The Raging Bull ending explained has puzzled and moved audiences since the film’s release in 1980, standing as one of cinema’s most haunting and ambiguous conclusions. Martin Scorsese’s biographical drama about boxer Jake LaMotta culminates not in a triumphant fight or redemptive moment, but in a cramped dressing room where a bloated, aged former champion recites Marlon Brando’s famous speech from On the Waterfront to his own reflection. This ending represents the culmination of Scorsese’s meditation on self-destruction, masculinity, and the possibility””or impossibility””of personal redemption. The film’s conclusion raises profound questions about whether Jake LaMotta has achieved any genuine self-awareness after decades of violence, jealousy, and self-sabotage.
When he speaks the words “I coulda been a contender,” is he finally acknowledging his own responsibility for destroying his relationships and career, or is he still deflecting blame onto others? The ending’s power lies precisely in its refusal to provide easy answers, forcing viewers to grapple with the complexity of human nature and the limits of introspection. By examining the Raging Bull ending in depth, viewers gain insight into Scorsese’s artistic vision, the film’s place in American cinema, and the philosophical questions it raises about guilt, redemption, and self-knowledge. This analysis will explore the scene’s symbolism, its connection to the film’s themes, Robert De Niro’s transformative performance, and the biblical quote that closes the picture. Understanding this ending transforms Raging Bull from a brutal boxing film into one of the most spiritually searching works in cinema history.
Table of Contents
- What Does the Ending of Raging Bull Really Mean?
- The Biblical Quote and Its Significance in Raging Bull’s Finale
- Robert De Niro’s Physical Transformation and the Ending’s Impact
- The Mirror Scene: Symbolism and Self-Confrontation in Raging Bull
- The Connection Between Violence and Self-Destruction in the Ending
- Scorsese’s Directorial Vision and the Ending’s Place in Cinema History
- How to Prepare
- How to Apply This
- Expert Tips
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Does the Ending of Raging Bull Really Mean?
The final scene of Raging Bull takes place in 1964, years after Jake LaMotta’s boxing career has ended and his life has spiraled through nightclub comedy, imprisonment, and estrangement from everyone who once loved him. Alone in a dressing room before a performance, Jake shadow-boxes briefly, then sits before a mirror and rehearses Terry Malloy’s famous monologue from On the Waterfront. The choice of this particular speech is far from random””it’s a monologue about betrayal, wasted potential, and blame. In On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy accuses his brother Charley of ruining his boxing career by forcing him to throw a fight. When Jake recites these words, the layers of meaning become dizzying. Is Jake identifying with Terry as a victim of others’ manipulation? Or has he finally realized that, unlike Terry, he has no one to blame but himself? Throughout Raging Bull, Jake destroys every meaningful relationship through his paranoid jealousy and explosive violence.
His brother Joey, his wife Vickie, his children””all driven away by his own actions. The mirror itself serves as a crucial symbol. Throughout the film, Jake has been unable to see himself clearly, projecting his own failures and insecurities onto others. Now, finally alone with his reflection, he performs someone else’s words about victimhood. The ambiguity is intentional: Scorsese refuses to tell us whether Jake has achieved genuine insight or remains trapped in self-deception. The ending suggests that self-knowledge may be the most difficult fight of all””one that Jake is still losing, or perhaps just beginning to win.
- The On the Waterfront speech creates multiple layers of meaning about blame and self-awareness
- The mirror symbolizes Jake’s lifelong struggle to see himself honestly
- Scorsese deliberately leaves Jake’s level of self-understanding ambiguous
The Biblical Quote and Its Significance in Raging Bull’s Finale
After the dressing room scene, Raging Bull concludes with a title card displaying a passage from the Gospel of John, chapter 9, verse 24-26. The quote describes a blind man healed by Jesus who, when questioned by Pharisees, responds: “All I know is this: once I was blind, and now I can see.” This biblical reference transforms the entire film, reframing Jake’s journey in spiritual terms and dedicating the movie to Scorsese’s former film teacher, Haig Manoogian. The blind man’s story provides a framework for understanding Jake’s arc. Like the man born blind, Jake has lived in a kind of spiritual darkness””unable to see his own cruelty, unable to recognize love when it surrounded him. The question the ending poses is whether Jake, like the blind man, has finally received sight.
Scorsese, raised Catholic and deeply influenced by religious themes throughout his career, offers this quote not as an answer but as a possibility. Perhaps even someone as destructive as Jake LaMotta can achieve grace. The dedication to Haig Manoogian adds another dimension. Manoogian was Scorsese’s mentor at NYU, the teacher who believed in him when others didn’t. By connecting this dedication to a story about blindness and sight, Scorsese suggests that Manoogian helped him see””helped him become the filmmaker he was meant to be. This personal element makes the ending feel less like a judgment of Jake and more like a prayer for redemption, both for the character and perhaps for Scorsese himself.
