The ending of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is widely believed to take place in Travis Bickle’s imagination in his dying moments, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the filmmakers’ intentions. Taxi Driver stars Robert De Niro as Travis, a Vietnam War veteran with PTSD and insomnia. After returning from Vietnam, driving a cab around New York, and being disgusted by the rampant crime on the streets of his city, Travis decides to take the law into his own hands. This vigilante crusade culminates in a deadly shootout at a brothel where Travis attempts to save 12-year-old sex worker Iris.
At the end of the shootout, a blood-drenched Travis collapses onto a couch and stops moving as police officers swarm the building. What follows seems a little too good to be true. Travis isn’t prosecuted for killing all those people; he’s lauded as a hero. A series of newspaper clippings pinned up on the wall of his apartment show that he’s become a local celebrity, and a letter from Iris’ parents thanks him for saving her. Then, Betsy – who previously wanted nothing to do with Travis – is suddenly interested in him. This turn of events is so idealized and unrealistic that it seems imagined. But was it?
Travis Bickle Isn’t Supposed To Be Dead In Taxi Driver
According to Taxi Driver’s original screenwriter Paul Schrader, Travis isn’t supposed to be dead at the end of the movie. The closing scenes aren’t supposed to take place in his head; they’re supposed to be taking place for real. The question of whether or not the ending of Taxi Driver is “Travis’ dying fantasy” was posed to Schrader by a fan on social media. The fan noted that when they asked De Niro the same question, he “insisted this wasn’t the intention.” Schrader corroborated De Niro’s claim: “It wasn’t our intention, but it’s a legitimate interpretation.”
Why Travis Bickle Might Still Be Dead At The End Of Taxi Driver
While Schrader didn’t write the ending of Taxi Driver with Travis’ death in mind, he does concede that this reading is “a legitimate interpretation” of the ending. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Travis doesn’t survive the movie. For starters, the happy ending seems at odds with the gritty, grisly, cynical tone of the rest of the film. For the most part, Taxi Driver is a subversively realistic take on a vigilante thriller, upending the problematic fantasies found in movies like Death Wish. But Travis’ cathartic ending seems more in line with Death Wish than Taxi Driver.
The camera seems to support the death theory. When Travis falls down on the couch after his gun-toting frenzy, the camera rises up above him as if to represent his soul leaving his body. When Betsy is sitting in the back of Travis’ cab, just before Scorsese goes into the end credits, Travis does a disturbed double-take in his rearview mirror, as if he’s being greeted by Satan upon arrival in Hell. These are all just fan theories, but it seems a lot more likely that Travis died and went to Hell at the end of Taxi Driver than he survived the shootout and all his wildest dreams came true.
