So I was writing a reply to your reply further up, when I saw this. I recently read Aristotle's Poetics, and for stating the bleeding obvious a lot of the time, it really brought home how much we respond to structure to inform our overall feeling about a piece, and how it has become "creative" to subvert that structure. (And I don't mean your switching between two periods of time. There is a very clear structure here. I am speaking of stories that deliberately omit, mislead without resolution, etc etc.)

But the interesting part to me was the necessity of dénouement (and screw Adaptation for ruining that word) to provide a satisfactory relief of tension for the audience. And I think the reason I find this story some completely pleasing is that you go beyond the usual end place a writer will end relative to the climax of the story.