The End

The first thing we need to look at in order to understand the ending is Donald Kaufman, Charlie's twin. Donald, at the beginning of the film, is living in his brother's house. He's just as fat, just as unattractive, and has no job or money of his own. Indeed, the first time we meet him he quite literally can't stand on his own, stuck to the floor due to a vague and never again mentioned back problem. We also find here that Donald has a plan for getting out of Charlie's house, not to mention off his floor. He's going to be a screenwriter.

Donald's story as a screenwriter is very straightforward. He takes McKee's class to learn the proper way of doing so, writes it very quickly and easily, and has no problem selling it. Donald's experiences at writing his script are basically the Hollywood ideal, where he has no problem writing it, no problem selling it, and by all accounts it's great. Mother Kaufman, who we never meet, loves it. Donald's girlfriend loves it. Charlie's agent loves it. Charlie does not. He doesn't actually read it, but just the concept of the film is enough to turn him off.

Now, the pattern of Donald's screenplay is what Charlie wants. He wants his screenplay to flow easily and be loved by others. He tries to do something completely different, by avoiding traditional plots and stories, but the goal is identical. The end of the film looks like one of these traditional films. Charlies's experiment at writing a screenplay fails, but the end result becomes a movie, I would argue a successful one. More than that, though, is the very last shot of the movie itself. We see Charlie driving away, describing the very scene we're watching as his ending, then the camera pans away to some flowers. Specifically, daffodils, widely considered to be weeds. We see the flowers close in the evening, then open again in the morning, as time flows faster and faster they open and close again and again.

Why is this? Is this a metaphor for the cycle of life? After all, Donald just died while Charlie lives. Is it to show the dance the La Roche described much earlier in the film, the dance that allows all life to exist? Does the yellow of the daffodil petals have something to do with Susan Orlean and Charlie's loves blonde hair? I think the answer is much simpler. At the beginning of the film, during that lunch with the beautiful producer, Charlie says he wants the movie to be just about flowers. He says, several times, that he wants to show how beautiful flowers are, but, for most of the film, he can't figure out how to do so. The last shot of the movie is to show how beautiful flowers are. Not only exotic orchids, but the most common flower in the world. It too is beautiful. So, in the end, Charlie succeeds. He succeeds at making a movie that shows how beautiful flowers are. He succeeds at finishing his screenplay. He does not betray his initial goals, he adds to them.

This only leaves one huge question remaining. Why this sprawling film? Why does it start to disjointed, and end so traditionally? Is it just to set up the daffodil shot?