Let us understand the Card Counter Ending. Card Counter is an American movie penned and directed by Paul Schrader. The executive producer for the movie is Martin Scorsese. It premiered on 2 September 2021 at the Venice International Film Festival and was released on 10 September 2021. The Card Counter probes a dark storyline, and its climax is even darker. The final scene, including the unclear Card Counter ending, is explained here.
The movie story revolves around William Bill Tell. He is a gambler with a shady past, trying to put behind his dark past. Bill has served eight years in an American military jail, where he learns to count cards. After his clearance, he becomes an unidentified poker player. During his visit to washa casino, he meets La Linda, his old acquaintance. Linda proposes to find someone to stake in him. He, however, refuses and soon meets Cirk. John Gordo and Bill decide to work for La Linda to win sufficient returns to set Cirk on the track again. The movie takes a hard ending, leaving the audience in shock. The Card Counter ending is explained here.
What happens in The Card Counter’s Ending?
In the final climax, Bill catches a news piece stating that Cirk has been shot and killed by Gordo. It promotes Bill to go to Gordo’s house and then trouble the former Army Major. Bill lastly kills him, which lands him in police custody. He is back in jail, this while for murder. In the ending scene, we see that Tell is in prison, and La Linda comes to meet him. A glass from the visitor booth keeps them separated. Linda puts her finger to the glass, and William Tell does the same. Although their fingers do not touch fully, it makes it clear that they both are connected.
What did the last scene mean?
Though the last scene is vague, it is full of meaning. It indicates that La Linda has pardoned him because she apprehends the darkness. She knew almost nothing about him, only that he had a dark past. But the news of Bill killing Gordo was foolproof to have been all over the news. Also, his despicable background, Gordo’s part in Abu Ghraib and succeeding escape from consequence, and Cirk’s story were all out there. It is terrible and miserable, but La Linda’s smile toward Bill raises the possibility that she now knows his story.
The Card Counter ending is also metaphorical as a counterexample of an idea that Bill ascribed to Cirk before in the movie: tilt. It is a term in poker to represent a player who gets upset during a game. It lets him embrace a foolish approach that usually involves playing in an overly assertive way. As Bill has depicted, holding a poker face every time is key to winning. The Card Counter isn’t exactly quiet in denoting that it is a metaphor for Cirk’s dynamic state and his plan for furnishing justice to Gordo.
How did Cirk’s Plan set the stage for The Card Counter ending?
When Cirk and Bill meet for the first time, it seems to be nothing but a coincidence. However, it is later clear that Cirk has purposes for Bill and knows his dark secret. In fact, Cirk shares some of Bill’s life. His discontent with Gordo becomes the reason for his plan to take revenge. He will first kidnap Gordo and then kill him. Cirk fails to realize that his father still tortured people.
Bill, on the other hand, deals with it in his own way. He withdraws his close connections with people and lives an itinerant lifestyle. He is, however, fully conscious of the atrocities they imposed and that they deserved to do jail time. Gordo might have ruined Cirk’s dad’s life, but his dad also destroyed it. Cirk denies seeing that. Because of this, we see that his plan won’t work and actually turns the opposite. Cirk himself gets killed, and later, Bill is sentenced to jail.
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