And so the Sopranos ended last night with a whimper, not a bang.
And it was fantastic. Literally — including a perfectly believable report by one of the nastier comic relief characters, Paulie Walnuts, that one night when he was wandering alone he saw the Virgin Mary at the Bada-Bing strip club.
Love it!
So here’s my 2 cents on the ending, which I also LOVED.
The wisdom of it was the “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” paradox. And the point, as I see it, is that both possibilities are parallel — killed, not killed — and equally likely.
Ending the way it did the emphasis was on the tension of this sort of life, the precariousness of being a mobster. And then, after a step back, the precariousness of life for everyone. Death stalks us all, no?
Still, I find it hard to resist the temptation of filling in the blank — however irrelevant to the sophistication of the open-ended ending. And in my mind, I see the abrupt cut-to-blackness ending, and the holding on that blackness for about 12 seconds — that whole sense, reportedly shared by many viewers, that one’s cable had been cut off at the penultimate moment — to be a very legitimate portrayal of a bullet entering Tony’s brain and shutting down the nervous system even before he felt the pain, sort of like that lag when you burn your finger on the stove.
Okay, favorite moment for me, as noted, was the appearance of the Virgin Mary at the Bada-Bing. After that this bit of dialog between Tony and his daughter who is explaining why she wants to be a civil rights attorney. ““The state can crush the individual.” says the beauteous Meadow. “New Jersey?” replies Tony in astonishment.
Love the Phil Leotardo murder, which if you think of it, was a stand in for Tony’s death, the opera buffa version. Just like the erasure of Uncle June’s Alzheimer-afflicted memory was a nice way of setting the tone, that all this killing and fucking and plotting comes to nothing.
Nice, but always a hard sell in films as well crafted as this. As a case in point, I kept drooling over the brief flash of the iPod car radio that AJ had in his BMW and thought how much better my life would be if I had one.
Materialism forever! Free Paris Hilton!
Okay Nightcharmers, give us your read on the Sopranos finale.
It was the perfect ending leaving a gnawing ach in the pit of the stomach and in the viewers collective psyche.
The tension was so thick in that final diner scene that I realized, guiltily, that I did actually care about these monsters (did I just misspell ‘mobsters’, or didn’t I?). And I was chuckling all day about Phil Leotardo’s twin grandkids rocking obliviously in their car seats as the Expedition’s back tire rolled up-and-over grandpa’s skull. Bravo to David Chase and HBO for delivering an ending that no one saw coming.
Well I liked it.
The Sopranos was not a narrative. It was a bravely amoral character study in soap opera format, which is why it was so compelling for so long. Within that format, there were story arcs, but the idiotic public fixation on whackings is not what the show was about.
Altho I too thought my TV was busted @ the end, I found it totally in keeping with the tone of the series. If people want plots with resolutions there is the Jerry Bruckheimer ouver, which I enjoy too. I really don’t care what happens to any of the Sopranos next, & I pray it doesn’t become a movie.
There were many fave moments. AJ quoting Yeats & joing the Army for 1. Janice period! Meanwhile, the blogosphere is enraged: Not enough whackings! I guess the should go see Hostel 2.
The 12 second black screen was right up there with the last 15 minutes of Six Feet Under.
Have never watched the show in my life, and I feel wiser and more beautiful because of it.
David K.
Publisher
Oh, David K., I thought I was alone in the universe in that position. Once again, Night Charm provides admirable company.
LAO
David, that smacks of reverse elitism. You sound like Penticostal Christians who object to Darwin but have never read him. Know whereof you speak before you judge.
Well, either Tony got whacked or didn’t, but one thing for sure, the viewer got whacked. Shades of Pirandello and the theater of Richard Foreman! Not to mention the Greeks, when after a long night of a comedy, a tragedy and and a satyr play (from whence satire), the audience was deliberately primed to want to fuck.
David chase got stugats.