How Martin Scorsese Ended 21 Of His Movies
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 12: Martin Scorsese arrives at the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 12: Martin Scorsese arrives at the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)

Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" is filled with some memorable images, but perhaps none more so than the film's final shot, which serves to make the audience complicit in the often amoral actions that came before. Here's The New Yorker's Richard Brody:

It’s a moment with a terrifying, Olympian blend of compassion, disdain, and anguish; it shows a fatal lack of imagination combined with a desperate range of unfulfilled desires. The shot shows not just an audience, but the audience: Scorsese puts the film’s viewers face to face with themselves, charges us with compensating for our lack of imagination and fatal ambition through contact with the wiles of a master manipulator. Just as the fictionalized Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is presented at the seminar by a host (who, in a diabolical cameo, is played by the real-life Belfort), so we, the movie audience, have been introduced to Belfort by another enthusiastic impresario, namely Martin Scorsese, who knows perfectly well that he is giving us something that we want, something that we need, and something that taps into dreams and ambitions that are both central to life and completely suspect.

That Scorsese is able to pack so much subtext into one shot is nothing new. From the eerie final moment of "Taxi Driver" to the demonstrative (and literal) last blast of non-conformity in "Goodfellas," Scorsese has been making audiences think as they exit the theater for years. Posted to Reddit by user thetacobellvampire, here is how Martin Scorsese ended 21 of his most famous films.

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