Nothing makes a good movie great like an unforgettable ending. And while a twist like The Sixth Sense’s or a seemingly inexplicable conclusion like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s will keep viewers talking long after the credits have rolled, the final scenes that tend to resonate the most are those that tug at our heartstrings — and manage to put the inexpressible into words. Here are six of the most moving final lines of all time.
It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening."25th Hour" (screenplay by David Benioff)
Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, released a little more than a year after September 11th, 2001, follows a drug dealer (played by Edward Norton) on his last day of freedom before entering prison. He lives in New York, and his interactions with other New Yorkers make it clear just how much the city has changed in a short amount of time. And while the film’s closing lines relate specifically to Norton’s character, the film’s context makes them even more moving. They’re spoken by his father, who, while driving his son to prison, imagines him making an escape and starting a new life: “You forget your old life, you can't come back, you can't call, you can't write. You never look back. You make a new life for yourself and you live it, you hear me?”
The reverie goes further and further, imagining a wife and children, and it’s to them that the last lines are directed. The tragedy, of course, is that the life being described never does happen and the children meant to hear these words may never exist at all. The sweetest dreams may be the ones that don’t come true, but that doesn’t make the lives we’re living any less of a gift.
You know how everyone's always saying "seize the moment"? I don't know, I'm kinda thinking it's the other way around. You know, like the moment seizes us."Boyhood" (screenplay by Richard Linklater)
Countless movies have stressed the importance of living in the moment, but none of them have done it quite like Boyhood. Shot intermittently over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age drama is a singular experiment in filmmaking that actually shows its protagonist (Ellar Coltrane) come of age. Even more remarkable than the circumstances of its production is the fact that Boyhood is genuinely insightful and moving, and nowhere more so than in its closing lines.
As Mason — whom we’ve just spent the last few hours watching grow from age 6 to 18 — enters college, he hears these words from a girl he’s just met. It’s an important reminder to live mindfully, but also to let situations play out as they’re meant to. If you spend all your time actively anticipating life-altering moments, you may just miss them when they happen of their own accord.
Yes, I can see now."City Lights" (screenplay by Charlie Chaplin)
Not a lot of silent films are remembered for their final lines, which is only part of what makes City Lights a classic that’s withstood the test of time. To call it Charlie Chaplin’s best film may seem like a bold statement when all-timers like Modern Times and The Kid are right there, but this romantic drama is set apart by its utterly beautiful ending.
It finds Chaplin’s lovable, downtrodden Tramp reuniting with the blind flower girl he’d fallen in love with and then drifted apart from. Unbeknownst to him, she’s since had her sight restored. Initially fearful that her feelings will have changed now that she can see him for who and what he truly is, he realizes that just the opposite is happening as she accidentally touches his face and finally understands who she’s looking at.
Maybe it was Utah."Raising Arizona" (screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen)
Not unlike 25th Hour, the Coen Brothers’ second movie ends with a hopeful vision of a future that will never come to pass. In this case it’s a dream had by H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage), who along with his wife (Holly Hunter) took the extreme step of kidnapping one of the quintuplet sons of a local furniture magnate after realizing they couldn’t have children of their own. After reluctantly returning the child, H.I. falls asleep imagining the football games and Christmas mornings that might fill his childhood with joy.
He then thinks of his wife, with whom his future is even more uncertain. “And it seemed real. It seemed like us and it seemed like, well, our home,” he says of the dream. “If not Arizona, then a land not too far away. Where all parents are strong and wise and capable and all children are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah.”
And with that, a simple declaration, “maybe it was Utah,” comes to represent the kind of hope and possibility that helps us sleep well at night — even, and especially, if we’re unsure whether those dreams will ever be fulfilled.
I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"Stand by Me" (screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon)
Made in 1986 and set in 1959, Stand by Me is an inherently nostalgic affair. Rob Reiner's adaptation of The Body, a Stephen King novella published four years earlier, follows a group of teenage friends (River Phoenix, Will Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, and Cory Feldman) as they embark on a potentially ill-advised journey to find the dead body of a boy who went missing earlier that summer. It’s narrated in the present tense by its protagonist, whose life ended up following a very different trajectory from that of his friends — something all of us can relate to.
Few of us have had experiences quite like the ones seen here, however, especially given the tragic turn one of those friends’ lives ultimately takes. Making this even more of a tear-jerker is the fact that Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” plays over the ending credits. It's a combination sure to leave you misty-eyed — a telltale sign of a powerful final line.
Featured image credit: Sean Musil/ Unsplash
