Anyways, for today, I thought I'd touch on something that I call "unendable movies." What are they, you ask? Well, put it this way. Have you ever watched a movie that probably wasn't the greatest movie in the world, but you just didn't want to see it end no matter how good the ending is? Did you wish that the movie could keep going on and on, because you love the characters so much?
That's what I call an "unendable" movie. And for this entry, I'm going to list a few of my favorite unendable movies, in no particular order. Today, I'll touch on 2 of them. In the next entries, I will touch on the other unendable movies on my list, 2 movies at a time.
Here we go...
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1. Good Bye Lenin!
Above: Lenin greets an incredulous Christiane in Good Bye Lenin!.Ariane: You were in a coma. Eight months ago.
Christiane: Eight months? What happened?
Ariane: Yeah, it was...
Alex: It was in October, in the supermarket. There was this enormous queue and it was really hot and you just passed out.
Christiane: In October?
Alexander: It was a really hot October. At the time.
This gem isn't very well known to most people but for those who are interested in foreign films, this is a treat. The plotline involves East Berlin during the tail end of the Cold War. The main character is Alex and his mother Christiane is a devoted communist. Political backlash is at an all-time high, and Alex finds himself mixed in with the protests calling for an end to communist rule. One day, Christiane spots him among the crowd of protesters and faints from shock.
She slips into a coma and in the meantime, communism collapses in East Germany and the Berlin Wall falls. When she wakes up, the doctors warn Alex and his sister Ariane that Christiane is still extremely fragile and any shock could potentially kill her. Fearing for his mother's health, Alex develops quite an elaborate scheme to hide the fall of communism from her, including making fake newscasts showing that East Germany is still alive and well, and acquiring his mother's favorite East German pickle brand (which is actually regular pickles in a jar with the East German brand's label stuck on it).
The rouses get more and more elaborate and ridiculous as the movie goes along as Alex finds new ways to "explain" some of the slip-ups which occur. (One of the more memorable rouses is when a large Coca-Cola banner is unfurled outside the window; Alex quickly makes a fake newscast reporting that Coca-Cola is discovered to be an East German brand after all, not an American one.)
The continued escalation in desperate attempts to keep East Germany "alive" makes me wish the movie would keep on going forever, because each attempt is better than the previous, while simultaneously putting a human face on this aspect of the Cold War. The ending is quite fitting and well done, but it's an ending that you wish would come later than sooner.
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2. The Parent Trap (1998 version)
Above: Lindsay Lohan as both of the twins, the late Natasha Richardson as the mother and Dennis Quaid as the father in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap.
Annie: That's the lunch bell.
Hallie: [as she wipes away her tears] I'm not so hungry anymore. So if your Mom is my Mom and my Dad is your Dad... and we're both born on October 11th, then you and I are... like... sisters.
Annie: Sisters? Hallie, we're like twins!
Hallie: Oh my god!
Annie: Oh my god!
[they hug]
Before Lindsay Lohan's life started spiralling out of control with the tabloid reporters at full attention, she was quite a talented young actress whose debut performance put an exclamation mark on what could've otherwise been an average screenplay.
In the 1998 remake of the original Parent Trap movie, she takes what seem like skeletal dialogues for the characters of Annie James and Hallie Parker and adds meat and emotion to them. Like most people, I want to pull for Hallie and Annie in their ultimate goal of reuniting their parents, but at the same time I do not want to see the movie come to a conclusion because the acting makes me feel like I actually know the twins in real life. It's not often that this effect can be achieved, but it succeeds here.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, here it is. Annie and Hallie are twins whose parents divorced when they were babies. Annie went with her mother to London and Hallie went with her father to the Wine Country in California, with neither of the twins informed of the existence of other. In a freak coincidence, they meet each other at summer camp in Maine, where they are antagonists despite their physical resemblance.
They go after each other enough to warrant a "time out" in a cabin isolated from the other campers, where they eventually discover their identities as twins. In an attempt to get to know their parents better and to reunite them, they devise a plan to switch places after camp -- sooner or later, the parents will need to switch them back again and consequently be forced to meet each other again, face to face. Things are complicated when it is revealed that the father has met a rather cruel girlfriend and plans to marry her.
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That's what I have for the first two titles on my unendable movies list. The list will be continued next time, with 2 more on the way.
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