I really felt let down by this movie. The characters on the whole were pretty horrible people who I continually felt like slapping (especially horrid Brenda). I at least expected some kind of resolution at the end. But that was not to be. What a weird ending! I know this is from a book, I guess generally I just disliked this story, rather than the movie itself. Are we meant to assume that Tony dies in Brazil years later with no one ever knowing he initially survived?
shareIt's a bit depressing - I had most sympathy for Tony. He's this simple naive character who gets the hard knocks in the story. While he thinks all is well, his wife has an affair, then his son dies, then he finds out his wife is having an affair... then when he goes to Brazil, he naively falls into the trap of the freak, only to have to read Dickens for every remaining day of his life (with everyone else assuming he is dead)... maybe not a bit depressing... VERY DEPRESSING!!! :p
shareThis film is based on a the book of the same name, by Evelyn Waugh. While the main ending is certainly very depressing (as befits what is essentially a study of cruelty in all its forms, intentional and casual) there is an alternative ending in the book. I urge you to read the book and find out what it is.
shareAwwwwwwww .... pleeeeeease tell me what happens in the alternative ending Philiphewlett ... I can't get the book in the country where I live!!
shareNo.
shareWell, thank you Philip! Anyone else?
shareOh, Ok then! Send me an email and I'll let you know. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else!
share"After the Lasts' son, also called John, is killed in a riding accident Brenda decides that she wants a divorce. In order to avoid any scandal for his wife, Tony agrees to go through the sham of creating appropriate grounds for divorce. Their agreement on the divorce falls apart when Brenda requests that Tony sell Hetton, and the divorce is postponed. Instead, he participates in an expedition to Brazil. Everyone on the expedition is killed, except Tony, who stumbles into an isolated tribal village. Once there, he is held hostage by Mr Todd, who insists that Tony remain forever, reading him the works of Charles Dickens. The novel ends with obscure relatives of Tony taking over Hetton.
In a different ending for the novel, required for an American audience who did not approve of the bleakness of the original, Tony returns from Brazil and returns to his relationship with Brenda."
Interested to find out what the alternate ending was, I came across this. So, to the person who first inquired as to how it ends - it seems the film was accurate. I don't know whather Philiphewlett is American or not, but I assume he is aware of the American "happy" ending rather than the original, which I assume the film is based on. :)
I am English, and the edition of the book I read contained both versions.
shareGreat.
shareThere was only the black ending in Czech translation (cca 1935) The novell is really depressing, but I read, that Tony (LAST!) is a symbol of the old, disapearing England, which Waugh, an ultra-conservative, loved. Compare with Brideshead Revisited. He hated the new world, and surely he suffered during the writing. MAybe it was a therapy for him.
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I very much prefer the alternative ending...wish they did that for this film. It was too depressing for me to think the good guy in the movie gets to finish his life alone and forgotten in the jungles of Guyana.
The movie was superb though...it was the story i hated...too depressing for me.
Thank you for sharing the alternative ending.
In a different ending for the novel, required for an American audience who did not approve of the bleakness of the original, Tony returns from Brazil and returns to his relationship with Brenda.
Wikipedia has since altered this part of the plot synopsis because apparently it was not true. It now states:
Waugh used as the second-last chapter of the novel a slightly adapted version of a pre-existing short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens". When the novel was serialized in the American magazine Harper's Bazaar, Waugh had to supply a new ending because the short story, which had been published in the US earlier, could not for copyright reasons appear in the magazine. In the alternative ending, included as an appendix in some editions of the book, Tony returns from Brazil and to his relationship with Brenda.share
I don't require a happy ending but I don't really care for movies where every character is unlikable. Who cares about people like this? I don't, no matter how good the acting is.
Tony is far from perfect, but I found him to be very likeable eventually. In fact, THIS is what made the ending most depressing for me.
Oh heartbreak and despair got nothing but boring
So I grabbed you baby like a wild pitch
Canada
I just watched this a couple of weeks after borrowing it from a local library, and I agree with you. I consider KST normally reliable in terms of her roles, but this was a real disappointment. My main problem with her character was that Brenda was not likeable and I still wonder what made her fall for the worthless John Beaver. The only character I liked was Tony Last and look what happened to him. From another post, there was an alternate, happier ending for him, but I don't buy that he would have gone back to England to be with Brenda again-not after she betrayed him with Beaver. And I wanted to slug Stephen Fry's character after the things he said in the restaurant.
I think that you're meant to have that response. This is a film about unlikeably people being thoughtlessly cruel to each other.
The Stephen Fry character (couldn't figure out who he was - lawyer? family?) was meant to be slappable.
The only thing I disliked about this film was Beaver who so lakced any charisma or anything that it was hard to see why she ever fell for him.
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I believe the Stephen Fry character was Brenda's brother.
share@maytloo: "My main problem with her character was that Brenda was not likeable and I still wonder what made her fall for the worthless John Beaver"
the only thing I can think of is that he was played by the adorable Rupert Graves, and therefore she fell for his gorgeousness! (Slightly) kidding, of course!
But really, almost everyone in this movie was a horrible person, except for poor Tony, and maybe his friend Jock. John Beaver was a money grubbing social climber, his "mumsie" was even worse, shoving her son into the London social scene (even though Judi Dench is brilliant in everything she does). Brenda pretty much got what she deserved.
And what was up with Anjelica Huston's character? I just didn't get her. She was a very strange, cold person. Was she kidding about her sons being away at school 'somewhere'? Was she being facetious, or did she really not know where they were?
Anyway, I got this movie so I could watch Rupert (really, he's one of my favorites, and I love everything he's in), and I thought it was well done, but hella depressing.
Brenda was unsatisfied stuck out in the country, lady of the manor who opens the village fete. Beaver represented the thrill of living in London.
shareIs this a tragedy or a satire/comedy? The movie and the original story had that problem in clearly going one way or the other.
The sad ending in the jungle feels tacked on and it comes from a separate short story "The Man Who Liked Dickens". Because of copyright reasons a new ending was done where Tony Last is able to return from Brazil to England.
There would have been many comic possibilities if that happier ending had been used for the film which I would've preferred.
BB ;-)
it's just in my opinion - imo -
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Is this a tragedy or a satire/comedy? The movie and the original story had that problem in clearly going one way or the other.
I'd think a big big tragedy. Let's see there's an unfaithful wife, a sad marriage in a large cold house devoid of any love, an abandoned and dead child and parasites like Beaver and his mother (maybe"civilized" savages?). Not a 'feel-good' film for sure. But it's one of the best to see moral bankruptcy in action in our modern world.
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