The last two films I've seen are Half Nelson and Borat. Both worth mentioning and maybe I will--but for the moment the final episode of The Sopranos is the 800 lb. gabagool in the room.My first reaction was that I didn't like the ending at all, but I respected it. After 24 hours and a second viewing I like it more and more. Here's why:
The general plot is pretty simple: With the back door help of the New Jersey FBI, Tony wins the war with the New York family and, in a classic scene, Phil Leotardo's head is squashed by his own SUV. On a typically cynical note, A.J.'s global angst is cured by a new girlfriend, a new job at a film production company, and a new BMW whose 23 mpg highway, he feels, is helping to ameliorate America's dependence on foreign oil. (So much for joining the Army and saving the world from Afghanistan). In the last scene the family gathers in a local diner, hearkening back to the final episode of the first season. A.J. even alludes to Tony's words of wisdom those many years ago that have become a refrain for the last two seasons: 'Cherish the good times.'
However, this isn't the first season. We’ve all come too far and there isn’t going to be a next time. The show's creator, David Chase, reportedly agonized over the music for each episode and so it’s fitting that Tony flips the carousel of a table jukebox for the song to end it all. As, one by one, the family gathers in the booth for dinner, the camera takes note of several other patrons--most notably a middle-aged man who enters and takes a stool at the counter. He may (or may not) seem to have a special interest in Tony. It's impossible to say. Tony settles on Journey's Don't Stop Believin' and the next few moments are a brilliant mixture of banality and tension. Tony says that there’s a strong chance he's about to be indicted for illegal gun possession; Carmella states that Meadow’s changing her preferred method of birth control, and A.J. sidles up to add that he’s already dissatisfied with his new job.
Then as Meadow rushes in after a difficult parallel park and the suspicious man at the counter heads off to the restroom and two African-American men enter the diner, the camera catches Tony looking up from his menu quickly--not in fear or surprise or in any easily discernible emotion. He just looks up and then--NOTHING. Cut to 4-5 seconds of black before the credits scroll silently across the screen. And that's it. It's like we got whacked.
Frustrating, but that's the idea. Chase is too good to give a comfortable ending that satisfies expectations and offers the consolation of a neatly ordered structure. Instead we get ambiguity, interruption, and massive uncertainty. It's been the world of the show for the last eight years and it's the world we live in every day.
Think back to the last episode of Seinfeld. There was a sitcom that proudly touted itself as a show about nothing: "No hugging, no learning," was the writers' mantra. And America ate it with a big spoon. Then, in the finale, the lead characters were placed on trial for failure to comply with a good Samaritan law, and suddenly it was a show about something: a really lame morality tale where minor characters of seasons past returned to accuse Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer of everything from gross insensitivity to dangling a marble rye from the window of an Upper East Side brownstone. It was the worst creative decision since McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H to do Hello, Larry.
I’m glad Chase didn’t pander or try to imply that any kind of harmony governs his universe. That awkward, sudden cut to black is an ending that’s not an ending. It denies even the solace of a violent death that so many had predicted for Tony. Instead, it implies that the Sopranos will live on in the same territory we all do--in that strange mixture of daily tedium, anxiety, and joy where uncertainties abound. Will Silvio live? Who will become the next New York don? Will Tony go to jail or even make it out of that diner alive? If death (or in Philip Larkin's nihilistic phrase, "endless extinction") is the only real closure, no closure may be the most hopeful gesture of all.
And after the black—no music whatsoever. Just the credits, a list of who’s accountable. The rest is silence.
