Yes, Hollywood puts too much sex and profanity in movies, and yes much of Hollywood pushes an anti-God agenda, laden with gender dysphoria paraded as progressiveness. Still, there is something more pervasive and potentially more destructive in movies in Hollywood that’s wrong and no one is talking about – ambiguous movie endings.
I watched the movie, The Order, the other night. It was based on a true story and offered some insight on why people become White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis. Overall, I would give the movie 3 stars out of 5. However, in the last scene of the movie (spoiler alert) the protagonist (played by Jude Law) takes aim with a rifle at an elk in the wild. Before you know whether he is going to pull the trigger, the movie ends.
The meaning was not clear. At first I thought I must be missing the message, so I asked ChatGPT. It confirmed what I suspected: the ending used symbol and metaphor to be intentionally ambiguous so viewers could indulge in multiple and somethings wrong interpretations and determine what it meant to them.
In other words, the last scene was a piece of abstract storytelling art intended to allow the viewer to bring his or her own subjective meaning to the movie. The Order is by no means a one-off. The symbol-laden, ambiguous ending has become the norm in modern filmmaking in Hollywood. It is considered artsy and progressive.
There are two problems with this. First, if the filmmaker does not know what he is trying to say in the movie, why should I waste my time watching it? If movies are a medium for message then the message should be clear.
The second problem is that the ambiguity is a sub-message. The symbol-laden, ambiguous ending suggests reality is subjective what we make of it, which is nothing but a recycled version of existentialism, a false view of reality.
Would the makers of The Order say I was entitled to conclude from its ambiguous ending that the message of the movie is that we should embrace White Nationalism and Neo-Naziism because force always prevails over freedom? I doubt it, and that means they don’t even believe the message they are peddling by the film’s ambiguous ending.
When we look to God, the source of all creativity, we find metaphors and symbolism used as devices to bring clarity to a message, not to cede determination of its meaning to the listener.
When Jesus said He was the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, He would have immediately evoked the image of the sacrificial lamb so prominent in Jewish religious ritual.
When Jesus told the Parable of the Talents He didn’t leave His audience wondering what happened when the master returned to seek an accounting from His three money-managers. See Matthew 25:15-30. When Jesus told the Parable of Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son, there was nothing ambiguous or confusing about how they ended or what they meant.
Even when Jesus tells His disciples that He was using parables so the religious leaders in hearing would not hear, the problem was not in the clarity of the message but in the religious leaders’ hardened hearts. See Isaiah 6:9-10:
He said, “Go and tell this people: “‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
Messages are by definition meant to be understood, but that Hollywood filmmakers opt for ambiguous endings does not mean they are all existentialists. Many are practical relativists, and others are just following the herd.
Regardless of their motivation, the ambiguous ending suggests a view of reality that is demonstrably false. This is what is wrong with Hollywood that Nobody Talks About, and We needn’t play along. We should call a spade a spade and demand better. GS