- The biblical quote from John 9:24-26 introduces themes of spiritual blindness and healing
- The passage reframes Jake’s story as potentially one of grace rather than pure tragedy
- The dedication to Haig Manoogian connects the film to Scorsese’s personal journey
Robert De Niro’s Physical Transformation and the Ending’s Impact
Robert De Niro’s legendary physical transformation for Raging Bull reaches its most devastating expression in the final scene. After filming the boxing sequences with a lean, muscular physique, De Niro famously gained approximately 60 pounds to portray the older, retired Jake LaMotta. This wasn’t mere stunt casting””the weight gain fundamentally alters the audience’s relationship to the character and makes the ending’s emotional impact possible. The bloated Jake of the final scene bears little resemblance to the explosive athlete we watched dominate opponents in the ring. His body has become a prison, a physical manifestation of all his accumulated sins and self-abuse. When De Niro shadow-boxes before the mirror, the contrast between memory and reality becomes achingly clear.
This man was once a middleweight champion of the world; now he can barely move. The weight isn’t just fat””it’s regret, isolation, and decades of poor choices made flesh. De Niro’s performance in the final monologue demonstrates why he won the Academy Award for this role. His delivery of the On the Waterfront speech is deliberately flat, rehearsed, performative””Jake is preparing for his nightclub act, not having a genuine moment of revelation. Yet underneath that surface performance, De Niro lets glimpses of real pain flicker through. The line “I coulda been a contender” carries different weight when spoken by someone who actually was a contender, who actually held a championship belt, and who threw it all away anyway.
- De Niro’s 60-pound weight gain makes the ending’s tragedy physically visible
- The transformation emphasizes the contrast between Jake’s past glory and present decline
- De Niro’s nuanced delivery balances performance within performance
The Mirror Scene: Symbolism and Self-Confrontation in Raging Bull
Mirrors appear throughout Raging Bull, but the final mirror scene represents the culmination of this visual motif. Earlier in the film, we see Jake looking at his reflection after fights, examining his battered face, but always looking at surface wounds. The dressing room mirror in the finale demands something different””a confrontation with who he has become inside, not just what has happened to his body. The staging of this scene emphasizes Jake’s isolation. He is utterly alone, having driven away every person who ever cared about him. His brother Joey, whom he accused of sleeping with his wife and brutally beat, is gone. Vickie, the beautiful young woman he obsessively pursued and then destroyed with jealousy, is gone.
Even the crowds who once cheered his violent victories are absent. The only audience Jake has now is himself, and the question becomes whether he can truly see what that self has done. Scorsese shoots the scene with minimal cuts, allowing De Niro’s face to fill the frame as he speaks to his reflection. The intimacy is uncomfortable, almost unbearable. We are witnessing something that should be private””a man attempting, perhaps for the first time, to look honestly at himself. Whether Jake succeeds in this self-examination remains the film’s central mystery. The mirror can show us our reflection, but whether we recognize what we see is another matter entirely.
- Mirrors serve as a recurring motif throughout the film, culminating in the finale
- Jake’s isolation in the scene represents the consequences of his lifetime of violence
- Scorsese’s staging emphasizes the uncomfortable intimacy of self-confrontation
The Connection Between Violence and Self-Destruction in the Ending
Raging Bull’s ending gains power from everything that precedes it””two hours of almost unwatchable violence, both in the ring and outside it. Jake LaMotta as portrayed by Scorsese and De Niro is not a sympathetic underdog but a genuinely disturbing figure, a man who channels rage into professional success but cannot turn it off when he leaves the arena. The finale asks whether such a person can ever escape the cycle of destruction. The boxing scenes in Raging Bull are deliberately brutal, shot by Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman to emphasize the visceral horror of the sport rather than its glory. Blood sprays in slow motion; faces become unrecognizable masses of swelling and cuts. But the violence outside the ring proves more disturbing: Jake’s explosive confrontations with Vickie, his savage beating of Joey, his cruelty toward anyone who shows him love.
The ending places all this violence in retrospect, forcing us to consider its cumulative weight. When Jake finally sits alone in that dressing room, the violence has turned entirely inward. He has no one left to punch, no opponents to absorb his rage. The self-destruction that was always his true opponent has won. Yet the film’s spiritual dimension””introduced by that biblical quote””suggests that even self-destruction might not be the final word. Raging Bull ends not with death or defeat but with a man still trying, still performing, still somehow surviving despite everything he has done to himself and others.
- The film’s brutal violence contextualizes the quiet devastation of the ending
- Jake’s rage turns inward once he has no external targets remaining
- The ending balances despair with the possibility of survival and grace
Scorsese’s Directorial Vision and the Ending’s Place in Cinema History
Martin Scorsese has described Raging Bull as a kamikaze project, a film he made when he believed his career might be over and he had nothing left to lose. This context illuminates the ending’s unflinching honesty. Scorsese wasn’t trying to create a crowd-pleaser or a conventional sports movie””he was making a film about the limits of redemption and the darkness within human nature. The ending of Raging Bull influenced countless films that followed, from Scorsese’s own later work to other filmmakers’ explorations of flawed, irredeemable protagonists. The refusal to provide catharsis, the ambiguity about whether Jake has learned anything, the quiet devastation of the final scene””all of this became a template for serious American cinema.
