The Happy Ending

There's so many wonderful reasons to make movies. To tell stories, to share experiences, to spread messages and ideas, even to entertain. The movies are something tangible in our world, they deal with emotions but they put them up on the screen, disassociated from ourselves, to be analyzed. In there, we are to find ourselves, hidden in the characters, and look at and realize our own flaws in them. The movies are about the characters as much as they are about the audience; it's our life experience, our knowledge that fuels the emotions on screen. If we didn't know their pain, if we didn't emphasize with it, then the movies wouldn't affect us at all; but they do. They stir us up inside, make us feel things that we try to avoid in the real world.

I make movies for control. Our real world seems so haphazard, so random, so inconceivable; the world of movies is a world of scripts and planning. The emotions, the relations on screen, it's all preconceived and preplanned; a smile here, a clever remark. But life isn't like that; life involves risk, chance, uncertainty. A character takes no chances; he is merely on a path that has the illusion of giving him free choice. But his life is decided before the movie ever starts to play.

In less philosophical terms, the real world is full of injustice. Good people face ruin. Evil people thrive or escape repercussions for their actions. In movies, evil is often vanquished and good triumphs; we like to think it applies in the real world but this isn't always true. We live our lives in a horrible dream and seek out movies as our escape from them; we hope and wish the reality of the movies could be the reality we live.

Even the objective idea of good and evil is blurred in our real world. In movies, evil is highlighted; we're shown why to hate the antagonist in a film. But the real world is fuzzy. Good can appear evil. Evil can appear good. We have to decide what evil is, what good is; unlike in the movies, it's not defined for us.

I make movies because I want to live in that dream. I want to live in that perfect, just world where the angles are predefined; the evil are punished and the good truly flourish. The world where everything works as intended. Where every path is set and meant for you; instead of our world where we stumble and bumble around unsure which path to take, not knowing where happiness lies.

I make movies because I wish every time I walked down the street or drove in my car, it would be perfectly set to score or soundtrack in a way the evokes the emotion appropriate for the moment.

There's no question movies have twists and turns, that's what makes them exciting to watch; but it's also the inevitability of a happy ending that is appealing and that most movies deliver upon. We want that happy ending because so much of our life doesn't end happily or the way we planned. We want to think life works out, wraps up perfectly with a bow, just like the movies; but it doesn't.

I make movies because I wish my life was as simple and predefined as a movie; and that whatever the obstacles I face, in the end, I will have done it right and got my happy ending.

I make movies to make that idea feel like a possible reality; in our harsh, real world.

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