Excellent thoughts. Because of the film's detached and nonjudgmental approach in depicting the Lieutenant and describing absolutely none of his history besides him shouting at "Jesus" that he himself has been "too weak" to do right for far too long, this offers many interpretations and doesn't seem to have any real agenda as far as preaching any true values even though it is so frequently considered to be about Catholic guilt and redemption (Ferrara once mocked a Video guide review in an interview after reading this by laughing and saying "is that what it's about?"). It is by far one of the most powerful endings I have ever seen after he releases the two junkies and is shot under the banner of a boxing match which reads "It All Happens Here", then having his car passed over by a bus with a large ad for what appears to be a Christian radio station with hands holding a piece of sunshine which seems to imply in a symbolistic manner that he is being carried off to Heaven and has indeed been redeemed, only then to have the screen turn white and silent for the end credits, back into nothingness just as the film began, with Schoolly D's Signifying Rapper coming back on for a final time halfway through the credits, a song that describes a quite animalistic, and therefore nihilistic, ghetto street confrontation which is a perfect description to the Hellish world of NY the Lieutenant has been living in. This to me challenges the thought that anything that has previously occurred has had any value or true meaning, at least for the Lieutenant, even though it is easy to interpret it all as redemption, and on a wider level raises questions about the validity of Christianity as a whole, because there is of course no real answer here on Earth as to whether or not it or any other religion is valid - so has he been carried into a beyond (Heaven) and actually done the right thing and we the audience are the ones left behind in the blank, white nothingness of the end credits, or is he the one who has entered into simply a state of nonexistence with the Schoolly D track being played to enforce that there is nothing beyond the miserable life on Earth and nothing that has happened truly mattered after it was all said and done? I think that's the question the film leaves us with and is utterly brilliant for that.
(A few more thoughts, really sorry for going on this long but just feel the need to get it out and am just trying to detail it to make my points clearer, probably won't be a whole lot of people who will read this anyway):
Furthermore, the film also seems to be a statement on the human condition about our need for redemption when faced with death as the final means to try to cheat it by gaining a pleasurable afterlife. Remember, the Lieutenant has been progressing toward his death with his gambling debts piling up until the very end when he is ultimately killed for them, and right before he takes the two rapist junkies to the bus station to send them off with the money, while he is in the crackhouse where he first finds and captures them, he watches the rest of the baseball game while holding them at gunpoint. It seems to me he does this because he wants to make absolutely sure that the Dodgers will lose and that he will then no longer be able to thwart his debt and death any longer, and that if they had actually won I truly believe that he would have simply taken the junkies in for arrest after being even for his prior losses with the bookie, collected the Church's reward ($50,000 if I remember correctly) for their capture, and then reverted back to his previous ways until he was faced with another life-threatening situation, as this ambiguous motivation and action comes even after he cried and apologized to his illusion of Jesus. He only does the "right thing" in accordance with the Nun's forgiveness and to do something loving for them to cure their hateful act after it becomes completely certain that he will face death in the very near future - he can barely refrain from killing them in the car on the way to the station when sticking the gun in one of their faces out of extreme anger and still openly thinks and voices to them that they are "scumbags" which shows he hasn't really changed inside and is simply abiding by the Nun's code to save himself from hell. The only thing that leaves me in doubt that the film offers a completely nihilistic viewpoint of the world is the fact of the sunshine logo on the bus which passes by his car after his murder which does indeed seem to imply some type of redemption, but is it a redemption on a higher level that implies it is for the Lieutenant who will be rewarded with Heaven in the afterlife, or is it strictly an Earthly one that he has perhaps changed the two junkies for the better who are most likely on that very bus with the sunshine symbolizing their change and hope he has given them with his "hands" holding it, only to then enter into the blank, white state of nonexistence with no sort of afterlife whatsoever? He has definitely done a good thing for doing this for them, but he only did it because of his imminent death and was likely terrified of going to hell and needed to feel redeemed in God's eyes before this - his final howling cry shows that he is still miserable and unchanged from when he let these cries out earlier in the film, and is still just a personally aimless and hopeless human being who may have once been happier, but given that we know nothing about his past, it really doesn't matter. Perhaps the "It All Happens Here" sign is there to suggest, or at least leave the question open, that there may not be anything beyond this life, and that while you should do good while you are here (because who would honestly want to live a life like the Lieutenant's?) and make a positive change in this world, we're all headed for the same nothingness afterwards whether or not we do, no matter if we live our lives like the completely ascetic and loving Nun, or the completely hedonistic and Bad Lieutenant. But then again, the focus has of course been on the Lieutenant, so the ending probably is not an extreme critique of Christianity but of the fact that he hasn't really spiritually changed at all and just followed the Nun's example without really understanding, or wanting to do, it (more points on this below).
Nicholas St. John, who had been steadily collaborating with Ferrara as a screenwriter, reportedly refused to script this film due to it conflicting with his religious beliefs. I don't know the exact details of how he thinks it would've violated them, perhaps it was just the blasphemy of the rape of the Nun and the church being desecrated, but if Ferrara's original concept for the film was to question the very religion itself and the Church's methods of teaching (he stated his frustrations with Catholicism before by saying that, even though he still does consider himself a Catholic, that "when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself...you're taught not to think too deeply about things.”), that would've certainly been the ultimate reason for St. John not to (who is a devout Catholic, according to Ferrara) and might support some of my thoughts on what the film is trying to say about the uncertainty of the religion and how to follow it, so while on one level it might be about taking responsibility for your actions and realigning your morals, I definitely think Ferrara has much deeper and far-ranging implications than the common interpretations of them and to open our eyes to the fact that we need to know our reasons for aligning ourselves in accordance with a higher system of morality and values and not just accept them without any real spiritual awakening or change like the Lieutenant does, as he once said about the film that "beyond all this quote unquote heavy guilt blah, blah, blah, there is the thing of, 'Do you believe in Christ, in the teachings of Christ?" which the Lieutenant doesn't seem to - so to sump up, my take on the film and especially the ending is two-fold: one, questioning if the religion is actually valid in terms of there being anything beyond this world (which we all do for the sake of fear of an afterlife) and the fact that there may be nothing afterwards at all, and two, that if you think the religion does have truth to it, are you actually going to truly change in becoming a better person in light of this belief (the extreme corruption of the Lieutenant in every possible way emphasizes the most drastic need for change in us all), or are you just blindly accepting what is being told to you which would demerit any aligning steps you proceed to take and would damn you to remain in a purgatorial (or even Hellish, depending on which you think better describes it) state like the Lieutenant...
sorry again for all the rambling, but just doing this adds even more to my appreciation of the film for being able to interpret and have it provoke thoughts to this length.
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