The 2003 movie with a “perfect ending”, according to Quentin Tarantino: “It was a genius scene”
Like every other year, 2003 saw the release of many movies with memorable endings in one way or another, but under absolutely no circumstances would most people even think about mentioning the one that Quentin Tarantino called perfect.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King had about 30 of the fuckers, but it was still the perfect way to bid farewell to Peter Jackson’s monumental trilogy, even if those finales became so frequent that Jack Nicholson decided he’d seen enough, got up, and left before the credits had even started rolling.
The one-take hallway fight might be the most famous scene from Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, but the harrowing third-act revelation and Oh Dae-su’s response were the cinematic equivalent of a punch to the gut. And, you can’t talk about 2003’s filmic finales without mentioning the mystery of what Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett Johansson in the closing moments of Lost in Translation.
Tarantino’s own Kill Bill: Volume 1 ends on the bombshell that The Bride’s daughter is still alive, Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder closes with a devastating stare directly into the camera, and Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River wraps up with the tragic realisation that a case of mistaken identity led to the murder of an innocent man, but none of those compare to the real granddaddy of go-home scenes.
The Academy Award-winning screenwriter has plenty of opinions that don’t toe the party line when it comes to the good, the bad, and the ugly of cinema, and his unyielding admiration for Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan’s climactic return to their original bodies in the Freaky Friday remake is right up there.
Look, it was a hit, and it was warmly embraced by critics and audiences, but how many people have seen the movie and thought to themselves, ‘Wow, that is one of the most perfect endings in cinema history?’ At least one, and for whatever reason, that person also happens to be Quentin Tarantino.
“One time, I got cornered at a party by Quentin Tarantino, who outlined in great detail, shot-by-shot, that sequence of the House of Blues to me,” Freaky Friday director Mark Waters revealed. “He was outlining why it was a genius scene and a perfect ending for the movie, and I was like, ‘This cool, man. Quentin Tarantino was, like, fan-geeking me.'”
Tarantino having seen and enjoyed Freaky Friday isn’t that surprising, since he’s spent the last three and a half decades outlining that there’s very little he won’t get around to watching at one stage or another, but “perfect” is an awfully big word to use in conjunction with any film, especially the remake of a frivolous Disney family comedy.
Obviously, opinions are like arseholes, and everybody has them, but it wasn’t even close to the best ending of 2003, so calling it the epitome of perfection seems like a bit much. Then again, Tarantino loves few things more than hyperbole, so it’s in keeping with his reputation, at least.
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