I think what really makes a movie like this, a movie like this is it's ambiguities. The plot is clearly laid out and you follow it just fine but little or big decisions the characters make don't have a clear answer and in fact have many. This is a testament to the director. He knows why and has the confidence to put it out there without defining every little thing. And the characters are so well developed that we can draw multiple conclusions that all make sense. Which is very true of humans in general and very hard for filmmakers to put on screen. You want everything to have a clear correlation or pay off but life isn't that way and only the best filmmakers can put that on screen genuinely.
I don't need to go off about the genius of Leone or this movie, we all know and that's why we're here but I want to throw in my two cents about the ending. There's the dream theory and all that other crap that teenagers like to come up with but theories like that put more thought into it than the actual movie. And this movie already gives you enough to think about.
I think the ending, the last scene, the scene right after Noodles thinks he just sent his friends to jail could mean one of these things: He's either happy that he saved them from death. Is just high. The only way he can actually be happy is when he's high/forgotten about his life. Or is happy he isn't going to jail again. The reason it's the last scene of the movie can be that they didn't have a good ending and thought this would be a nice scene. Or it could be that Max is actually dead now and the last time this happened this is what Noodles did and he's grown from that.
I don't know for sure but those are my two cents.
I don't need to go off about the genius of Leone or this movie, we all know and that's why we're here but I want to throw in my two cents about the ending. There's the dream theory and all that other crap that teenagers like to come up with but theories like that put more thought into it than the actual movie. And this movie already gives you enough to think about.
I think the ending, the last scene, the scene right after Noodles thinks he just sent his friends to jail could mean one of these things: He's either happy that he saved them from death. Is just high. The only way he can actually be happy is when he's high/forgotten about his life. Or is happy he isn't going to jail again. The reason it's the last scene of the movie can be that they didn't have a good ending and thought this would be a nice scene. Or it could be that Max is actually dead now and the last time this happened this is what Noodles did and he's grown from that.
I don't know for sure but those are my two cents.