What I take from this movie might be completely different than what others do. This is one of those masterpieces which appeal to each individual in a completely different way. While most people I know believe that de Niro's character actually died and the end was his imagination before he died, and Scorsese explained it was all literal, the common ground I find and I think that makes more sense is that most of the movie was his imagination except for its end. I think it was in his imagination he fell in love and tried to help Jodie Foster, while in reality he remained an ordinary Taxi Driver. In the last scene however he actually meets the girl he imagined he was in love with, and he only realizes that after she gets out of his cab. He doesn't charge her because for some strange reason which even he doesn't understand he likes her. And just as he moves away from her he realizes this was the girl he imagined. Before she leaves, she calls him by his name and most viewers would think she knows him from the past, but I think she doesn't. She just reads his name written close to the meter on his taxi. Just like the senator figured out his name.
What the film in my opinion is actually trying to tell is how a taxi driver dreams of being a hero according to his own understanding of his surroundings.
Review of Taxi Driver
