Ending sequence structure in Modern cinema

No matter on what narratology they are based, movies of the modern cinema will eventually reach an ending point. There might remain, however, a lot of questions unanswered in the audience mind. Unlike the classical era, modern directors were not required to observe a set of strict rules and regulations to finish their movies. Consequently, there can be seen in the current era various closing scenes in terms of narratology and découpage settings. In contrast to the classical cinema, the modern version of movies never followed a specific formula for closure. We may suggest, however, to a few innovative models for ending sequences derived from the works of famous directors in the current era. Ending plan in modern cinema was influenced by movie content. Directors of this era address different themes about human inner worlds and interpersonal relationships. The modern cinema often intended to challenge the audience in the ending of movies through ambiguity, suspense and other similar techniques, which later turned out to the most fascinating moments of such works. The decoupage structure of the ending sequence of modern movies attempts to bring about a kind of preawareness of the end of the movie in the audience’s mind with the aid of bracketing and ending codes. Bracketing serves to maintain the cyclic uniformity of the movie narration through the repetition of scenes from the opening sequence of the movie or using acoustic techniques, and sets the beginning and the end of the movie within one framework. The ending codes in the final plan of such works indicate the ending point of the movie in a way, and they announce the end of the movie using decoupage and camera motions. From a narrative viewpoint, modern movies with open ending in movie closure leave some questions, which are posed in the audience’s mind during narration, unanswered in order to encourage them to get mentally entangled with the work and to ponder over it. A number of the directors of the modern cinema prefer to give a close ending to the narration of their works similar to the classical cinema; however, most of them select open ending as the narrative pattern of their works. Open ending adds to the ambiguity of these works in the ending sequence, by means of providing no answer to the cause and effect relationships, created during narration. By creating contradictions in time, place and narration, the ambiguity strategy in the ending sequence leads to the emergence of a challenge inducing a state of undecidedness in the audience’s mind which eventually results in a sense of uncertainty at the end of these works. This state of affairs makes any interpretation and definite conclusion difficult and at times impossible.