I hate it when I start watching the movie, midway through the movie, I start liking it immensely to have it fall apart in the final 2minutes. Among the top 10 harbingers of “THE END” - 1) dreaded crane shot with a character walking away from the camera or 2) that fade to black, both with a raising musical cresendo.

It happened 2wice during the last 2 days. First with the ‘The Whale and the Squid’ and yesterday with ‘Baran’. Beautiful movies, both. But the ending kinda left a bad aftertaste.

The Squid and The whale – a well shot movie with a razor sharp screenplay, and wonderful perfomances. All characters are well itched, and mostly do things which are character driven, rather than screenplay driven. Thats a very rare trait, usually I see it the other way round – when the character needed to be painted in a bad light – he does something which is forced by the screenplay rather than by his character. Eg: To show a bully character, he picks fight with a random guy to show his character. But in these 2 movies, the character traits come from within, from bouncing off other characters, and even with their respective environments.

The Squid and the Whale (2005)
-Dir: Noah Baumbach ($1.5million indie movie)
Baran (2001)
- Iranian movie – Majid Majid (the guy who did Children of Heaven) 

Irrespective of the deadpan endings – the journey was worth it.

4/5