The end of the year or New Year is one of the most curious holidays on the calendar. It is not celebrated on the same date for all cultures, but it does symbolize the same thing for most of them. Which means that the last day of the chronological cycle is dedicated to more or less similar ideas. From reviewing what happened in the previous months, to the big plans to start again. The truth is that it is the end of one stage and the beginning of another, with all the allegorical that that idea can entail, no matter where it is celebrated.
Cinema is not indifferent to that point of view. So for a good part of its history, it has turned the last night of the year into an essential element when telling endearing stories. Whether it’s great reunions, impossible loves that end up enjoying a few hours of passion, or even promising time travel. Nothing is missing from the way Hollywood has imagined New Year’s Eve. Nor, the way in which that perception of closure and a fortunate beginning, He provided some of the best scenes to the cinematic world.
We leave you five movies with twists that take place on New Year’s Eve or on the first day of January. From a miracle that freed a woman from eternal condemnation to a dance that closed a painful pact between two lovers. Nothing is missing in this journey through the way in which the seventh art raises its glass to celebrate the end of a year.
Adaline’s secret
The story, which is both a romantic drama and a condemnatory recreation of the possibility of eternal life, begins and ends on New Year’s Eve. Adaline (Blake Lively) fought all night to come to life, making her the first baby born in San Francisco on New Year’s Day 1908. It is a starting point that will take the character auAn extraordinary journey through the meaning of life, love and of course, time.
Years later and after a serious car accident, Adaline stops aging. But what seems to be a prodigy, she ends up becoming a nightmare, as she understands that the world changes around her, while she remains the same. Gradually, the meaning of everything she holds dear will change and her ability to delve deeper into what she loves will be tested as the only sure thing in a very long life. Also, the way love, can be a reflection on the identity of the human being, as any other limit disappears.
Finally, the cycle for Adaline seems to close when almost half a century later and about to celebrate her birthday and also, New Year’s Eve, she begins to age. Which frees her from the loneliness of an eternity that she never asked for and that had become a sentence. Lee Toland Krieger’s film does not end as an exactly encouraging message. Yes, with the certainty that the end of the year is a symbol of hope. Even an end (whatever that may be) to great suffering.
The diaryof Bridget Jones
Nobody doubts it: Sharon Maguire’s film, based on the book of the same name by Helen Fielding, did not age well at all. But despite criticism of the messages’ subtext about the aesthetic pressures that a woman must suffer, there is something more. Bridget (Renee Zellweger) could say that love came into her life during the New Year. After all, her first meeting with Darcy (Colin Firth) occurred at a New Year’s Eve party. and their great reconciliation, on the same date, a year later.
The plot ingeniously uses the passing of the months to narrate Bridget’s evolution. Not only in love — let’s not forget that this is a romantic comedy — but also to mark the pace of the character’s spiritual evolution. This is not an epiphany, but a slow awareness about your life and everything that awaits you in the future.
Which includes a romance with the least expected man at the time when he needs him most. For their big final scene — which, of course, takes place on New Year’s Eve — Bridget and Darcy discover what appears to be the secret of adult love. Which is none other than starting a new page of a diary, together, with a whole new year ahead.
snowpiercer
This list could not miss a parable about destruction and the end of times, associated with the end of the year. South Korean director Bong Joon-ho analyzes in snowpiercer not just the fear of definitive destruction. Also, class struggle and social inequalities. All in the setting of a train trying to escape the climate apocalypse with the few — and wealthy — survivors on board.
Among the wagons that travel the world in an endless New Year’s celebration, there are also the poorest survivors. All, struggling to maintain life among the crumbs of the decadent abundance of the powerful. The cultural and political message is obvious. Much more, the symbolic. The end of times is at the same time the possibility of a new rebirth. But, for something like this to happen, the transition to the next day — or the New Year, with all its questions — must occur.
Of course, the moral of the film becomes more painful as it becomes evident that tragedy awaits the travelers. However, one point remains clear amid the potential catastrophe. The rebirth of few survivors will be the equivalent of a new cycle, with all the possibilities and dangers that entails.
Apartment
In 1960, director Billy Wilder directed what is considered one of the most beautiful romantic comedies – with overtones of drama – in cinema. Which also includes a whole well-intentioned ode about new beginnings and the certain possibility of love. The Apartment is not only a work that celebrates the best of the romance genre with some sour overtones. At the same time, it is a New Year’s film that celebrates hope as the main power in every action in the future.
CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is deeply in love with Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). The latter is the mistress of Baxter’s boss, Mr Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). The relationship is a kind of impassable bridge that Lemmon’s character must cross, even at the cost of his moral prejudices and even fears. But in the end, it’s about love, as the character loudly insists. And with that conviction, the risks that are taken to keep alive the deepest feeling of all.
And it is under that premise that the film reaches its best moment on New Year’s Eve, when Fran discovers what she really wants. Not only for her life, but for her future. The big scene of the plot shows her running through the streets, with a bottle of Champagne in her hands and convinced that Baxter is the man she loves. An ending, which is not so ending, which concludes a long series of disagreements.
The invisible thread
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is considered one of the great films of recent years. And it also has a central scene during the New Year’s celebration, which gives it its sense of bittersweet menace. One of the most remembered elements of this story about power, influence, obsession and tortuous love.
The fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) needs his life to be perfect. But also, that everything around him are scenes of that need for neat control that he exercises over his clothes and workers. With romance, it couldn’t be any other way.
The big emotional scene of the film — or all it can be in this gloomy narrative — takes place on New Year’s Eve. During the sequence, Soul (Vicky Krieps), the object of Woodcock’s desire, dances with the designer in an empty room. Outside the year ends, inside a bond is created between the two. A subtle conclusion to a story full of symbolism and darkness, which dazzles with its beauty.