There & Back Again

The movies we’re looking at today understand this well and use their bookending scenes to convey something meaningful.

The Kuleshovs - Be it the iconic Gone Girl stare, hats in The Prestige, 1917 or Saving Private Ryan - here the opening and closing scenes are visually similar, but having gone through the entire journey that is the film, we read something totally different in the same frame by the end.

The Evolution - Avatar cleverly foreshadows the evolution to becoming a Na'vi by dousing the lead character in blue light in the close up opening shot. Kicking & Screaming too beautifully captures character evolution - where writing something on the go - once annoying, becomes something the character finds meaningful by the end.

..or the lack there of - Seinfeld opens and closes with the exact same petty exchange about shirt buttons between the two lead characters. Although 180 episodes apart, it shows how things and people don't really change.