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Taxi Driver Ending Explained: What’s Real & What’s In Travis’ Head?
Directed by Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver builds to a bloody climax and concludes with a cryptic sequences of events — events that may be in Travis Bickle's head. When interpreted literally, the 1976 film ends with a lonely taxi driver, Travis Bickle, saving an adolescent prostitute by killing her pimps, and then becoming a New York City hero who seemingly fulfilled his destiny. However, a closer look implies that Travis' life ends in a figurative hell that he references throughout Taxi Driver.
On the surface, Travis (Robert De Niro) represents the prototypical loner who's detached from reality. He's a U.S. Marine who previously served in Vietnam, or at least that's what he claims, and struggles to connect with acquaintances, such as Wizard (Peter Boyle), and a romantic interest, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). During a first date, Travis upsets Betsy upon taking her to a porno movie and painfully showing his naiveté. After being rejected, Travis foreshadows his fate in Taxi Driver by telling Betsy that "You're in a hell, and you're gonna die in a hell like the rest of 'em."
At home, Travis trains and attempts to get organized. He writes in his diary that "loneliness has followed me my whole life," and informs Wizard that's he thinking about doing something "bad" after a bizarre encounter with a customer, portrayed by Scorsese, who plans to murder his wife. In Taxi Driver, everything changes for Travis after he spots a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster). Now, he's seemingly found a purpose, and plans to help the girl anyway he can. "Suddenly, there is a change," he says, "there has never been any choice for me." Now experiencing a major existential crisis, Travis prepares for war.
The Transformation: Real
When a militarized Travis shows up at a Palantine rally, wearing a mohawk and aviator shades, he's left his real identity behind. Earlier, Wizard explains how a man can become his job (in this case, a taxi driver), and now Travis has fully transformed into someone else — the archetypal Man with No Name. Previously, he'd been identified as a suspicious individual after lying to a Secret Service agent during a Palantine rally; in this moment, he tries to assassinate the politician but doesn't succeed.
This version of Travis suggests that he's delusional and fully detached from reality. Shortly before the assassination attempt, he writes a letter to his parents and implies that he's doing "sensitive work" for the government, and that he's dating Betsy. Travis also tells Iris that he "has to do something for the government," and that he "might be going a way for a while." But, he's merely projecting an image that will allow him to make sense of the world he lives in. "All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go," Travis writes early on in Taxi Driver. Now, he's identified that place as a hell on earth.
Travis' Ascent Into Hell On Earth: Real
Travis becomes a fatalist in Taxi Driver. He believes that he's supposed to kill Palantine — a man who claims to represent the "the people." Travis also believes that he'll save "sweet Iris" by cleaning up the symbolic "filth" that is Matthew, Iris' pimp (Harvey Keitel). It's this same frame of mind that unfortunately inspired John Hinckley Jr.'s real-life assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to get the attention of the Taxi Driver actress who portrays Iris, the aforementioned Foster.
In Taxi Driver, Travis kills Matthew and then waits a few moments before ascending into a hell on earth, a New York City building where men pay to have sex with teenage prostitutes. Aesthetically, this entire sequence was inspired by Scorsese's admiration of Caravaggio, an Italian Baroque artist known for blending the sacred with the profane (via Rebeller). First, Travis blasts a pimp's hand and ultimately shoots him in the head. By saving Iris from harm, Travis has eliminated a profane threat and protected a sacred figure. Any one of Scorsese's visuals could be the premise for a Caravaggio painting, as the Italian artist often incorporated extreme violence into his work, even going so far to depict his own severed head in "David with the Head of Goliath." As a character, Travis takes a similar approach by painting the walls red (a concept repeated in Scorsese's 2019 film The Irishman), and then sacrificing himself. In a slight twist, however, Travis' plan fails when he runs out of bullets.
Travis' Survival And Arrest: Not Real
Travis dies from his wounds in Taxi Driver after the police arrive; a moment that's foreshadowed earlier when he suggests that Betsy will "die in a hell like the rest of 'em." The irony is that Travis becomes one of the pack, a dead criminal who believed that his actions served a higher purpose. Visually, Scorsese shoots from above to remind the audience that they're looking down on Travis and the other victims who lie in the hell they created. An angelic figure in white, Iris, is the lone survivor, and she's framed next to religious imagery. On the left side of the frame: the profane. On the right side of the frame: the sacred. In the middle: Travis — a fusion of both Caravaggian concepts.
To reinforce the idea that Travis dies in Taxi Driver, Scorsese's camera slowly leaves the room while the police assess the scene, frozen in shock. The camera ultimately settles in the street to show that a giant mess still exists. The implication: Travis didn't clean up anything but instead contributed to the filth. Still, Taxi Driver leaves it up to the audience to interpret the rest of the film. Was Travis just in his actions? Or did Travis' delusional mind and moral righteousness get the best of him? Essentially, Scorsese provides the audience with a Caravaggian ending. Travis can be viewed as a sacred figure who lives on. Or he can be viewed as a profane murderer who's stuck in purgatory, or hell.
The Letter From Iris' Father: Not Real
Taxi Driver's epilogue makes it seems like Travis survived and became a New York City hero for saving young Iris, whose father reads a thank-you letter through voiceover narration. But if you listen closely, the man's writing and speech pattern mirrors Travis' diary entries and narration. And so Travis is either alive and creating another false narrative to justify his actions, or he's imagining an idealized version of events in his moment of death. Based on Scorsese's visual evidence, the letter from Iris' father is a figment of Travis' imagination.
