I’m not saying that The Two Faces of January is a great movie.

But the Viggo Mortensen character serves to show how many good stories end.

It goes like this…

And love has its way with the world.

You don’t hear it, no one says it, it’s the subtext. It’s even more “sub” than that. It’s what the audience feels in themselves:

And love has its way with the world.

The protagonist has his way for most of the movie. He may be charming but he’s self-centred, misguided, and self-destructive. (I’m talking about most fictional protagonists.) His way with the world has created mayhem and misery. It’s called the plot.

Now at the end, having failed utterly, what else can the protagonist do? He disowns his game plan…

And love has its way with the world.

Contrary to popular belief…

You know that happy-ever-after feeling—well, this is it. Think about it. The feel-good feeling rarely has anything to do with heroes winning or successfully manipulating people or events. Nobody achieves love. It’s transpersonal, isn’t it? Love is a grace.

Love does us.

Audiences feel good because their virtual heroes are done to.

Check it out for yourself—your favourite protagonists are probably those who finally get out of their own way so they can be done to by a force beyond their power to manipulate.

We’re talking about escaping from our “second nature.” It’s the one that prevents us from knowing the first.

Marcel Proust identifies this second nature as the heavy curtain of habit which conceals from us almost the whole universe.

CUT BACK TO:

The Two Faces of January and Viggo Mortensen lying dying on a street in Crete…

[SPOILER ALERT! Not really. Students of story aren’t concerned about spoilers. We consume fiction to better understand it! We want to know how fiction works. But I digress…]

Viggo Mortenson has been an incorrigible swindler, con man, and liar, and here in the final scene, with a bullet in his back, he has one chance to come true. And he better be quick about it.

Viggo has one chance to prove the film’s title—The Two Faces of January.

Janus is the Roman god of transitions, the god of gates and doorways, of endings and beginnings. Janus is depicted with two faces, one looking backward, one toward the future.

Viggo is Janus at the threshold.

Viggo’s second (bogus) nature is evaporating in the blinding light of his first nature. He’s glimpsing almost the entire universe. At the very least he probably wishes he could take back a whole lot of unfortunate history.

But of course it’s too late do anything more than die in truth.

Protagonist dies and yet audiences feel good—what just happened there?

Answer: Freedom trumps death. How does that work?

Answer: Because love is finally having its way with the world.

I’m falling in love…

I’m falling in love with this turn of phrase. It slipped out while I was writing the final chapter of The Writer in Love. My protagonist is likewise caught in a dead-end where he surrenders his game plan. He is Janus at the threshold of a new beginning.

As are most good protagonists.

As are we all in a moment of crisis.

Deep down I know that if only I would quit deluding myself, love would have its way with my world, too.

Isn’t writing fun!