The last scene (spoilers)

Agreed - I watched this film just the other day, thinking it was a new film (I got the DVD) and absolutely loved it. I was staggered to find out it had come out in 1998!!!

How on earth did it ever pass me by?

I have just seen this movie for the first time and it was wonderful, possibly my favorite movie. So I was stunned by negative reviews and apathetic reactions from my family. I thought Roth did a great job, the music and the hands playing is awesome. I just love the whole thing and I wish there was someone in my family who felt the same way, but at least I know other people love it too.

O.K., I can't check the man you mention, cause I don't have a copy (I saw it only on TV). Though I found this last scene wonderful and one of the best endings of movies ever made, if you noticed well (I saw the man, but didn't pay attention what he was wearing), it would add many new meanings. It would be disappointing if 1900., after sacrificing everything in his life for his art (not accepting mainstream or mediocre work offered in those endless city streets - as was described excellently on another board "A metaphor for the lost glory of cinema?") gives up and accepts what ordinary life brings - he would lose his credits. On the other hand, you can imagine the shop as a history of art, and as his world and his art (and unfortunately, the whole art in this world) gets destroyed, only place he can find himself in is a history. But, again, there's a last ironic message Tornatore sends us: while he was creating, and his art was widely accepted, he lived on a ship, all over the world, not belonging to any nation, parties, companies; now, the only place where he can exist in modern world is a shop - commercial place his art was avoiding whole his life, and it is our commercial way of living that burried the art.

IIRC, the man that enters the shop in the last scene is carrying a violin. It can't be 1900. The women in the shop also looked a bit like the girl, didn't she? But, IMHO, it's not her.

It seems to me that another girl and another 1900 could meet in the shop.

The explosion scene, with the flying anchor, is the worst scene in the movie. It really does not belong to this otherwise high quality work. There are several :highly unrealistic: scenes in this legend - how Max walks during heavy sea, how 1900 can stay (you can't even with 'sea legs'), rolling piano. Lighting cigarette on piano strings - they would be severely damaged far before reching this temperature. Old ships are not sunk, the steel is recycled. But this flying anchor in the end is a real spoiler...

georg

I agree about your words "the way that they showed the twisting street down which Max went at the end, was very symbolic, as that was what 1900 was afraid of. All those twisting streets that never seemed to end."

*** SPOILERS ***

Did 1900 get off at the end by some chance? No. As he was playing the invisible piano at the end, you can just hear before the bang, the hum of the generators (or similar apparatus) building up and creating the electrical spark charge for the explosives.

A beautiful film with an equally brilliant sound track, Truly moving. So good, the very next day after viewing I bought the cd of the music.

Some people have knocked it for not understanding the levels in which the film reaches out to us as emotional creatures of this Earth. You either get it or you don't as someone previous has aid.I got it and have loved every minute of it.

Well done to all involved.

"Is it just me, but in the veyr last scene, as Max leaves Pop's shop, a man who looks like 1900, wearing a camel coat and hat enters it. We don't really see his face. Could it be that 1900 left the ship and found his way to Pop's shop, like his record before him? "

It's just you. :)

I'm watching that scene right now, and...

1) It's not a camel coat. It's a regular trench coat which looks completely different than the camel coat Max gave 1900 earlier in the film.

2) He's carrying a trumpet case, which 1900 certainly wouldn't have had.