 9/10 4. Dunkirk – 9/10 5. Following – 9/10 6. Interstellar – 8.5/10 7. Inception – 8.5/10 8. The Dark Knight Rises – 8.5/10 9. Insomnia – 8/10 10. The Prestige – 8/10 11. Batman Begins – 8/10 12. Tenet – 7.5/10
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 27, 2023 5:56:19 GMT
Also... slightly bummed that my cocaine wasn’t in this.
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Nikan
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Post by Nikan on Jul 27, 2023 6:14:06 GMT
Also... slightly bummed that my cocaine wasn’t in this. I think Kenneth Branagh is gonna fill in his shoes from now on... Glad you liked it so much
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 27, 2023 7:49:17 GMT
Great movies - and Oppenheimer is on several levels - technical, visual, sensory, contemplative etc. - "great" or great enough, often enough anyway - can usually be summed up by an early scene and always, 100% of the time the very last scene. So it is here - although the early scene to me the reconsidered potential murder via a tampered with, poisoned apple and the last scene an improbably specific revisited dialog with Einstein could be rewritten in ways that would make the film MORE interesting...... How/why would you have wanted those scenes rewritten? By this, do you mean that the movie is maybe too “precise” or “clean” in its portrayal of real life events in a way that doesn’t seem quite true to the messiness of real life?
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 27, 2023 8:00:29 GMT
GREAT use of the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima Where? I actually don't recall any use of preexisting music (at least nondiegetic)... thought it was all Göransson. Can someone explain what the point of the nudity was in that scene? I just found it super awkward. Not even uncomfortable but just awkward. It felt like Nolan trying to do artsy nudity and it just fell flat. It didn't help that Murphy and Pugh had zero chemistry During the hearing, he was having his personal life picked apart, with his wife having to listen to him recounting his affair, so he felt particularly vulnerable and exposed with the sordid details of his life being put on display for all to see... so he felt “naked.”
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 27, 2023 8:46:35 GMT
Great movies - and Oppenheimer is on several levels - technical, visual, sensory, contemplative etc. - "great" or great enough, often enough anyway - can usually be summed up by an early scene and always, 100% of the time the very last scene. So it is here - although the early scene to me the reconsidered potential murder via a tampered with, poisoned apple and the last scene an improbably specific revisited dialog with Einstein could be rewritten in ways that would make the film MORE interesting...... How/why would you have wanted those scenes rewritten? By this, do you mean that the movie is maybe too “precise” or “clean” in its portrayal of real life events in a way that doesn’t seem quite true to the messiness of real life? * "Clean" is a good way of phrasing - I think it is hurt for me because of another movie - R.M.N. which I saw twice - once last year and again now almost a year later and it is almost entirely unclean - alll odd scenes and angles that you can never tell where and how they might end. That movie has stuck with me very much - I put it in my top 10 last year (#6) ........it's the opposite kind of movie - fiction that feels like life and unburdened with how you may interpet it but very weighty...........where Oppy feels burdened by conveying facts specifically......for stuff I saw this year they are 2 and 3 actually.......but R.M.N. is a different level of "great" to me - even if you wouldn't see much of a difference in a rating or something. Someone said Oppy feels like "a film of a Wikipedia page" ..............which is a good snarky pacinoyes line I wish I said ................and may later take credit for originating (um)...... * I picked that scene in the opening because it ends with Murphy slapping it out of Branagah's hand - but dramatically shouldn't go that far ..............if you showed him merely changing his mind momentarily afterward - injectng it and then saying (not "literally" saying btw but thinking it, putting the apple into his pocket........ "I'm not a murderer using the tool of science.........No.....yet I might do it later" when he kind of is those things and has the capacity to murder..........it just plays better dramatically..........it's weirder.......odder.......more character and foreshadowing based........there's nothing wrong with the scene as is.....it just isn't distinct or odd and it could be ...........it's in how and what you convey to an audience and when and in what manner........a lot of those things are in the scene of course as is - but to me they're conveyed more clumsily dramatically in his storytelling........I'm sure others feel my way is more clumsy and unnecessary too..........ah well....... * The end scene is Nolan insisting on putting a bow on his film in a way that's not my thing and is imo again too clean.........it would be so much better to me if we don't know what is said........or what is said is not so precisely on-point.......it's shoe-horning a dramatic turn at the expense of the unknowable, the unfathomable, the great unknown(s) ..........I wish the movie had more "unexplainable" to it....... But like I said somewhere (Best Director thread?) - the ending is I think possibly going to be what could win it BP - it's memorable to audiences in it's irony.....
