The Card Counter Ending & Final Scene Explained

The Card Counter Ending & Final Scene Explained

Contents

The ending of Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is typically ambiguous; here’s the ending of the movie and the final scene in prison explained.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

The Card Counter Ending & Final Scene Explained

WARNING: Spoilers for The Card Counter.

Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter explores a dark storyline and its ending is even darker; here it is explained, including the ambiguous final scene. The story revolves around William “Bill” Tell (Oscar Isaac), a gambler with a dark past he’s trying to put behind him. While on the casino circuit, he meets La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who offers to front him money to be part of her stable. At first refusing, he soon meets Cirk (Tye Sheridan) a young, troubled man with ties to Bill’s past, namely a man named Maj. John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), and Bill agrees to work for La Linda in order to win enough earnings to set Cirk on the right path again.

As with most of Schrader’s movies, The Card Counter focuses on Oscar Isaac as a man grappling with the sins of his past and the darkness within. It’s certainly not an easy watch, but it is a fascinating one, grappling with a subject that has seemed to be largely taboo in Hollywood filmmaking. Isaac’s intensity and carefully controlled performance, in particular, is some of the best work of his career.

The ending takes a hard turn that may leave some audiences shocked, or at the very least confused. With so much work happening internally in the characters rather than in external dialogue, choices may seem to come out of nowhere and scenes left open-ending. Here’s the ending of The Card Counter explained.

Cirk’s Plan Explained (& Why It Wouldn’t Help Him)

The Card Counter Ending & Final Scene Explained

At first, Cirk and Bill’s meeting seems to be nothing but a casual coincidence, but it’s quickly revealed that Tye Sheridan’s character has intentions for Bill and also knows Bill’s dark secret: he was a former prison guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib who worked under Maj. Gordo, a military defense contractor. With that hook, Cirk also shares some of his life: His dad was also a guard who had worked at Abu Ghraib under Gordo and, like Bill, he took the fall and did time in military prison while Gordo went scot-free. Cirk’s mom left, his dad turned to drinking and eventually killed himself. Cirk’s plan for revenge is simple: kidnap Gordo, torture Gordo, then kill Gordo.

As a revenge narrative, it’s simple and compelling. But it’s the over-the-top revenge fantasy of a boy who only witnessed the change in his father after Abu Ghraib; he’s now filled with a righteous fury directed only at Gordo and no one else. Bill, who is older, wiser, and was actually there at Abu Ghraib, understands what Cirk doesn’t: they still participated in the torture. Gordo may have been in charge and he may have been the one to teach Bill and Cirk’s dad his methods of “enhanced interrogation” – but they still went along with it. Corrupted and pressured by Gordo or not, the stark truth that Cirk either doesn’t want to or isn’t emotionally mature enough to see is that his father still tortured people and it was on him to make his peace with that and atone.

See also  Morbius How Jared Letos Vampire Design Compares To The Marvel Comics

Bill deals with it in his own way, by withdrawing from close connections with people, living a transient lifestyle and a monkish existence. But he’s fully aware of the horrors they inflicted and that they deserved to do jail time, that they deserve the shame. Willam Dafoe’s villainous character may have ruined Cirk’s dad’s life, but his dad also ruined it himself and Cirk refuses to see that. It’s why his plan won’t work – the only way to get past it is to reach some sort of understanding and through understanding find peace.

Why Did Cirk Change His Mind About Seeing His Mom?

The Card Counter Ending & Final Scene Explained

By late in the third act, it appears as though Bill has finally gotten through to Cirk, though it took extreme measures in the end. Ultimately, Bill realizes his more oblique approach to getting through to Cirk isn’t working and decides to scare him straight. One night in his hotel room, Bill transforms with terrifying speed back into who he was when he worked at Abu Ghraib with the pretense of enacting those very methods upon Cirk. Previously, that version of Bill had only been shown in flashbacks even more intense than scenes from The Hurt Locker. The kid is rightfully terrified, and Bill, no longer threatening torture but still with a thick air of menace, reveals that he’s been saving up money for Cirk to pay off his college debts and go back to school, telling him to forget his plan, take the money, and go see his mom. Wisely, Cirk agrees and does just that–or so it seems. The horrifying third act twist reveals that Cirk hasn’t gone to see his mom at all, but has headed to Gordo’s house to put his plan into motion.

