I like happy endings. I don't know why this needs an explanation. To me, it's akin to liking oxygen or chocolate. But then I sit down and watch Great Expectations (the old BBC version) and am forcibly reminded of why I hated the book in high school. As the camera pulls away from the closing shot of Pip and Estella playing cards because their circumstances prevent them from the kiss they would both prefer, I gnash my teeth at having spent several hours of my life watching them come to this impasse. (What did I expect? I'd read the book...)
Last year, I saw Take Shelter, in which Michael Shannon spends two and a half hours trying to decide whether or not he's losing his mind. We still don't know. I had to grip the arm of my seat to keep from running out of the theatre.
I am aware that not all outcomes are good, that shit happens, that the agony of defeat is a more common experience than the thrill of victory. I get it. I just don't want to watch movies about it. I'm a firm believer in round stories, ones that tie up the plot's loose ends and put the hero to bed with his beloved at story's end, wedding rings on both their hands, smiles on both their faces.
There's a whole raft of difficult-but-uplifting movies in which the hero dies for a good cause, the protagonist goes to jail for his reprehensible behavior or a lover's moral slip dooms a promising romance. Lessons are learned, tears are shed. If these are your favorite movies, I admire you.
But I like happy endings.
I suppose the argument against them is Realism. That Seabiscuit doesn't always win the Santa Anita, that David doesn't always slay Goliath, that the U.S. Olympic hockey team can't always be counted on to beat the Russians.
But they DID. So that's realism, if realism is defined as "this really happened." Some define it, instead, as "something that feels gritty and hopeless, or pointless and boring," because so much of life genuinely feels like that. Of course the great bulk of daily occurrences are not stunning victories.
But, for the stories that are not over yet, for the races still being run, the stories in the process of being written...for the sake of my life in progress, I get to choose which books I read, which disc I stick in the DVD player, which outcomes I watch. I get to cast a deciding vote in the outcome of my own life's story. Happy endings better prepare me for a happy ending of my own, give me courage and inspiration for my particular battle of the day. And I need all I can get.
Here's to happy endings.