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Jul 27, 2023 9:15:48 GMT
How/why would you have wanted those scenes rewritten? By this, do you mean that the movie is maybe too “precise” or “clean” in its portrayal of real life events in a way that doesn’t seem quite true to the messiness of real life? * I picked that scene in the opening because it ends with Murphy slapping it out of Branagah's hand - but dramatically shouldn't go that far ..............if you showed him merely changing his mind momentarily afterward - injectng it and then saying (not "literally" saying btw but thinking it, putting the apple into his pocket........ "I'm not a murderer using the tool of science.........No.....yet I might do it later" when he kind of is those things and has the capacity to murder..........it just plays better dramatically..........it's weirder.......odder.......more character and foreshadowing based........there's nothing wrong with the scene as is.....it just isn't distinct or odd and it could be ...........it's in how and what you convey to an audience and when and in what manner........a lot of those things are in the scene of course as is - but to me they're conveyed more clumsily dramatically in his storytelling........I'm sure others feel my way is more clumsy and unnecessary too..........ah well....... Okay, I see what you mean. I don’t know how the apple incident played out in irl, but that scene did seem to me like Nolan just needed an efficient way to get Murphy to interact with Branagh's character, so having that exchange overlap with him reconsidering the potential murder was a way to consolidate things narratively, resulting in one of those movie contrivances. Would you say that JFK is similar in the sense that it also feels burdened by conveying facts (or what Stone thinks are “facts”)?
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 27, 2023 10:10:48 GMT
Would you say that JFK is similar in the sense that it also feels burdened by conveying facts (or what Stone thinks are “facts”)? In that way - yes......the difference of course is JFK is (almost) solely about an event - or series of connected events - and not the man directly where Oppy has to ride dual narrative rails covering the man and also what he created and how................... so it can feel a bit clunkier where JFK for a while (at first) really zips by in a way Oppy can't.........I think Oppenheimer evokes some obvious parallel films in some way at least ( Schindler's List, Nixon, JFK) but also some other ones with less historical impact in how it is constructed. The Insider is one which also conveys a staggering amount of specific, scientific / factual details especially in its first 45 minutes+ .......and some movies like that........some "journalistic" movies........
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Post by Joaquim on Jul 28, 2023 18:22:32 GMT
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Post by countjohn on Jul 28, 2023 21:18:14 GMT
Would you say that JFK is similar in the sense that it also feels burdened by conveying facts (or what Stone thinks are “facts”)? I'm pretty sure Stone freed himself of that "burden" while he was making JFK
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Post by countjohn on Jul 28, 2023 21:21:23 GMT
The scene where it cuts to Pugh naked in his lap while he's getting dressed down by the board is a great moment and really conveys how exposed someone can feel when people are rummaging through your personal life. I can be somewhat uptight about nudity in movies and roll my eyes when I feel it's gratuitous but that wasn't the case there. Maybe for the first sex scene, but you could argue that even that sets up the moment later since the scene works better if we've actually seen them while they had sex.
