VERY Surreal end to a surreal Flick! So he was in a Coma?!? Did the Mafioso Tenement/Brothel owner CAP him??
And how come he was not imprisoned for shooting all those (admittedly Bad) people??
even in "Death Wish" the cops had to spirit Gerome Kersey out of Town.
...and how did he know the Teenage Hooker's parents address in Pittsburgh?
It was surreal. Basically, even though he was nuts, he became an unlikely hero for shooting all the baddies.
It's meant to unsettle you
I think the court of public opinion save him. Who would prosecute a guy who nearly died trying to save a very young girl who was being pimped out and addicted to drugs? Especially in 1976?
I love the ending though when the music plays backwards and he looks in the rear view mirror, as Scorsesse says, "the clock is ticking once again."
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Who would prosecute a guy who nearly died trying to save a very young girl who was being pimped out and addicted to drugs? Especially in 1976?
Because it’s right after Vietnam. A Vietnam vet saves a child prostitute from vile pimps and lowlifes.
No DA is gonna want to touch that.
We don't know if he was prosecuted or not. Maybe he was acquitted or a Grand Jury refused to indict him.
shareThey (Iris's parents) wrote HIM a letter after Iris moved home. He would have gotten their address in Pittsburgh from their letter to him.
I still think the ending was part of his delusion after he went into the coma and/or died, but who knows. Apparently the movie's creators (writer and director) say he was really hailed as a hero. I find that ending less satisfying and less believable, personally.
No delusion. The "joke" is on the public. Travis was still out there. He will be set off by something else even if he's pacified with employment, some kind of human contact with whoever, something.
Mental Illness --in most cases- doesn't mean you are doing lunatic activity all the time. Sick people aren't necessarily dumb people. They can be smart enough to not reveal everything.
Kisskiss, Bangbang
OK, I get that. I still find it less than plausible, though. It just all seems so unlikely to me that, even after Travis had run-ins with the Secret Service (don't you think the agent who saw Travis would have recognized him from the little "chat" they had during the candidate's appearance in the same city?), everyone assumes he's a hero/good guy.
shareI think the "it was all a dream" scenario is the most likely. Besides the implausibility of Travis not being committed to a nuthouse after murdering two people and an unarmed man, there is no way Betsy would be getting into his cab again with a loving look in her eyes after what went down at the movie theatre.
The way it's filmed gives it a dreamlike atmosphere, the dying thoughts of Travis as he tries in his mind to justify what he did and how he will be remembered for it. However, how he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and turns it away shows that he secretly knows nothing will change. He will have lived and died as the same old antisocial psycho he always was, and wherever he's passing on to he will be stuck in an eternally recurring, purgatory hell of himself. The ending is chilling.
~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.
Both Scorsese and Schrader say that it wasn't a dream, but I guess that they wouldn't know...
share"Personally, I've always been inclined to take Schrader and Scorsese's words for it when they've claimed Travis's rebirth as a tabloid hero was meant literally – a preface to the equally mordant conclusion of the King of Comedy as well as a door left ajar for the sequel they still occasionally talk up. But there is a clear elegance to Travis's story ending with his corpse, and enough of a mood of woozy unreality to the coda for a question mark to eternally hover over it. Which is at least partly, I think, why the film so stubbornly refuses to leave the mind afterwards – De Niro's jarring last glance back in the cab like a needle stuck in a groove at the end of a record, refusing to let us move on, leaving us forever nipped at by doubt."
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/may/13/taxi-driver-reissue-scorsese-de-niro
But then again, I guess movie critics "wouldn't know" either. In your narrow world view there can only be room for one interpretation of something.
~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.
Yes, asswipe, critics know more about the reality of a film than the director and writer do, as well...especially when they're of the opinion that YOU like. You've got nerve, referring to my reply as "cold vomit", given your "warm dogsh!t" attitude. Join my "ignore" list, you smarmy sack of pus.
shareI'm on your ignore list? Oh, I'm devastated, really.
~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.
