How Does 'The Blue Hour' End?

I am absolutely obsessed with this short film from last year, ‘The Blue Hour’ and how it ends. It’s so heartbreakingly beautiful. After the main character of ‘The Blue Hour’ has found out the truth about this supernatural event that only occurs during twilight, he tries to find a way to put the spirits of the deceased to rest. He finally manages to find a way to do this by sacrificing himself in order to cut the cycle of pain and let the deceased move on. The final scene follows him as he crosses over to the other side. The film fades out in this very dream-like state, in very light and washed-out colors, and the shadows look to stretch and become very long and thin. The scene is set in a bright blue and pale colored world and the main character slowly starts to fade away as he is made of light particles. He is reunited with a ghost of someone he loved in life, and after a long and abiding search for her he is finally able to hold her and even touch her. However, her fingers pass through his and he is forced to realize that he can’t keep her with him. They share a final moment of connection and he is pulled back through the rift he created. As he passes back through the event he feels a searing pain and the rift in space and time is closed with a sigh of relief. The film then fades to black and we are given an epilogue of how life returns to normal in the small town in which the story takes place, but it’s obvious that the world is a duller place without magic in it.

It’s brilliant in its ambiguity. We’re left with so many questions and with no resolution to the protagonist’s actions. Does it have been worth it for him? Have the ghosts found peace? The last shot of the film is of a blue flower growing in the edge of the rift. Some fans believe that this must be a sign of residual magic in the world. Others believe that nature, after years of the space being abandoned, is simply reclaiming it. My own view is that the director of ‘The Blue Hour’ did a brilliant job of leaving his story untidy and painful and for it to linger long after the film has ended. The soundtrack to ‘The Blue Hour’ swells with a simple but beautiful piano motif throughout the film and is then stripped away to a single fading note in the silence of the film’s end. That’s the genius of ‘The Blue Hour’ – not a dramatic end to tie up all loose ends but quiet.

I was also very struck by the complete absence of coercion in this topos. In the topos of the human in the magical realm, there is often a balance that needs to be kept by a human or a prophecy that is fulfilled by a human’s presence. Here, there is none of that. The blue hour does not need her. It simply is. And her presence is completely voluntary on her part. She’s not staying for a job or a destiny. She’s just stopping. And that she can do that at all, and that it’s completely voluntary on her part, is what haunts me. The realm is completely indifferent. And that makes it a kind of purer refuge even.

This is an ending that requires complete buy-in to the internal logic of the book. If you have been reading it as a straight portal fantasy, then this ending will be a shock. But, if you have accepted that the blue hour is a real, and valid, plane of existence (not a dream, not purgatory, but a real place with its own rules), then the author’s choice here is positive and logical. The book has spent so much time building the authenticity of this world that it is just as textured and real as her normal world. In fact it may be more real. The ending is successful in that it reframes what we consider to be ‘real’ and ‘escape’.