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Old 11-25-2007, 08:20 AM
silver book silver book is offline
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Default Re: Great film

[ QUOTE ]
GTL what are your thoughts on this(taken from comments section on blog in regards to Jones final speech)


"One of the things I most love about the end of the film is the ambiguity of Tommy Lee Jones' final monologue. I'm not referring to the film suddenly ending and some not understanding the point the film is making. Instead, I'm referring to the final line of dialogue that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about his second dream.

"I continue to think long and hard about that final line. And I ask myself how I'm supposed to take that line coming from that man.

"Is the story of the second dream supposed to provide a ray of hope, a sense of eventual contentment of a full life lived to its fullest being finally rewarded? Or am I supposed to take the final line as an admission that this kind of hope has been completely, irrevocably taken away? That the good sheriff had that dream of a hopeful place there in the dark, a warm place made by his father waiting for him out there in all that dark and all that cold.

"And then I woke up".

"And that the events he's recently seen have removed any possibility of that hope coming to pass?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the beginning of the movie, Jones' character says,

I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my
chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it but
I don't know what it is anymore. ...More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. ... He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

When talking about his dream at the end of the movie, the warm place he refers to seems to be the world he has fancied himself a part of, the olden days when times were better. He does not want to be a part of the new cruel world that doesn't make sense to him, and tries to escape by retiring. However, his wheelchair bound friend tells him that times haven't changed that much by telling him a story of a bunch of outlaws killing a sheriff. In his dream, Jones' character wakes up and realizes that is a part of this new, cruel word not the warm and cozy days of yester year.

Edit: In the screenplay I just read, it says the final line is " Out there up ahead", not " And then I woke up."
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