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Post by finniussnrub on Jul 30, 2023 22:07:46 GMT
Re-watch: The first two hours are still riveting even on rewatch but having the known twist, the last hour dips a little but still holds pretty well considering how well it is edited. Also features his best character work since The Prestige- Dark Knight days. I reaffirm my earlier comment that this is top-tier Nolan indeed. The only nitpick on my 2nd viewing is, the scale of the bomb itself, somehow it felt small and lacks punch. The buildup to it was super intense and i liked the silence but i thought CGI would've produced better visuals? I support Nolan's interest in practical effects but sometimes he is too stubborn and unwelcoming of things he doesn't trust. In short the explosion should've been in CGI or at least enhanced by CGI. I think in a way the explosion might've "looked small" because most of us, if not all of us, have seen the far larger Hydrogen bomb tests.
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dazed
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Post by dazed on Jul 31, 2023 15:32:49 GMT
i loved this. the movie was technically beautiful as always with nolan but the fact that he made this as riveting as he did for the total three hour runtime is what impressed me the most even though i’m a sucker for this kind of subject material. the movie flew by. i’m so happy they decided to keen in on the political drama rather than focus on the physics behind the bomb. they touch on surface level quantum mechanics and discuss the physics throughout the movie, but it’s never a core focus. the focus is the issue of an amazing scientific discovery that ultimately/inevitably will be used for evil acts by corrupt people.
favorite scenes are the build up to the trinity test (thank you ludwig for being a huge part on keeping me on the edge of my seat for those 15 minutes) and the victory speech. another one is when they’re sitting in the office and discussing which cities to bomb, with the one official saying not kyoto since he loves to honeymoon there. so fucking harrowing and maybe the most harrowing scene in the entire movie. showing the governments inability to view those victims as people.
cillian murphy is so great in this, he’s the MVP for me. never overacts and embraces the subdued nature of the character. plays a man struggling with his own morality so well and he’s a big part why this movie works as well as it does. the supporting cast is all around really good too. little surprised by all the RDJ love. he’s really good and is given the most showy part in the supporting cast, but i don’t see it as some all time performance. i’m especially surprised by the amount of blunt raves. she had almost nothing to do until the last 15 minutes, and even then her ‘big scene’ didn’t really impress me all that much. it’s not like she was bad or anything, she just didn’t have much to do.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Jul 31, 2023 18:50:38 GMT
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sirchuck23
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Post by sirchuck23 on Aug 1, 2023 16:53:02 GMT
Saw the film. Christopher Nolan's Magnum Opus. Will go see again in IMAX.
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Post by michael128 on Aug 8, 2023 0:26:52 GMT
Re-watch: The first two hours are still riveting even on rewatch but having the known twist, the last hour dips a little but still holds pretty well considering how well it is edited. Also features his best character work since The Prestige- Dark Knight days. I reaffirm my earlier comment that this is top-tier Nolan indeed. The only nitpick on my 2nd viewing is, the scale of the bomb itself, somehow it felt small and lacks punch. The buildup to it was super intense and i liked the silence but i thought CGI would've produced better visuals? I support Nolan's interest in practical effects but sometimes he is too stubborn and unwelcoming of things he doesn't trust. In short the explosion should've been in CGI or at least enhanced by CGI. What twist?
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Aug 8, 2023 0:45:14 GMT
Re-watch: The first two hours are still riveting even on rewatch but having the known twist, the last hour dips a little but still holds pretty well considering how well it is edited. Also features his best character work since The Prestige- Dark Knight days. I reaffirm my earlier comment that this is top-tier Nolan indeed. The only nitpick on my 2nd viewing is, the scale of the bomb itself, somehow it felt small and lacks punch. The buildup to it was super intense and i liked the silence but i thought CGI would've produced better visuals? I support Nolan's interest in practical effects but sometimes he is too stubborn and unwelcoming of things he doesn't trust. In short the explosion should've been in CGI or at least enhanced by CGI. What twist? I'm guessing the fact that Strauss (not Borden) is revealed to be the one pulling the strings behind the smear campaign against Oppenheimer... maybe also the reveal about the conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein in the last scene.
