Towards the end of the movie, the film returns back to the first frame of the film. The we saw of the main character was that he trashed a gasoline truck into the Yakuza's hideout. Was this supposed to mean, it was all a dream? Or......? What could it mean?
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Just watched it and all i can add is that i guess he lived. thats the thing w/ kitano; he'll turn the entire movie on its head in the last few frames. i love and hate it but thats why i love it. its what makes him a true auture. that style is like no one elses and who would want it?! but he has the balls to play that big of a cinematic trick on his audience only moments before its all over. but its what we expect, i 'suppose. anyways..great film. one of his best.
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It was all a daydream on the can XD
shareHe could have jumped out of the truck at the last minute.
shareI have to agree the ending is very strange. It seems impossible he could have survived the crash at the end and to see it as a daydream on the toilet is a bit silly.
I think it was a great enigmatic artistic touch in the vein of Antonioni at the end of Blow Up when he can hear the tennis match but no one is playing. And the explosion is a bit like Zabriskie Point.
Yeah, but in Blow Up, the final scene had some kind of relevance and followed in the vein of whatever lame point Antonioni was trying to make. The only point I could extract from showing the character in the same position he was at the beginning of the movie, if it wasn't a dream, is to show how much things have spiralled out of control. If this was the case, I think it could have been done less ambiguously. I don't see what's to benefit by making the interpretation "enigmatic." This wasn't some kind of movie where the characters were struggling to come to a concrete base of reality.
shareI'd prefer that it was all just a dream, I can't see how hes that close to the Yakuza when hes only been in it for a few weeks.
shareAre you joking? Who has the balls to do that? It's not about balls - people hate the 'it's all a dream' plot device. I like Takeshi, but this film was scraping average before it annihilated any scrap of meaning.
shareIt was what he imagined while sitting in the can for so long during the game.
"Be wary of Wenk -- I want to warn you!"
I guess I have a different interpretation of the ending than the ones given here.
I thought that the scene at the very end, showing him in the outhouse, didn't occur in linear sequence with the rest of the film. Rather, it was just a rhetorical device to demonstrate how far the protagonist had traveled from that sleepy local baseball game before meeting his demise.
upon viewing the film again, i feel that the two crapper shots illustrate a kind of character development. i don't think it makes sense to view the last scene out of sequence with the rest of the film; that is, i don't think it occured before his tragic journey and is simply placed at the end to remind the viewer who this person was. the two crapper shots are clearly different. in the crapper shot at the beginning, he is lazily walking back to the game. in the shot at the end, he is running. as a linear sequence, these two shots seem to illustrate that the character has come to some kind of discovery which compels him to value action and the expression of energy.
it's a really odd way to end the film. i mean, in the penultimate shot we've just seen the gas truck go up in flames. could a mere daydream be enough to spark a change in character? or perhaps he miraculously survived that close call with death?
i agree with this interpretation....
that being said, my personal opinion is that this whole movie if offbeat!
were we meant to respect or feel sympathy towards the lead? coz from the very first scene all i felt was apathy bordering on hate! Until he said 2 sentences, i was also thinking he was borderline retarded!
That original Yakuza had every right to be a dick right up until he said his clan would take down the Gas Station... the guy hadn't even started washing his fn car!
Another reason why there was little to no sympathy evoked for the lead was in the construct of the film. What happened to Iguchi?? The film seems to be 3 seperate acts focusing on 3 seperate, but main, characters?? I was more interested in Takeshi's character, but that really seemed to bear no relevance to the main story outside of 'wanting to kill Yakuza'... (certainly didn't see the double-rape coming!)
in short - whilst i did appreciate the filmography, the lack of character development left me at point that i wanted to smash that lead characters face in!
Have to say I agree with this totally - felt that the last scene was basically a retrospective shot. He didn't 'survive' the exploding gas tanker, and to suggest it was 'all a dream' is nothing more than the insultingly obvious and literal conclusion if you see a film in black and white, from A to Z, what you see is what you get. I personally give the maestro that is Takeshi Kitano a lot more credit than that!
shareBut remember that this was one of his very early efforts as a writer/director. He's developed his craft a lot over the past couple of decades, but as this is just his sophomore work as a director I think you can give him a little too much credit. I had a literal take on the ending, and it struck me as amateurish and disappointing.
The other posts about it being a device to show how far the protagonist had fallen are interesting, but I just don't buy it. Of course, there's no such thing as a 'wrong' interpretation with a film like this, but, like I say, I think it is possible to give a film maker too much credit.
No, no. Psychopaths kill for no reason. I kill for money. It's a job. That didn't come out right.
Surely you're not saying that the film was all a daydream whilst having a poo poo...? I just refuse to believe that. I appreciate it's an earlier film, but the man is sharp and smart, and he always was, even back in his comedy days. I find it hard to accept that such a guy would write something that ended 'and it was all a dream...'
shareactually it doesn't really matter if it was a dream or not.
Think about that.
"Actually it doesn't matter if it was a dream or not".
Indeed; that's the way I see it as well. After all, everything that happened, happened. We saw it with our own eyes.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan
I thought he was just daydreaming while sitting on the can the whole time. Escapism. The guy has the dullest and most boring life in the world. If anyone needs to daydream about something unusual and exciting happening in his life, it's that guy. Personally I think the daydream theory is preferable to the alternatives, and moreover makes the most sense. I mean come on, would a guy like that really do a kamikaze gasoline truck attack on a yakuza headquarters, or would he just daydream about doing something like that to escape the tedium of his real life?
"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history."
Mao