FILM

TRAGIC HAPPINESS

the joy of death and romance

By Quan Liu

Goodbye, Jack

“And they lived happily ever after.” This is the clichéd line from the end of many fairy tales and romances. The beautiful princess ends up marrying the handsome prince, and everyone is happy and everything is perfect. We aren’t even told the obvious, that at some point the happy couple will eventually age, and die, and experience at least some difficulties along the way. But we’re usually fine with “they lived happily ever after.”

But I’m not interested in that, I’m more interested in another kind of narrative, the one where we find out that there will be no happiness, that this is it, and that the ending that we all know is coming is coming right now. I don’t know why I find these endings satisfying, but I do and I often get myself a good cry when they happen.

Such Sad Parting

Two of my favorite sad endings are from the movies, Titanic and La, La Land. I still cry every time I see the scene where Jack’s body floats down into the ocean and Rose watches, her love over almost before it begins. And I love watching the story of Mia and Sebastian as they turn gain professional success but somehow miss out on love, the right person at the wrong time. So to try to understand why I’m crazy about endings like these, I’m going to examine the most iconic and sad romance ever, in the whole of the world, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. How can it be so pleasurable when the last line is: “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Don't drink, Romeo

The plot is simple. Romeo and Juliet are from two warring families in Verona. The fights are so crazy and intense that the play begins with a street brawl. Through happenstance Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love, which is a problem because their families want to essentially kill each other. We root for them because they are young, good looking, and can talk a good game, but no matter how hard they try, they cannot escape from their family’s violence. By the end of the play, one of the good characters, the Friar, has concocted a plan to unite Romeo and Juliet, but it backfires and Romeo seeing the sleeping Juliet thinks she’s dead and kills himself. She then wakes up and does the same. If but just for a few seconds we would have had a happy ending.

First of all, you can’t watch the ending of Romeo and Juliet without dealing with the issue of timing. If Romeo had just waited a moment Juliet would have woken up and they could have lived happily ever after. But the play would have been infinitely less pleasurable. Part of our enjoyment lies in the almost-get-away-with-it quality of the tragedy. It is as if we can taste happily ever after without it actually happening. It makes it more bitter, but at the same time it feels real and gives us a sense of what actually happens in the real world—we die.

I love the fact that they die and get enormous pleasure out of the fact that they do. It’s dramatic and gives closure. How Romeo and Juliet die is much more pleasurable and much more indicative of true love than if they got married in front of their parents in an official wedding and said we’re going to live happily ever after. Instead we get to see their love in action, which is that they cannot live if the other one has died. Romeo sees the sleeping Juliet (she’s not really dead) and thinks that it’s impossible to continue living and kills himself. I’m pretty aware at this point that his love for Juliet meant everything to him and certainly Romeo believes that:

Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe

That unsubstantial death is amorous,

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps

Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.

Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death.

That is a great speech and a lot of fun, not fun in the sense of happiness, but fun in the sense of a real accounting of the world. Romeo’s decision to kill himself makes time stop at the most beautiful moment of his love, and at the most passionate period of his life. For most couples, there is only decay, but for Romeo and Juliet there is only eternal youth and the decision to die one for the other.

They must die, both of them

As soon as Romeo kills himself, we want Juliet to do the same. Why? Well, in a way their double deaths are a continuation of the notion of happily ever after, only with limits. And what does Juliet do when she wakes up? She kills herself with Romeo’s dagger. She cannot live without Romeo either. This is why the play is more satisfying as a tragedy than as a comedy. The two young lovers only have two choices, live together or die together, and I’m all in on them dying.

The death of Romeo and Juliet also solves a serious problem, which is the adversarial relationship between their families and what causes both their love and the tragedy that follows. How can Romeo and Juliet live under these conditions? Their relationship precipitates one violent act after another. They try to fight for a happy ending, but they fail and so death is actually kind of cool and better than living. It’s not so much a sad ending as a way of getting out all the problems of life.

We must meet and die

Ironically, their deaths end the violence and the conflict:

CAPULET: O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

MONTAGUE: But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAPULET: As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie; Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

We want to end the stalemate, both of how Romeo and Juliet will continue living and the reason why they can’t. Their death allows this and allows for future Romeos and Juliets to live happily ever after. So their deaths are actually as romantic as anyone can imagine.In conclusion, sad romantic movies are more interesting than those that have happy endings. Sad endings give closure to stories. You aren’t bothered by what might happen in the future and are free to concentrate on the present. The sharp endings finish the stories in a cruel but satisfying way and Shakespeare gives us one of the first and best examples of sad and over trumps happy and forever.

©Quan Liu and the CCA Arts Review