Water a silly plot? 'Bad' ending?

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2003)

Obviously a re-education session in Chinatown is now in order.
SPOILERS
Firstly, I will address the comments regarding the ending of Chinatown being "bad, stupid, or pointless" and Polanksi being "pretentious" for insisting an ending killing the female lead. How many writing this know what happened to Polanski six years before making Chinatown? Did you know that his wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally killed in the Manson family murders? Now, you might want to consider, just maybe, this event would cloud a person's perception of justice in LA, particularly in a city where THE industry sells in wholesale and bulk the manufactured image of perpetual beauty. Polanski was living in Italy at the time he was approached to make Chinatown, and wanted nothing to do with Hollywood. Luckily, Nicholson, Towne, and Evens all convinced him to come back to work on the project as he was the director they absolutely sought.
Now, for those folks who think a water kingpin is a pointless and silly villain, I would suggest highly looking into the real life William Mulholland, the man who 'allegedly' paid-off the State Supreme court of CA for the largest public works project in history to divert the Owens River to Los Angeles, and in the process ruined the entire Owens Valley, once called the 'Geneva of the West'. Farmers were bankrupted, lives were lost, people were killed. Mulholland became a vastly wealthy and respected man. The city named a street after him, Mulholland Drive, now an international landmark running along the top of the Hollywood Hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley, a valley his water (and yes, land speculation too) made developable. Mulholland is now considered the spiritual father of Los Angeles. Where is the true justice here? What is one honest farmer's life worth? How much power (and water) can one man have?
Chinatown, it is not a movie about a place, but a journey into a world that you and I as a people, don't, can't, and won't understand, and if we try to, those with the REAL power will swat us down like flies and not give a D@$N! Jake's last line is "as little as possible", repeating the quote he and Faye Dunaway say in bed much earlier that morning, "What did you do in Chinatown? As little as possible."
And I must also mention Jerry Goldsmith's stunning combination of Cowell/Cage avant guard piano techniques and Gershwin in the score. Remarkable!
Godfather (I, II), Network, All the Presidents Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, French Connection (I,II) and Chinatown...dark character studies all, probably the greatest American films ever made, and no, not a happy ending to be found. I read a transcript of an interview of Robert Towne where he said he couldn't make Chinatown today as the studios wouldn't put up the money thinking the public would get it. Sadly, judging from many of the comments here, this is accurate. For evidence look at LA Confidential. The film is the modern relative of Chinatown (but with lots of neat guns, fights, blood and a happy ending added) and it only grossed 60 million on a budget over 30 million; nearly a failure in today's Hollywood.
Oh, and Faye Dunaway's character losing an eye? Read Oedipus to understand the imagery. If not, go rent Shawshank Redemption, Titanic, Gladiator and various other 'modern classics' and leave Chinatown, with its bad ending, well alone.