Friday, January 26, 2007

No happy endings

Pascalle (our youngest daughter) was watching the last scenes of a rental DVD today. I wasn't paying that much attention, but noticed that she didn't like the ending of this movie. "What's an alternative ending?" she wanted to know. "I guess you can select a different part of this DVD if you don't like the ending of the story", I answered. Slightly relieved, she decided to give it another try. Now she is still upset about it, because the alternative scenario didn't give her the happy ending that she wanted to see either. Maybe I must tell her to stick with the Disney DVD's? (She was watching The Break-up with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. Age indication: 6+ years... She also loves to watch Friends).
Btw, I did try to explain to her that in real life people don't always live happily ever after. But she didn't accept her father's words of wisdom. "If you really love each other, you can always get together again", she says. I want to believe she's right.

4 comments:

Vicki said...

Oh, if only we could all have the innocence of children and the wisdom of the aged.

Paul said...

Lydia, my wife, also prefers to see happy endings... She was also a bit disappointed by the ending of this movie. A "comedy" :-) should be happy from start to end, right? You don't want to have a sad feeling :-( after seeing a feel good movie... do you?

Carolanne said...

I prefer happy endings when watching dvds. I know it's not like that in real life but maybe the reason we watch dvds is to "escape" real life or really just to pretend that happy endings are what it's really about.

Your daughter is not so far wrong. I think 2 people can stay married or reconcile - not if they love each other, but if they submit to God and ask Him for help in healing their marriage. That's what happened to my friend last year. :)

Paul said...

I agree, she's not wrong at all - she just looks at the world as a child and believes as a child and I envy her because of that. Somewhere during our lives we become more cynical (but we call it "realistic"), maybe we start to listen more to our minds and less to our hearts. And, like you said, if in real life people can be reconciled with each other and stay together hapily ever after - that's even better than all the happy endings of feel good movies combined! And these miracles do happen! I do think that some people just don't try hard enough and they give up too soon. If you can survive a crisis in your relationship together, you can become stronger as a couple - that's what I believe.
And about happy endings in movies, dvds, books... yes I am disappointed when a movie has a sad ending. I don't mind an 'open ending', but I don't want to finish a book or a movie with a depressed mind or a cold heart!
I also agree that we need God to be truly reconciled. At the same time I do know Christian couples that can't make their marriages work and that's really, really sad. This is not a perfect world - Christians do make stupid mistakes and can become unfaithul or unloving to each other and they have to work on their relationships like people without such religious beliefs.