The movie ending is an art unto itself. What is the final feeling the filmmaker wants you to walk out with? Do they want to wrap their story up in a tidy bow, or do they want to leave you with a question? Both options are completely viable and appropriate, but is one more impactful than the other? I’ve been thinking about this recently after rewatching Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 film Birth and talking to my brother, who said he was deeply “unsatisfied” with the ending.

A quick synopsis: in Birth, Nicole Kidman plays a rich NYC widow who, a decade after the death of her husband, is visited by a child who proclaims to be her husband reincarnate. The film plays out more like a dream than a drama, magically floating through the story until the credits roll. Kidman is fantastic, giving one of her greatest performances, but by the end, her character hasn’t really changed. She starts the film grief-stricken and in a deep depression, and she ends it in the same place — now haunted by the nightmare she has lived through. So why am I cheering, applauding, as we watch her walk along the beach in her wedding gown? To put it simply, it’s because I’m asking myself, “How will she live on?”

Birth, and Jonathan Glazer as a filmmaker, is deeply inspired by Stanley Kubrick — the tone of his films, the way they often care less about plot and more about feeling, and his unflinching refusal to hold the audience’s hand are all in conversation with Kubrick’s work. There’s a great double feature to be made of Eyes Wide Shut paired with Birth. Both obviously star Nicole Kidman, both examine desire, grief, relationships, and the human condition, both feel like a dream, and both have inscrutable endings. Eyes Wide Shut ends with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman trying to understand how they can maintain their marriage after both have, in one way or another, been unfaithful to the other. The film refuses to answer the question; Kidman even states she doesn’t know how they will live on. However, there is one thing she knows:

Alice Harford: The important thing is: we’re awake now. And hopefully… for a long time to come.

Dr. Bill Harford: Forever.

Alice Harford: Forever?

Dr. Bill Harford: Forever!

Alice Harford: Let’s not use that word, you know? It frightens me. But I do love you. And, you know, there’s something very important that we need to do as soon as possible.

Dr. Bill Harford: What’s that?

Alice Harford: Fuck.

End of movie, roll credits, get out of the theater. An insane ending, and one of the most memorable — not because it satisfies our desire for a wrapped-up story, but because it raises more questions than it answers. Cruise and Kidman don’t know what the rest of their life will look like, but they know they need to excise whatever sexual frustration they’ve both been feeling toward each other.

Now, there are many ways to end a movie, but for the simplicity of this column, and staying mostly modern Western-focused, I’ll reduce it to two. It’s called the Kubrick-to-Spielberg scale (coined by David Fincher). On one end, you have Kubrick, whose films often end on a question. 2001: A Space Odyssey — what just happened to Keir Dullea? Did he turn into a giant floating baby? What was that strange hotel room? Paths of Glory — after witnessing firsthand the failures of his military and government, how will Kirk Douglas live on? A Clockwork Orange — so everything we watched was for nothing? Malcolm McDowell just gets to carry on? I’m simplifying these endings, but each leaves you questioning what you just watched, imprinting something powerful on your psyche.

On the other end of the spectrum is Spielberg. Jaws: we killed the shark. Raiders of the Lost Ark: we defeated the Nazis and found the Ark of the Covenant. Jurassic Park: we escaped the island and saved the kids! Spielberg is an entertainer, and as one, he wants the audience to leave satisfied that they’ve watched a complete story with a neat, tidy ending. One approach is more commercial than the other, but both work.

Somewhere in the middle lies Christopher Nolan, perhaps the perfect synthesis of the two. His films are simultaneously personal, artistic, and commercial. Oppenheimer: we built the bomb — but did we destroy the world in the process? Inception: we completed the heist — but am I still lost in a dream? The Dark Knight: you saved the day Batman — but at what cost? Part of what makes Nolan’s films so compulsively entertaining is his ability to split the difference between Kubrick and Spielberg. He’s a wildly entertaining filmmaker who is equally invested in plot mechanics and emotional resonance — in what happens and in what question you carry out of the theater with you.

I love and admire all of these films, and they each hold a special place in our hearts. None of these endings is the “right” way to end a movie, and none is wrong. It all comes down to the filmmaker’s intent — what they want you to feel as the lights come up and you rise from your seat. That’s the power of movies, storytelling, and art in general: they compel you to engage actively, leading you further down a line of thought than anything explicitly on the screen. That’s the power of the movies.