![]() So, by the last scene of the movie, then, we've heard the poem twice, and we've seen it-or at least the paper it's written on-several other times as Ottway has stored the letter in which it's written in his wallet and saved it from the plane's burning wreckage. Ottway concludes, "Storm clouds." And the men turn their attention back to the present. I read it at his funeral: "Once more into the fray / Into the last good fight I'll ever know / Live and die on this day / Live and die on this day."Ī clap of thunder sounds. ![]() It was only when I was a lot older did I realize that he'd written it. There was one that hung over his desk in the den. But a clichéd Irish motherfucker when he wanted to be-drinker, brawler, all that stuff. Ottway, by this point established as the group's Alpha, tells part of his story and, in an extended scene, flashes back to his childhood. There, around a campfire, as the wolves surround them in the darkness, and as one of their group is hallucinating in the process of dying from hypoxia, the men start sharing their stories-about sex, faith, family, and whatever source of inspiration keeps them fighting. ![]() What we don't know at the beginning of the movie- that he's remem- bering a poem, that his father wrote it, that it hung above his father's desk in the den-gets cleared up partway through the film, after the plane crash, after lots of competition for the Alpha position among the crash survivors, and after the men seek shelter in the woods. Ottway pauses, then adds the poem's first two lines, "Once more into the fray-into the last good fight I'll ever know." The camera shows Ottway putting a rifle muzzle into his mouth, and then we hear the poem's final lines, "Live and die on this day. Poison … And I’ve stopped doing this world any real good.," he writes. I know I can’t get you back … I don’t know why this has happened to us. And I can’t get you back … I don’t know why I’m writing this. In fact, the clash of discursive registers between it and what he's thinking is a little confusing: "I want to see your face, feel your hands in mine, feel you against me. At this point, though, we don't even know it's a poem. Indeed, at the beginning of the film-during a heavy-handed montage that shows Ottway killing wolves, lying in bed with his wife whom we eventually learn has died, writing a final letter to her about how miserable his life has become, flashing back to what we eventually learn is his childhood, and making preparations to commit suicide-the poem's words run through his head as part of a voice-over, presumably a section of what he's writing in his final letter. Jane and The Expend- ables one better, though, as the poem (pictured here) doesn't just end the movie but provides the frame mechanism for the entire narrative itself (it's even quoted on the movie poster). ![]()
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