About Closure and Eastern Promises
Post 777:
Throughout my many stints in institutions hither and yon, I’ve had the pleasure of learning a lot about closure. Does that sound like fun? Trust me, it was. Let’s do a definition of closure before proceeding. According to the internets, closure is something like the yearning for an unequivocal answer to a persistent question coupled with and perhaps even a corollary to built-in tendencies toward emotional rejection of ambiguity. Put more simply, people like it when shiz gets wrapped up.
Not to brag, but I cobbled together that definition from medical journals, psychological studies, and the mother of all scientific sources, Wikipedia. Henceforth it’ll probably be the gold standard of closure definitions, but that remains to be seen… Ah. A moment for irony.
Where might I be going with all this? Where I usually go, you mountebanks and vagabonds… time to talk about stories. More specifically, movies. Even more specifically, scripts. Zoom in again to a really fantastic flick and one of my favorite scripts of all time, Eastern Promises, released in a magical time called 2007.
Why talk about this script? Because it might come about as close as it gets to providing me with closure when the credits roll. I feel, unlike life, things unfold in this film the way they have to unfold. The characters all do what they are set up to do. It was inevitable, I say to myself, feeling good about my perceptiveness. Why, that was the only way it could play out. Geez, I’m a genius for expecting exactly the things that happened to happen.
Okay, I’m fooling around a bit. Getting back on track with the whole closure deal, it’s about the completion and satisfaction we rarely find in the day to day. This sounds a little weird and it might be even harder to explain, but in all seriousness great story closure is rare and it doesn’t happen because of anything I did. Obviously, it was the frigging guy who wrote the thing. He conned me into closure, and by Jove, I enjoyed every minute of it. The writer’s a salesman. He sold me on a situation and a series of circumstances—that was the easy part—but then he had the decency to deliver on his word. Thanks good salesman!
In a little over an hour and a half, this brooding and violent but mostly subdued story about Russian mobsters in London sets up a complex web of problems and ends without loose threads. The real world has loose ends and leftover feelings, emotional hangovers. Screw that noise. Give me that good stuff, the piece that is written well enough that I’m left without questions. It is my favorite gangster film to appreciate and get wrapped up in, but hold on. That doesn’t mean it’s the most entertaining.
When you’re talking Scorsese and Tarantino and everybody else, hard to say Eastern Promises is more fun. I won’t even make that claim with half my foot past the line. I will say, though, it gives me the most closure. When those sad Russian mandolins and violins play over the final scene, I’m momentarily convinced that even in the worst of situations, things work out not for the best but the way they had to. Closure isn’t inextricably linked with entertainment, but maybe something deeper. Something like balance or contentment, however fleeting it might be.
Does closure actually exist in real life? I don’t know yet. I need more time in the institution. Until then I’ll keep looking for it in good stories. Cheers you beautiful souls. Stay safe and see you after.