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tep
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Post by tep on Aug 18, 2023 11:51:41 GMT
Finally saw it, thought it was pretty fantastic. A few moments of tedium, but so many really incredible moments. The more I think about it, the more I like it. 9/10
I would probably put this slightly above Dunkirk as my new favorite Nolan. Ranking -
1. Oppenheimer 2. Dunkirk 3. The Dark Knight 4. Memento 5. Insomnia 6. The Prestige 7. Batman Begins 8. The Dark Knight Rises 9. Tenet 10. Interstellar 11. Inception
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Aug 19, 2023 7:16:41 GMT
Went to see this for a second time today... damn, those 3 hours really fly by. Just relentlessly paced. Always fun noticing details I miss on initial viewing, like the image of the raindrops on the water from the beginning returning briefly in the final scene with Einstein – symbolizing of course the ripple effect of what he’s created and its consequences. Also, in the gym scene where the sound cuts out, the way the sound of the audience clapping/cheering returns and hits you like the delayed sound of the bomb’s explosion in the test sequence... like the delayed “shockwave” of moral reckoning and the consequences of your actions hitting you too late. Underrated moment: when Einstein basically tells Oppenheimer maybe he should turn his back on America because it’s been shitty to him, he shows up wearing this baggy gray sweatshirt that looks like he just boredly wandered over to his neighbor’s house after watching Sunday Night Football and pounding some Bud Lights.
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Film Socialism
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Post by Film Socialism on Aug 20, 2023 17:37:02 GMT
aint no god damn way people are saying this is his best lmao. surprisingly good in how it handles the prickly politics of oppenheimer's life, surprisingly awful in how it handles literally everything else - nolan is a fine craftsmen, what the fuck went wrong here??
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Aug 21, 2023 6:46:42 GMT
How/why would you have wanted those scenes rewritten? * I picked that scene in the opening because it ends with Murphy slapping it out of Branagah's hand - but dramatically shouldn't go that far ..............if you showed him merely changing his mind momentarily afterward - injectng it and then saying (not "literally" saying btw but thinking it, putting the apple into his pocket........ "I'm not a murderer using the tool of science.........No.....yet I might do it later" when he kind of is those things and has the capacity to murder..........it just plays better dramatically..........it's weirder.......odder.......more character and foreshadowing based........there's nothing wrong with the scene as is.....it just isn't distinct or odd and it could be ...........it's in how and what you convey to an audience and when and in what manner........a lot of those things are in the scene of course as is - but to me they're conveyed more clumsily dramatically in his storytelling........I'm sure others feel my way is more clumsy and unnecessary too..........ah well....... * The end scene is Nolan insisting on putting a bow on his film in a way that's not my thing and is imo again too clean.........it would be so much better to me if we don't know what is said........or what is said is not so precisely on-point.......it's shoe-horning a dramatic turn at the expense of the unknowable, the unfathomable, the great unknown(s) ..........I wish the movie had more "unexplainable" to it....... But like I said somewhere (Best Director thread?) - the ending is I think possibly going to be what could win it BP - it's memorable to audiences in it's irony..... After seeing the film a second time and reconsidering the apple scene again, I think it works fine as is, mostly because a lot of the things you mention are already in the scene (as you said), but I can understand wanting the moment to be more contemplative in nature, which is what I think you were getting at... the scene does sort of just fly by when it could have sat with the situation a bit longer to allow for more overt self-reflection on Oppenheimer’s part. I don’t mind the Branagh moment though, mostly because I wouldn’t want to deny Nolan his “wormhole” joke... As for the end scene, I actually think it would have been an artificial omission if we don't know what is said since the movie overall is aiming to depict events from Oppenheimer’s POV. Because the film is set up that way from the start, we’re pretty much expecting to be shown that final exchange at some point... but if you would have preferred certain things like that to remain “unknowable” then I suppose you could argue that Nolan sort of boxed himself in by insisting on making the film about Oppenheimer’s “subjective” experience. The way the dialogue at the end is perhaps too precisely on-point (as you put it) to me makes it feel more like the ending of a novel than a movie... very “literary” in kind of an old-fashioned way.
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