CONTROVERSIAL ENDINGS in PSYCHO and THE DEPARTED
By Jerry Saravia
The endings of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" have created some furor among fans and critics. They are, in hindsight, not too dissimilar. What? They are obviously two different films but their endings shift and complicate what might be studio-imposed finalities into something more obscure, more ambiguous, more despairing.
Hitchcock's 1960 horror classic "Psycho" ends with a psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) telling the family of the slain Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) that Norman Bates was not exactly a transvestite but a man who wore women's clothing to become his mother. He also interjects that Norman is his mother. Obviously, this psychoanalytic speech is silly and technically spurious. I sense it was put in there as Hitchcock's and writer Joseph Stefano's joke on the audience who need everything wrapped up into a tidy ending that put closure on the Norman Bates insanity. It also gives the audience comfort that such a killer can be categorized and explained away so that we know better than to enter a desolate motel in the middle of nowhere where a strange, childlike, candy-consuming, forlorn and androgynous motel owner exists.
Hitchcock doesn't quite end it there. We see Norman in his cell, staring away at the walls while Mother narrates. A housefly appears on his hand and Mother makes it clear she will not harm that fly, sensing that an eventual release from the nuthouse will be fortwit because Norman is insane (naturally, this was the case of the opening of "Psycho II"). Norman looks up at the audience and we have a superimposition of his smiling face with his mother's skull and Marion Crane's car being dragged from the swamp. This adds a sense of discomfort and proves Norman isn't exactly insane; he knows what he is doing and thinking. He is aware Mother is a distinct personality and he knows he is not Mother. But maybe he can keep fooling the psychiatric community. This is the ending that a lot of critics, including Roger Ebert, ignore or don't acknowledge. Sometimes evil can't be explained away with a stuffy psychoanalytic speech, hence the chilling last scene.
Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" has a fatalistic finish where the presumed bad guy, Colin Sullivan, the duplicitous villain (a superbly controlled performance by Matt Damon), a cop who has ties to the slowly derailing Boston mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), is executed at point blank range by another cop, the ferocious Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). Most would concede that this very Americanized ending was appropriate (it differs from its source, Andrew Lau's "Infernal Affairs"). After all, the dirty, corrupt Colin had it coming. And Scorsese could have ended it there, but he took it one step further. When we pan up from his body in a pool of blood, we see a rat running along a window sill and the shot rests on the Massachusetts State House (a place Colin is enamored of). This shot is foreshadowed earlier by Costello who is plaguing the undercover cop, Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) with questions, making rat-like faces and drawing rats running rampant around the, you guessed it, Massachusetts State House. The implication being that the rats, the dirty cops, will continue to run and control everything.
I mentioned the ending is still fatalistic because I had sympathy for Colin, no matter how rotten a person he is (forcing his live-in girlfriend not to hang pictures of her as a kid is an example of a man not comfortable with identity or sentimentality). I feel sympathy because he grew up in a tough environment where he was possibly molested by priests as an altar boy, and had to succumb to Costello's control rather early on. Costello expresses hate towards everyone, especially priests with which he makes consistent references to with sexual and violent analogies. Colin wants to get away from the city life, as expressed to Madolyn (Vera Farmiga) in a bedroom conversation, but he is embroiled in his loyalty to Costello (Costello betrays Colin when he admits he is an FBI informant). Colin is a man without shame, remorse or identity - he was shaped and lured into a criminal life and environment that Costello helped nurture. So Scorsese could have ended with the assassination of Colin and showed us the courthouse. The rat adds an extra dimension and a touch of black humor, creating a fused symbol of corruption never dying.
Scorsese and Hitchcock have fundamental similarities in the films they have made.Their films are strewn with Catholic guilt, immorality, sexual inadequacy or limitation, occasionally graphic violence, a virtuoso display of camera moves, and antiheroes who refuse to justify themselves. "Psycho" and "The Departed" also play the audience like a piano, showcasing an element of surprise and unexpectedness in fashioning a genre attempt to fit their respective personalities. Seemingly obligatory, tidy endings, indeed, are more complicated than expected when it comes to Hitch or Scorsese.