Wow, chill out prick
shareI'm curious to know if many people in the theatres were cheering Travis on during the shootout.
shareNot 100% true. While they do state it is not meant to be an obvious fantasy or dream sequence, they state it is an EMOTIONAL conclusion to the film, not a literal one. It's a prologue meant to explain the cycle of violence and despair will never end - but it's not meant to end the story in a literal, factual storytelling manner. You're supposed to understand the meaning, not to focus too much on the literal details.
It's like in the end of Goodfellas, when Henry Hill gets out of the witness stand and starts to narrate to the camera. Do we take it literally that Henry Hill just got up and started talking to himself? No. Movies are about emotion, not about literal storytelling.
The same thing can be said about "The King of Comedy", which also offers an ambiguous emotional ending.
"You keep him in here, and make sure HE doesn't leave!"
he was fantasizing about being a hero and saving the girl, but all he was was a taxi driver
so many movies, so little time
I find the ending very confusing, as well as the comments from the director and writer. They say it's not a dream, but also that it's not intended to be realistic. If it isn't to be taken as a delusion or a reality, how is it supposed to be taken? The statements from the writer and director seem unclear to me.
Regardless of their intent, the behavior of the other characters at the end does not match their behavior during the rest of the movie. During the majority of the movie the other characters act and react in a realistic and plausible manner, then all of a sudden at the end they don't. Apart from a small scar Travis looks just like he did at the start of the movie. He keeps his job, doesn't go to jail or an institution, and the other drivers talk to him as if nothing happened. Then Betsy finds his taxi in row of parked cabs and just hops in without telling anyone. Just hopping an empty cab to be found by someone. - It doesn't (to me) seem to match the behavior of the rest of the movie, which is why so many people gravitate toward the idea that the end is a reflection of Travis's delusions, rather than the reality.
It makes perfect sense to John Hinckley and many others on this board. That's the scary part about all this.
shareTravis takes justice into their own hands, that should be punished....
Really he killed four guys, with guns without license.
I see it as a perturbed criminal, not a hero.
And it's also spiteful, as we can see in the final sequence.
Both the director and screenwriter have stated that the ending is not a dream or a fantasy. That tells you that the aftermath of the shooting was meant to be real, not flashes in Travis' mind as he's dying or in a coma. If the ending weren't real, we'd miss out on one of the best twists to the film: an unhinged social outcast almost inadvertently becomes a local hero, because he failed in his original mission that would have made him a pariah.
It gets a little tiresome to hear people ignoring authorial intent and claiming that their contrary interpretation is the correct one. It's one thing to say that they don't like or accept the ending as the creators intended, or to say that the filmmakers weren't very clear about their intent. It borders on delusion to ignore their intent and declare that your contrary interpretation is the "real" intent.
Very good points. Subjectivism is as insane as moral relativism. ‘I’ll pick my own reality depending on what I want to believe 👏🏻‘ Nope, we have to consult the creators, and they’re telling us the ending is real.
I suspect they were making the point that the world is as insane as Bickle - a murderous madman could only be hailed a hero in a crazy world, and apparently Betsy’s character was described in the script as a ‘star fucker’ in which case maybe she’s sick in her own way - now attracted to this nutcase after all.
Travis’ creepy look at himself in the mirror snatches away any hope we might have for Travis though, he’ll kill again and it won’t be low-lives next time, it’ll be someone more like his original target, and the world won’t be as sympathetic.
My only issue with the ending is that I don’t think ‘this world’ would be insane enough not to imprison Bickle for his crimes, or at least send him to a loony farm. I just can’t see the justice system let a triple murder off because of ‘public opinion’, and letting a guy with illegal guns and homemade contraptions for concealing them just drive around in his taxi again.
I think he's alive, and avoided jail time and psychiatric treatment, but Betsy being in his cab and lovingly looking at him and admiring what he did was just a fantasy. Notice we never see her get into the cab, and Travis is driving for awhile before he realizes she's there. Between this and the quick flash when he looks in the mirror show that he's not "cured" or in any better state of mind than he was at the start. He's merly in a brief oasis of peace, before his next psychotic episode.
shareIn addition to all of this, it was debated for a long time if any parts of the ending, including the shootout, was even real or a figment of Travis' imagination, however slightly deranged but mostly laden with positive wishful thinking?
shareSo when she exits the cab and goes to pay him, and he tells her not to worry about it, he’s talking to thin air?
share