Films like The Wrestler, Whiplash, and even Scorsese’s own The Irishman owe debts to Raging Bull’s willingness to end on a note of unresolved complexity. Initially, Raging Bull underperformed at the box office, but critics immediately recognized its power. The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor (De Niro) and Best Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker). Over time, critical opinion has only grown stronger; in 1990, Raging Bull was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and numerous critics’ polls have named it the best film of the 1980s. The ending, which confused some initial viewers, is now recognized as essential to the film’s lasting impact.
- Scorsese made Raging Bull during a personal and professional crisis, lending it urgency
- The ending influenced decades of American cinema about flawed protagonists
- Critical appreciation of the film and its ending has grown substantially over time
How to Prepare
- Watch On the Waterfront beforehand, or at minimum, familiarize yourself with the “I coulda been a contender” scene. Understanding the original context of Terry Malloy’s speech””a man blaming his brother for ruining his boxing career””illuminates the layers of meaning when Jake recites these words. Terry’s accusation of betrayal gains ironic weight when spoken by someone who betrayed everyone around him.
- Pay attention to mirror imagery throughout Raging Bull from the very beginning. Note when Jake looks at his reflection, what he sees, and what he refuses to see. Track how his relationship with his own image changes over time. By the finale, the mirror becomes his only remaining relationship.
- Read the biblical passage from John chapter 9 in its full context before watching. The story of the man born blind who gains sight involves not just physical healing but spiritual transformation and conflict with religious authorities who refuse to believe. Understanding this story enriches the ending’s theological implications.
- Research the real Jake LaMotta’s life to understand what Scorsese chose to include, exclude, and emphasize. The film is not strictly biographical; it’s an interpretation. Knowing that the real Jake collaborated on the film and reportedly didn’t fully understand Scorsese’s artistic intentions adds another layer to the ending’s questions about self-knowledge.
- Consider the film’s production context””Scorsese’s near-fatal drug addiction in the late 1970s, his sense that this might be his last film, and his collaboration with De Niro to create something honest rather than commercial. This context transforms the ending from character study to something approaching personal confession.
How to Apply This
- On first viewing, simply let the ending wash over you without trying to definitively interpret it. Note your emotional response: do you feel pity for Jake, contempt, hope, despair? Your instinctive reaction provides valuable data for deeper analysis.
- Rewatch the ending immediately after your first viewing, this time paying close attention to De Niro’s micro-expressions as he delivers the monologue. Look for moments where the performance within the performance cracks, where Jake’s actual feelings might be leaking through his rehearsed delivery.
- Compare the Jake of the final scene with the Jake of the opening””the confident, explosive fighter in the ring. Consider what has changed, what remains the same, and whether growth is possible for someone so defined by violence and self-destruction.
- Discuss the ending with other viewers, specifically asking whether they believe Jake has achieved any genuine self-awareness. The disagreement this question generates reveals the ending’s productive ambiguity and its success as art that resists easy answers.
Expert Tips
- Focus on what Jake doesn’t say as much as what he says. The On the Waterfront speech is notable for blaming others (“You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me”). Notice that Jake never explicitly takes responsibility for his own failures, yet he’s reciting these words to his own reflection””the subtext speaks louder than the text.
- Pay attention to the sound design in the final scene. After two hours of punishing sound effects during boxing matches, the relative quiet of the dressing room becomes almost unbearable. This acoustic shift emphasizes Jake’s isolation and the internal nature of his final confrontation.
- Consider the significance of Jake preparing for a performance. He’s literally practicing a role””a performer rehearsing someone else’s words. This raises questions about authenticity: has Jake’s entire life been a performance? Is this moment of apparent self-reflection just another act?
- Notice that Scorsese ends the film not on Jake’s face but on the biblical quote and dedication. This editorial choice shifts the final emphasis from Jake as an individual to broader questions of sin, redemption, and grace. Scorsese wants us leaving the theater thinking about salvation, not just character.
- Research Scorsese’s other films dealing with Catholic themes of guilt and redemption””Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, Silence””to understand how Raging Bull fits into his lifelong artistic exploration of these questions. The ending makes more sense within this larger body of work.
Conclusion
The ending of Raging Bull remains one of cinema’s most debated and analyzed conclusions precisely because it refuses easy resolution. Jake LaMotta, alone with his reflection, reciting another man’s words about wasted potential and betrayal, presents viewers with a puzzle that has no single solution. Whether Jake has finally achieved sight after a lifetime of blindness, or whether he remains trapped in self-deception even in this moment of apparent vulnerability, depends entirely on the interpretation each viewer brings to the scene. What makes this ending transcend its specificity is its universal relevance.
Most of us will never step into a boxing ring or experience Jake’s particular brand of violent jealousy. But all of us face the challenge of seeing ourselves honestly, of taking responsibility for our failures rather than blaming others, of seeking redemption for the damage we’ve caused. Raging Bull’s ending asks whether such self-knowledge is possible and offers no false comfort about the answer. The film closes with a prayer””that biblical quote about blindness and sight””and prayers, by their nature, are expressions of hope rather than certainty. For anyone seeking to understand Scorsese’s artistic vision, American cinema of the 1980s, or simply the depths of human self-destruction and the possibility of grace, the Raging Bull ending demands repeated viewing and continued reflection.
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