10 Most Confusing Movie Endings People Don't Understand

3. The Tree Of Life

If you've seen any of Terrence Malick's more recent films, you'll likely appreciate that the man isn't much interested in conventional narrative cinema.

In that respect his opus is unquestionably The Tree of Life, a visually stunning existential drama following the formative years of a man (Sean Penn), interspersed with sequences depicting the formation of the known universe.

The final passage of the film sees Penn's Jack O'Brien end up on a beach, where he's reunited with his younger parents (Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt) and his dead brother R.L.

Malick never makes it entirely clear whether this is the afterlife following Jack's death or something more metaphorical and less-literal, and true to his recent artistic focus, it's a sequence more interested in feeling than consistent narrative logic.

The film ends with Jack smiling and seemingly relieved, which seems to be the point here: whether you filter death through the lens of the afterlife or simply choose to remember the departed, they're both valid means of keeping the dead "alive" and finding peace.

Or something like that, anyway.