Of course, the majority views the film as a “multi-layered” story in which what I consider to be the psychological drama, manifested through revelations of Noah Cross’ remorseless depravity, is but the deepest, darkest layer of a film dealing with various layers of deception and corruption. Enter the comparison to Greek Tragedy, in which, as Moses Hadas puts it in a book on Greek drama, “When a man behaving admirably as man is nevertheless tripped up by forces beyond his understanding, we have tragedy.” But frankly, this view of tragedy can be banal and dramatically uninteresting. It’s like the Aeon Flux short by Peter Chung in which Aeon spends her time stalking Trevor Goodchild, only to get within reach, step on a nail, fall off a ledge, and plummet to her death. Chung ostensibly wanted to poke fun at the expectations that heroes succeed, but it’s a poor joke. And so it is, in a dramatic storytelling sense, with the kind of tragedy in which people are destroyed by circumstances beyond their control.

The Tragedy of Mistaken Choices

Far more interesting is the tragedy that arises out of the choices people make — the kind of tragedy in which a character, heroic in many ways, nonetheless has flaws that lead to his or her downfall. One could argue, I suppose, that Gittes’ desire to protect a woman coupled with an inability to recognize that he’s in ‘way over his head is the flaw that undoes him. It’s an almost convincing argument, as Gittes is clearly better suited to investigating cheating spouses than putting clues together. (As noted by many critics, he has the unerring ability to find clues and draw the wrong conclusions, leaving him with no method other than to accuse anybody and everybody until he finally stumbles unto the truth.) But the case is weak, and in the end, the tragedy is determined not by Gittes’ choices, but by the flight path of a bullet.

Some have pointed out how “Chinatown” embodies the despair of a shattered idealism in the wake of, among other things, Watergate. This could be a very sensible interpretation, although complaining about the unfairness of evil elicits more of a “duh!” than any profound insight into world. And for the movie, it shows up how the film’s resolution is less an examination of real tragedy than it is a shock tactic. After all, if “Chinatown” was really interested in the psychology of its characters, it wouldn’t have ended so abruptly, but continued on to show the consequences of Evelyn’s accidental killing on the film’s characters. Therein lies my ultimate disappoint with “Chinatown.” I can forgive it dropping the mystery plot, but I can’t abide the film depriving us f the juiciest character development — the kind that comes in reaction to dramatic events. And lest it be said that I’m demanding the Hollywood happy ending film snobs enjoy railing against, far from it. (Yes, snobs — some people parade unhappy endings like a sign of artistic integrity in the face of “happy,” thus commercial, endings.) I simply believe that tragic endings must be earned just as much as happy endings should be.