A Dark Comedy About Life, Death, and Second Chances
The End, released in 1978 and directed by Burt Reynolds, is a film that takes a difficult subject and treats it with a mixture of humour, sadness, and surprising tenderness. Reynolds stars as Wendell Sonny Lawson, a man who learns that he is terminally ill and must confront what the end of his life might mean. Sally Field plays Mary Lawson, the woman at the emotional centre of his story. Her performance is essential to the film’s balance. Without Mary, the comedy might feel cruel and the sadness might feel empty. With her, The End becomes a story about love, responsibility, and the messy business of saying what matters while there is still time.
By 1978, Field was in the midst of a remarkable run of film work, moving confidently between drama and comedy. The End asked her to do both at once. Mary Lawson is not a simple comic partner, and she is not a weeping figure of tragedy. She is a woman with her own history with Sonny, her own frustrations, and her own capacity for forgiveness. Field plays her with a directness that keeps the film honest. When Mary is funny, she is funny because she sees Sonny clearly. When she is moved, she is moved because she knows him well enough to understand what he is hiding behind his jokes.
The Story in General Terms
The premise of The End is deliberately stark. Sonny Lawson, a successful but restless man, receives devastating medical news. Faced with a prognosis he cannot accept, he begins to think about ending his own life on his own terms, rather than enduring a slow decline. What follows is not a solemn drama, but a dark comedy in which his plans go wrong, his encounters become increasingly absurd, and his attempts to control his fate reveal how little control any of us truly has.
Reynolds, directing himself, leans into that absurdity. The film includes a series of comic set pieces, eccentric supporting characters, and moments of broad humour that sit uneasily alongside its serious theme. That unease is intentional. The End is interested in how people use humour to cope with fear, how they deflect pain with jokes, and how they sometimes need to be shaken out of self-pity before they can see the people around them clearly. Sonny’s journey is not toward a tidy moral. It is toward a more honest reckoning with the life he has lived and the relationships he has neglected.
Mary Lawson is central to that reckoning. As Sonny’s former wife, she knows his charm, his selfishness, and his capacity for kindness. She is not impressed by his dramatic gestures, and she is not willing to pretend that their past was simpler than it was. Yet she remains present in his life, and her presence forces Sonny to confront questions he would rather avoid. What does he owe the people he loves? What does it mean to make amends? And is it possible to find meaning not in a grand exit, but in ordinary attention to others?
Sally Field as Mary Lawson
Field’s performance in The End is notable for its restraint. She does not compete with Reynolds for comic attention, and she does not try to soften Mary into a saintly figure. Instead, she gives Mary a lived-in quality, as if this woman has a life beyond the scenes we see, with work, friendships, and opinions of her own. When she speaks to Sonny, she speaks plainly. She can be exasperated, affectionate, and unsparing in the same conversation, and that range makes their scenes together feel real rather than scripted.
This is one of the great strengths of Field’s acting in this period. She had a gift for playing women who were emotionally intelligent without being sentimental, and who could hold their ground in a scene with a powerful male star without turning the scene into a contest. In The End, that gift is on full display. Mary Lawson does not need to shout to be heard. She listens, she responds, and she refuses to let Sonny’s humour become an excuse for avoiding feeling. In doing so, she becomes the film’s moral compass, not because she lectures, but because she embodies a different way of facing difficulty: with honesty, humour, and care for others.
The chemistry between Field and Reynolds is also important. The two actors had worked together before, and their familiarity gives their scenes a relaxed, unforced quality. They can trade jokes quickly, but they can also fall silent in a way that suggests shared history. That silence matters in a film about mortality. It suggests that some of the most important things between people are not said in speeches, but understood in glances, in pauses, and in the decision to stay in the room when leaving would be easier.
Comedy, Mortality, and the 1970s
The End belongs to a particular moment in American film, when mainstream comedies were willing to take on darker subjects and when stars like Reynolds were willing to risk audience goodwill by playing flawed, frightened characters. The film’s humour is not always comfortable, and modern viewers may find some of its jokes dated or uneasy. Yet its central question remains relevant: how do we live when we know that life is finite? The film does not offer a comforting answer, but it does suggest that connection matters more than control, and that humour, used honestly, can be a form of courage rather than avoidance.
Mary Lawson represents that suggestion in human form. She is not a symbol, but a person who has learned, perhaps through her own disappointments, that love is not about perfection. It is about showing up, telling the truth, and allowing another person to be both ridiculous and deserving of care. Field’s portrayal avoids the trap of making Mary merely a supportive figure for a male protagonist’s journey. She has her own dignity, her own boundaries, and her own sense of what she will and will not accept. That independence makes her compassion more powerful, because it is chosen rather than automatic.
For audiences in 1978, The End was also a chance to see Field in a different register from her more dramatic roles. She could be funny without losing emotional depth, and she could be serious without losing warmth. That versatility would serve her well in the years ahead, as she moved between genres and continued to build one of the most respected careers in American film.
Why The End Still Deserves Attention
The End is not a perfect film, and it does not pretend to be. Its tone shifts, sometimes abruptly, between farce and melancholy. Some viewers may find that shift jarring. Yet those shifts are part of its honesty about grief and fear. Real life rarely stays in one emotional register, and neither does this film. One moment can be absurd, the next can be heartbreaking, and the next can be unexpectedly tender. Field helps hold those moments together. Her steadiness gives the audience a place to stand while Sonny’s world spins.
For Past Tunes readers, The End is worth revisiting not only as a Sally Field performance, but as a document of a time when popular cinema was willing to be both entertaining and unsettling. It reminds us that Reynolds, often remembered primarily as a charismatic star, was also a director interested in serious themes, and that Field, often remembered for her dramatic triumphs, was also a gifted comic actress with a keen sense of timing and emotional truth.
Mary Lawson may not be the role that won Field awards, but she is a role that shows her artistry clearly. In a film about a man trying to write his own ending, Mary is the person who reminds him — and us — that endings are rarely ours alone to write. They are shared, shaped by the people we love, and made meaningful not by dramatic gestures, but by the quiet, daily work of paying attention to one another while we still can.