'My Oxford Year' stars Corey Mylchreest, Sofia Carson explain ambiguous ending

My Oxford Year’s ending is significantly different from the novel it’s based on.

The story follows American graduate student Anna (Sofia Carson) during her year at Oxford, where she falls in love with her professor Jamie (Corey Mylchreest), after both initially decide to keep things casual.

Spoilers ahead!

Anna then discovers that the real reason behind his lack of commitment is a rare form of terminal cancer. In the book, Jamie travels through Europe with Anna before he dies.

However, in the movie, Anna sits at his bedside as he slips away. She only gets to imagine the adventures with him, and then he fades from the scenes, revealing that he never got to travel with her.

Lead stars Sofia and Corey are explaining how that came to be, with the Queen Charlotte star first and foremost clarifying the film’s ambiguous ending, declaring, "The guy's dead."

"It's better like that," he added gently. "It's more powerful. That is the direction that the book is heading in, and it would feel like hypocrisy for Jamie to speak all these things and for Anna to be understanding that philosophy of life [and not end there]."

"The impressive thing is that Jamie believes all of these things — forever is composed of nows — and he doesn't have that many nows left," Corey added.

"So, what's really amazing is that he's doing all of this stuff and believes all these things with really not that much time left. If that wasn't true, it would feel like we're undervaluing his beliefs," he explained further.

Weighing in, Sofia said, "Even though it's clear Anna's alone at the end, we left it a little bit ambiguous because we wanted the film to end with hope and with light."

"Which is why we wanted to show them living all those things together," she continued. "And then when he disappears and when he's gone and you assume she's lost him, that element of hope and the idea of life after love and life after loss is a really powerful thing."