Before I get into the movie, a little backstory. I first heard of Death of The Endless when I was in High School reading the DC Encyclopedia. Other than that, until a decade ago I was unaware of Neil Gaiman as a writer let alone a comic book maker, save for watching the stop motion adaptation of his work Coraline.
It wasn't until recently that I heard of the full story, The Sandman. In which Death of The Endless was one of the characters, but it wasn't until last winter, that I seen this beautiful embodiment of moving on.
Most of the time Death or The Grim Reaper or whatever force you call it that allows you to pass onto the afterlife, has often been portrayed as either at best Neutral or at worst evil and loves his job. Gaiman thought otherwise and the result was what I seen in this short.
The story is about a man named Vincent who is a down on his luck artist in Gotham city. So needless to say there were so many ways that poor guy would have gotten killed. He gets fired from his job at Arkham asylum and haunted by inner demons of his past. While drowning his sorrows, he meets a mysterious, friendly and beautiful woman in Gothic attire. She makes small talk with him and deduces by his look he wants to paint her portrait. However he didn't have the guts to ask thanks due to his inner demons. Depressed at missing an opportunity, he overdoses on Heroin and passes out all while his demons watch. He gets awakened by a car crash and finds the same woman in an altercation with two people. He runs down to defend her, only to find them vanished, with two body bags in their place.
The woman convinces Vincent to show her his work and when he reveals his motivations to paint her portrait, she accepts. Once finished he realized that Time had stopped despite painting for hours. It was then and there, she revealed, that he died from the overdose and that she's Death. Come to claim him. At first he's upset, but then excited that he managed to leave a meaningful picture behind. Unfortunately the house goes up in flames thanks to him dying with a lit cigarette in his hands. He accuses Death of Cruelty, but she mentions that his fate was already written before he was even born. He begs her to save the painting but comes to a realization, that he drew a picture of her as a child and that she's been watching him over ever since. She takes Vincent to move on and the firefighters discover the painting. Intact among the ruins. Death granted his final request.
This story was one of the most messed up ones I've ever seen. There was lot's of scary moments with the innerdemons, lot's of mystery moments with Vincent's interaction with Death and most importantly a heavy stack of tragedy that leads to a surprisingly happy ending. Poor Vincent struggled his whole life with nothing to show for it until his life was over and when his legacy was left behind, he died happy.
That is a Death we all should aspire to one day. It also shows that not all DC characters have to be Super to be a hero. Death encouraged him to give it one last go, he conquered his inner demons which I believe is the work of Despair of The Endless and when it was all over he was able to move on and she was able to help him. It showed a different way of heroics.
I want to see more of this. Not all heroics are super, but they still matter.
It wasn't until recently that I heard of the full story, The Sandman. In which Death of The Endless was one of the characters, but it wasn't until last winter, that I seen this beautiful embodiment of moving on.
Most of the time Death or The Grim Reaper or whatever force you call it that allows you to pass onto the afterlife, has often been portrayed as either at best Neutral or at worst evil and loves his job. Gaiman thought otherwise and the result was what I seen in this short.
The story is about a man named Vincent who is a down on his luck artist in Gotham city. So needless to say there were so many ways that poor guy would have gotten killed. He gets fired from his job at Arkham asylum and haunted by inner demons of his past. While drowning his sorrows, he meets a mysterious, friendly and beautiful woman in Gothic attire. She makes small talk with him and deduces by his look he wants to paint her portrait. However he didn't have the guts to ask thanks due to his inner demons. Depressed at missing an opportunity, he overdoses on Heroin and passes out all while his demons watch. He gets awakened by a car crash and finds the same woman in an altercation with two people. He runs down to defend her, only to find them vanished, with two body bags in their place.
The woman convinces Vincent to show her his work and when he reveals his motivations to paint her portrait, she accepts. Once finished he realized that Time had stopped despite painting for hours. It was then and there, she revealed, that he died from the overdose and that she's Death. Come to claim him. At first he's upset, but then excited that he managed to leave a meaningful picture behind. Unfortunately the house goes up in flames thanks to him dying with a lit cigarette in his hands. He accuses Death of Cruelty, but she mentions that his fate was already written before he was even born. He begs her to save the painting but comes to a realization, that he drew a picture of her as a child and that she's been watching him over ever since. She takes Vincent to move on and the firefighters discover the painting. Intact among the ruins. Death granted his final request.
This story was one of the most messed up ones I've ever seen. There was lot's of scary moments with the innerdemons, lot's of mystery moments with Vincent's interaction with Death and most importantly a heavy stack of tragedy that leads to a surprisingly happy ending. Poor Vincent struggled his whole life with nothing to show for it until his life was over and when his legacy was left behind, he died happy.
That is a Death we all should aspire to one day. It also shows that not all DC characters have to be Super to be a hero. Death encouraged him to give it one last go, he conquered his inner demons which I believe is the work of Despair of The Endless and when it was all over he was able to move on and she was able to help him. It showed a different way of heroics.
I want to see more of this. Not all heroics are super, but they still matter.