Spoiler alert: this article features the endings of several movies you may not have seen, but should.<\/p>\n
At a time when social media is doomier and gloomier than ever, on the darkest of January days, a little light came from the unlikiest of sources.<\/p>\n
It transpires that the cast and crew of hot Oscar ticket Hamnet, currently in cinemas and a firm contender for the saddest movie ever made, decided to celebrate the end of an emotionally gruelling shoot with a Shakespearean rave, soundtracked by Calvin Harris and led by stars Jessie Buckey and Paul Mescal.<\/p>\n
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Hamnet is steeped in grief, loss, and historical weight, yet the sight of its cast dancing doesn’t lessen the movie’s tragedy. Instead, it deepens it. Somehow the dance acknowledges sorrow while refusing to let it have the final word. It’s a moment of something resembling pure joy – something in short supply these days – while providing a rather unlikely alternative ending to boot (we should probably stress that it’s an outtake, and not part of the actual movie).<\/p>\n
It also reminded us how much we love movies that end with a big dance number, the more incongruous the better – Noah Bambauch’s White Noise was a slog for many, for example, but the closing credits offered a magnificent supermarket dance-off scored to the sounds of LCD Soundsystem<\/p>\n
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Since the dawn of movies, dance has offered the purest cinematic expression of joy, release, and community – something that words and plot often struggle to deliver on their own.<\/p>\n
Bollywood movies might be an aquired taste, for example, but give the gonzo Indian period epic RRR a go sometime; its mix of adrenaline-pumping action and dance sequences defy descrpition.<\/p>\n
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We don’t just understand good stories; we feel them, and nothing evokes feeling quite like movement set to music. After two hours of watching characters suffer, struggle, or transform, a dance lets actors step up.<\/p>\n
It’s a collective exhale, a cinematic curtain call that doesn’t just thank us for watching, but celebrates life itself. Case in point, the ending of 2020 Oscar winner Another Round…<\/p>\n
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Think of it as a cinematic curtain call that doesn\u2019t just thank us for watching, but celebrates survival. You don’t need to “get” it intellectually to be moved by it. Rhythm bypasses analysis and goes straight to the nervous system, after all.<\/p>\n
To paraphrase Rhianna, who gave Hamnet its groove back, shut up and dance.<\/p>\n
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In our fragmented, anxious world, a shared final movie bop is a radical act of connection. And that’s why every movie should offer that gift: not just an ending, but a release.<\/p>\n
Oh all right, maybe not every movie.<\/p>\n
But from the dance of death in Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal to the balletic ode to self-acceptance in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, after the credits roll and the lights come up, what we take with us is the feeling that for a moment, in the dark, we were held together by the same song.<\/p>\n
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