Going out with an artistic bang

John Judd portrays a man who thinks he's being by haunted by his wife in "Shining City." (Peter Wynn Thompson)

I'M A subscriber to the Big Bang theory of art. The best way to make an audience remember something is to end it with a big Beethovenian bang. Sure, there's a place for "Sopranos" like ambiguity or a Mahler's Ninth death rattle, but for the most part I want a shot of adrenaline on my way out the door.

Several things, recently, have driven that point home - "Shining City" at the Huntington Theatre Company; the suspense, or antisuspense film, "Funny Games"; and the release of the special edition of "Bonnie and Clyde" on DVD.

I'll try not to give too much away with the first two, but I've heard a lot of complaints about the jolting ending to Conor McPherson's play, "Shining City," which closes Sunday. McPherson, in my book, is one of the best playwrights around, in part for his ability to make the paranormal world of Irish ghosts and vampires underscore everyday issues of existence.

In "Shining City," an inexperienced therapist tries to console an older man who thinks he's literally being haunted by his wife. McPherson's writing is so crisp and rhythmic, and the acting so good, that it's never anything less than a moving story about human nature in all its messiness. But it wouldn't be much more than that without the final image, which slams home what a difficult time the therapist is going to have trying to escape his own demons, and what a difficult time we will, too, if we don't face up to our fears and desires.

The counterargument is a good artist shouldn't need such "tricks" to underscore his or her themes. Tell that to a classical crowd after that Beethoven symphony. And aren't the final images of "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Bonnie and Clyde" what really sear those great movies into our memory bank?

I've been thinking about the two bank robbers and their death throes - you knew that, right? - since seeing Michael Haneke's remake of his German thriller, "Funny Games." It's an incredibly brutal movie that I was tempted to walk out of a number of times.

It's also one I would have erased from said memory bank if it hadn't been for the last shot. I'm not giving anything away by saying that one of the characters stares directly into the camera, as if to confront the audience with what it has just seen - an utter negation of Hollywood thrillers such as "Desperate Hours" and "Cape Fear."

But the final image of that movie - it's more dramatic than I'm letting on - reminded me of "Bonnie and Clyde," which came out when I was in college. One day I was watching the "CBS Evening News" and commentator Eric Sevareid was denouncing "Bonnie and Clyde" as representative of how the young romanticized lawlessness.

I wrote a letter to him saying that Gandhi-esque, antiwar civil disobedience had nothing to do with robbing banks and, if anything, Arthur Penn's movie, particularly its ending, was a brilliant negation of Hollywood movies and a refutation of all his bourgeois values . . .

Whoops. Have I turned into Eric Sevareid? Isn't "Funny Games" emblematic of art that jolts rather than pacifies and isn't that a good thing? Not if people won't listen to you. "Funny Games" closed almost as soon as it opened and will no doubt join the German version as a DVD cult classic. Besides, I've always preferred works that extend the form - Stravinsky's, say - instead of those that tear it down, like Schoenberg's. Highsmith, not Haneke. Still, I'm grateful for final images that are lasting images, that make us think and feel deeper after the fact.

Oh, and that letter to Sevareid. If I wanted to end this with a bang I'd tell you he wrote back saying how much he respected my thoughts and he offered me a job at CBS News. But truth be told, some months later, my roommate was cleaning the living room and found the letter behind the sofa. I had forgotten to send it.

Ed Siegel, former Globe theater and television critic, is a freelance writer.