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In storytelling, whether that be in prose or cinema, one of the trickiest and yet most vital elements of the structure is the denouement. It is the part of the story where the plot, the character development, and the crisis have all passed and all that remains is the ‘wrapping up’, a little emotional palate cleanser that leaves the audience or reader on the final emotional notes that bring resolution to the tale’s symphony.
The denouement can be exceedingly brief, such as in the film The Maltese Falcon. Once the police arrive at Sam’s apartment and he turns his partner’s killer over to them the story is all but over, but that would be a very unsatisfying end. Instead, we get two more beats. One detective, hefting the fake falcon, asks Sam what it is and his reply is cinematic legend, ‘The stuff that dreams are made of.’ That single line serves as the audience’s sole peer into Sam’s inner life, the only hint to how he really felt. The second beat is as Sam and the police walk out of the apartment and take the stairs down while the killer rides the caged elevator down on their symbolic descent into hell. These two beats provide the emotional closure that the mystery demanded, Sam’s melancholic mood along with the justice that has been served.
Merchant Ivory’s The Remains of the Day also has a bittersweet denouement to its tale of misguided service and repressed romance. Mr. Stevens returns empty-handed from his trip to the west country where he had hoped to reengage the services of Ms. Kenton, the woman he loved but never could face that truth himself, and resumes his quiet life as butler for his new employer, a retired American congressman. His life is winding down, the years ahead are growing shorter, and while he has come to some realizations about the nature of the man of peerage he had served, it is far too late for the character growth that Stevens himself requires. A bird trapped that they free from his new employer’s grand house serves both as a metaphor for letting go of the past, the film’s final emotional beat and bringing the film full circle by allowing a swooping camera move away from the estate mirror imaging the camera move the swooped into the mansion at the film’s opening, creating both an emotional and a visual denouement.
A denouement does not need to be quiet or nostalgic. In Star Wars, the story has ended with the surviving rebel fighters speeding away from the exploding Death Star and the ghost voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke that the Force will be with him, always, but the film gives us one more beat: the medal ceremony.
In a grand hall housed in an ancient structure, the entire rebel force has assembled to witness Princess Leia bestowing on Han and Luke medals for their gallant service. The droids are presented shiny and repaired, Chewie roars in triumph and the movie closes with a rousing militaristic march to seal the audience’s emotional state.
A missing or flubbed denouement can harm an otherwise fine production. The SF/Fantasy novel 1633, a sequel to 1632, ended so abruptly that reading it on an e-reader, I kept trying to turn the page when no more pages remained. Lacking any closure, the book felt unfinished. I never read any further into the series. David Gerrold’s A Season For Slaughter, the fourth novel in his ecological alien invasion series ended on a cliffhanger which dictated that the novel could have no denouement. A cliffhanger that remains unresolved from the book publication way back in 1993.
John Landis’ horror/comedy An American Werewolf in London, which along with The Howling, created the current interpretation of man-to-wolf transformation, ends without any denouement. The beast is killed by London’s SWAT, the man’s body is revealed and his love, Alexandra Price, cries, the screen slams to black and a doo-wop version of Blue Moon plays over the credits. This movie needed one more beat, a single scene showing the lives changed by the fantastic events.
A film can have too many denouements as well as lacking one. Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Return of the King has often been critiqued for having too many endings, but the film has only one ending: the quest to destroy the ring is concluded with the ring of power’s tumble into lava. What this film has is too many denouements. Frodo and Sam are rescued, the Fellowship is reunited, Aragorn is crowned King, the Hobbits return home changed by their experiences, and finally Frodo sails off with the last of the elves to the undying lands. That’s five denouements for a film that already tested it audiences with an extensive running time. While a novel, particularly a long one, can take time with the denouement, film is a swifter medium and demands a swifter conclusion, including its denouement.
When crafting a tale, whether in prose, poetry, song, or film, give serious thought to not only the nature of the ending but of the denouement and the final emotional note that you leave on.
