As I read the ending of Song of Solomon, I couldn’t help but compare the ending of the Song of Solomon to the ending of the movie Birdman. Now, this blog post will contain very serious spoilers for the movie Birdman so if you haven’t seen Birdman and don’t want it to be spoiled for you STOP READING NOW and so see Birdman!!
There. Now I have hopefully weeded out all the people who want to avoid spoilers and now the only people left are the ones who have either seen Birdman or don’t really care.
In the ending of Birdman, the main character of the movie jumps out of a window. There is no shot of him after he leaves the window ledge and one character is seen looking out of the same window wistfully moments after he jumps, leaving ambiguity as to if the main character has flown or fallen.
This reminded me a lot of the ending of Song of Solomon. They both have main characters who are fascinated with flight and both stories have supernatural elements. At the ending of both, if you have believed the supernatural and mystical elements the whole time you would have little trouble believing the more optimistic of successful flight, but if you do not buy into these it is also easy to see how both characters could be committing suicide and falling to their deaths. In Birdman he is a superhero type character, yet it is ambiguous if this character is only in his mind.
In Song of Solomon Milkman discovers he is from a legendary tribe of flying men, yet this is only a story and is not concrete evidence that Milkman can fly. In both stories, the ending is left open to the interpretation of the reader. Both have evidence for a more optimistic interpretation where they fly. In Song of Solomon, there is the line about being able to ride the air makes it appear as though Milkman has achieved his dreams of flight and in Birdman the other character’s calm at seeing what has happened out of the window achieves the same.
I think that both endings are very beautiful and fascinating. I think that the ambiguity of the ending adds a lot to the story, but I can see how these endings could be frustrating to the reader/viewer. With no complete ending, the reader is left to wonder about both endings. What do you think?
Yesssss! I'm so glad you wrote a blog post about this, I also was going to do so but opted to go a more traditional route due to my hazy memory of the Birdman ending. I definitely also drew connections to the Birdman ending as I read the book as the ambiguities were extremely similar with both a "realistic" take on the ending and the more optimistic and mystical one as you point out. I'm personally more of the "realistic" mindset mainly because I think that it just makes both the book and the movie so much more interesting as it explores way more in terms of what the reasons for each of the characters respective flights are for. If the supernatural elements can't just be explained away as "oh yeah, it was just magic" then your forced to think more deeply about why each of the characters act the way that they do, and then the ambiguity serves as a way to not give a boxed in singular definite answer, but to allow the reader/watcher to come up with their own reasons. I talk a little bit about why Milkman jumps in my blog post which you should check out and hopefully that provides the reasoning I think as to why Milkman jumps and what it means. Great blog post though btw. I'm glad someone wrote about this because it's a great comparison.
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