In the end, Bill failed to see exactly what was going on with Cirk. Through the movie, it becomes clear that Bill doesn’t really know what to do with Cirk or how to meaningfully communicate with him. The gambler’s people skills have gotten severely rusty over the years; the only people and scenario he truly knows how to read is other gamblers at a poker table. Thus, Bill read Cirk’s plan as the temporary plan of a young man without direction, a plan that would soon fade from his mind once the kid got distracted and lost interest. But Cirk is driven by an internal fury much stronger and more resolute than Bill realizes. His anger is vast and deep and compounded by all the awful events of his life, along with his impotent rage at a justice system that so often fails to deliver justice to those who deserve it most. All of Cirk’s rage has been funneled into the target of Gordo and it’s not something that will dissipate.

It’s certainly not going to be replaced with traveling the casino route and gambling. Throughout the movie, Cirk provides tells that Bill’s plan to distract Cirk and help him to find meaning is not working. Gambling movies usually emphasize the glitz of casinos but The Card Counter emphasizes their seediness. The young man often makes comments about what an odd lifestyle it is and that gambling really isn’t his thing, nor does he ever show any inclination in wanting to learn. Bill either can’t or won’t see that, so privately hopeful that a success story with Cirk will help him atone for his own sins and it leads to tragic results.

See also  Zack Snyder Says Rebel Moon Casting & First Look Coming Soon

The Meaning Of The Final Scene In Prison

After the terrible, final climax in which Bill sees a news report that Cirk has been shot and killed by Gordo, promoting him to go to Gordo’s house and torture the former Army Major, ultimately killing him, he turns himself into the police. He’s back in prison, this time for murder. The final scene shows Tiffany Haddish’s character La Linda coming to visit Bil in prison. It’s something of a surprise. They had started up a romance, but he left her high and dry, not only walking out on his poker tournament but also walking out on her, all to kill a man–and violently, at that. But La Linda comes to see him and she comes as a benevolent figure, not jilted or angry or betrayed, but seemingly with understanding. The final shot shows La Linda put her fingertip to the glass partition that divides him and Bill does the same and the shot pans and is held to the end.

It’s ambiguous, but full of meaning. First, it suggests that La Linda has forgiven him because she understands the darkness. She new virtually nothing about him, only that he had a lot of baggage in his past, some of it that might be quite dark. But Bill’s murder of Gordo was sure to have been all over the news, along with his sordid background and Gordo’s role in Abu Ghraib and subsequent escape from consequence, as well as Cirk’s story. It is horrific and tragic, but La Linda’s understanding smile and gesture to Bill seems to indicate that she now knows his full story and understands why he did what he did.

It’s also symbolic as a counterexample of a concept Bill explained to Cirk earlier in the movie: tilt. It’s a term from poker to describe a player who gets upset or emotionally rattled during a game and, as such, lets those emotions get the better of them, adopting a foolish strategy that often involves playing in an overly aggressive way. As Bill has shown, maintaining a poker face at all times is key to winning. The Card Counter isn’t exactly subtle in indicating that it’s an analogy for Cirk’s emotional state and his plan for delivering justice to Gordo.

But since Cirk has come into Bill’s life, Bill has also been tilted in ways. He spent years trying to keep equilibrium in his life, able to keep his demons at bay through the perfect balance of his routine. His life ever since being released from military prison has been an attempt to try to recreate the regimented setting of prison, as well as the peace. The final shot of The Card Counter, in which La Linda’s and Bill’s fingers are in perfect symmetry with each other are symbolic of the balance Bill has regained now that he’s back in prison. He has finally confronted his past, even if only in the most violent way, and has finally accepted that he is happier in prison than in the outside world as there’s no danger of his pristine equilibrium being upended.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/card-counter-ending-final-scene-explained/

Movies -