Final Cut by Charles Burns Review

SPOILERS

It’s the early ‘70s and Brian is a teenage artist/filmmaker whose latest film will include his crush, the red-headed Laurie, to be shot on their friend group’s hiking break in the mountains. Will he finally tell her how he feels - and how will she respond? Flying. Alien. Braaaaains. It’s Charles Burns’ latest comic!

Ten years is way too long to wait but Charles Burns has finally released his new comic, Final Cut (I’m not counting Kommix from earlier this year as it was a series of random covers for comics that don’t exist). It’s a surreal and sometimes unsettling comic with layered storytelling and an unreliable narrator, much like X’Ed Out was, and I enjoyed aspects of it, though I felt the overall concept was a little weak.

I’ll just lay my cards out: inadvertently or not, I think this is Burns’ version of I’m Thinking of Ending Things (either the Charlie Kaufman movie or the Iain Reid novel). Brian is looking back at this summer in the early ‘70s and mentally revisiting maybe his most significant romantic relationship at the end of his life, much like the protagonist of I’m Thinking of Ending Things did.

The story is told more or less linearly although it has the feel of nostalgia and a nagging sense of dream logic, like we’re in the mind of an unreliable narrator. Scenes repeat throughout, like Laurie catching Brian drawing something or she looks through his sketchbook in front of him; wristwatches and their significance for devotional love; Brian sitting outside Laurie’s tent; and certain movies - The Last Man on Earth, The Last Picture Show, Invasion of the Body Snatchers - appear at different points and echo plot beats in Brian’s story, as if his memories of those films are also influencing Brian’s “edit” of that summer.

Brian loves Laurie but Laurie doesn’t love Brian. Brian’s a filmmaker who edits movies and controls those stories through editing. Similarly, Brian is looking back at this time and “editing” what happened back then to give him the happy ending in his imagination that he didn’t get in reality - he’s got “final cut” of the story, whether it’s real or not.

I’m inferring that Brian’s dying or about to die partly because of the title and also because of the movies mentioned - both have “last” in their titles (a synonym for “final”), and two of them are about the end of the human species/human existence, while the other is about doomed unrequited love. So “the end” as a motif is heavily implied throughout and the final page is black - Brian finally dies?

In his “editing” of his memory of that summer, he revisits scenes that give him pleasure: when Laurie praises his drawings. That’s why those scenes repeat. And he rationalises why their relationship never happened by making Laurie a lesbian. She didn’t reject me because of who I am, she did it because she’s gay - that too plays to Brian’s fragile ego.

And that’s another clue why this is all in Brian’s head: Laurie has sex with Tina out of nowhere. Well, not entirely - there’s a scene earlier when Brian’s friend films the girls stripping to their underwear and swimming in the lake - they need more “adult content” for their movie, he jokes - and then shortly after we get the lesbian sex scene. Maybe it’s the memory of that earlier scene influencing the story Brian’s telling himself - he’s including more adult content, as well as providing a reason for why he and Laurie never got together.

But there are other clues scattered along the way. Brian is… a bit unusual. He’s very spacey and a loner. He says and does creepy things like filming Laurie when she’s not looking, draws naked pictures of her in his sketchbook, and sits outside her tent at night without telling her he’s there. When he asks Laurie to drop by and see an edit of the film he’s made, she shows up - with two friends in tow. She doesn’t want to be alone with him. Are they even friends or just have mutual friends - did Laurie go on the hiking trip to be with them and not with Brian?

It doesn’t feel like there would ever have been a chance that he and Laurie would’ve been a couple given his awkwardness - it’s entirely possible he’s fabricated their connection and extrapolated a deeper one from the most surface level of friendships. It’s likely Brian’s even aware of this - the repeated imagery of the floating giant brains is Brian’s sense of alienation from others in symbolic form.

The opening line is another clue - “It takes me a while to figure out, but at some point, I realize I’m drawing a self-portrait” - and the fact that Laurie’s narrative voice sounds exactly like Brian’s. This comic was also published in French over the last few years (this collection is the first English language publication) with the title “Dedales” or “maze” - perhaps referring to the labyrinth of Brian’s mind.

Maybe I’m off but that’s how it read to me at any rate!

If you’re familiar with Burns’ comics then you’ll know that it goes without saying that his artwork is exemplary - whatever my opinions of Burns’ comics, his artwork is only ever first class. Here’s a few examples but really there isn’t a page of bad art, just varying levels of greatness:







All that said, I felt a bit underwhelmed once I finished the book. This is just a story of unrequited teenage love, and how reality never lives up to our imagination? Hmm. Even with Burns’ stylisation - the amazing art and complex storytelling - it feels too slight to hang an entire book on that premise alone.

Parts of the story were dull - the story of making an amateur film and teen love don’t make for the most compelling scenes - and the repetitive narrative only added to that feeling. But I also wasn’t too bored reading this and I wanted to see what this was all building up to. Final Cut isn’t Charles Burns’ best comic but it’s worth a look if you’re into unusual non-superhero comics and it’s always good to see a master of the form put out new material.