UKC

A question for the UKC hive-mind, since google doesn't support this sort of search... Given the hive-mind's remarkable ability to identify films and music from the most obscure references, I thought I'd give it a go.

Quite a few years ago, I caught the very end of a film on TV, late at night, and never managed to find out what it was.

The film ended with a scene of people in small boats, probably lifeboats, drifting or rowing away from a shore into foggy sea, all rather dark and forboding, and, I think, escaping from something like nuclear war. There may even have been something bobbing in the water before finally sinking. I don't recall any dialogue, so I don't even know what language it was in... And I don't recall any closing credits. But it was a long time ago...

Suggestions on a postcard to...

In reply to captain paranoia:

Titanic?

In reply to captain paranoia:

On the Beach?

In reply to captain paranoia:

the end of 'children of men' has 2 people in a boat escaping from the sewers into the foggy expanse of the thames (I think its the thames, could be the sea itself). Clive Owen, humanity becoming sterile, pretty bleak but with a wonderful pot smoking character played excellently by Michael Caine.

In reply to captain paranoia:

None of the above. Too long ago for Children of Men, more modern that On The Beach.

In reply to captain paranoia:

It's also not how On the Beach ends!

I'll ponder it. Children of Men sprang to my mind too but that is only one boat.

In reply to captain paranoia:

The City of Lost Children? (Jeunet/Caro masterpiece) though they are rowing away from a converted oil rig rather than from shore, and it's slapstick as well as being bleak and dark (one of six clones of Dominique Pinon suicide-bombs the oil rig in a comedic manner)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

near enough to On the Beach for a hazy memory I thought. Though mine's hazy too I'm sure there were some boats, and a submarine disappears beneath the waves? Or am I thinking of a different film?!

In reply to captain paranoia:

B&W or colour? Bergman's 'Shame'?

In reply to Toreador:



SPOILERS for "On the Beach". I will leave a big gap so you can choose not to scroll down the post



















In On the Beach, in the second half the submarine goes all the way across the Pacific from Australia to San Francisco to investigate a possible sign of life. It turns out to be a bottle in the breeze tapping the key-lever of a Morse Code transmitter. Meanwhile those left in Australia fill their days with pointless car races and so on. Fred Astaire commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning after enjoying a good race. Submarine returns to Australia. Then I am pretty sure that it ends with everyone deciding to stay put and await the radiation cloud that will kill them. Waltzing Matilda plays on the soundtrack (again!). It is daytime. The submarine crew may go off again on another optimistic mission but I think Captain Gregory Peck decides to stay behind and die with alcoholic Ava Gardner. No boats, no night, no fog, no real attempt to escape anything.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I was about to admit that I must have been thinking of a different film, but then I checked
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/synopsis?ref_=tt_stry_pl
and I wasn't. The scenes I was picturing - fishing boats and a submerging submarine - are both there near the end. I'd just forgotten the bit that came between the two, and then the bit that came afterwards

In reply to Toreador:

Always happy to be a bit corrected
In my description I think I may have been getting slightly muddled with the (pretty decent) 2000 remake where an ambiguous (is she hallucinating it or not?) ending has sub captain Armand Assante choosing to suicide with Rachel Ward rather than go with his crew.

But are we in agreement that this is not the film the OP is looking for?

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:


Had Clear skies, he says foggy.
Was , at sea, he says near a shore.

In reply to captain paranoia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlyUC_pnL3c&feature=youtube_gdata_playe...

Sure it's wrong, but the last 8 minutes fits the bill. Good film btw.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The City of Lost Children sounds promising...

Neither version of On The Beach sounds to have the right ending, which is the rowing away scene I remember.

But the answer might well be Bergman's 'Shame', even if it is older than I thought. Given how mesmeric I've found Bergman's other works, and how strangely mesmeric I recall the ending of the mystery film being, it could well be that. The boat pilot killing himself, and the sea of bodies sound familiar. And, in Swedish, the limited dialogue would have offered me no clue as to the plot...

I shall have to try to dig it out from somewhere.

Probably another triumph for the UKC hivemind...

In reply to David Alcock:

Scrolled to the end of that YouTube and watched the last few minutes, and yes, I think that's probably it. Not sure why I remembered it being at night; maybe the B&W, the gloomy nature, and the fade to black at the end.