Shards of Memory

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2012)

If you can think of the entire film as being broken shards of Noodles' broken brain, I think much of the ambiguity can be explained.
I think everything we see in the film originates from an unseen Noodles (as unseen narrator?) from the future (beyond 1968.) The best scene in the film is at the end when Noodles refuses to acknowledge that Senator Bailey is in fact Max. It feels like the entire film's purpose is to support this intensely profound and emotional moment.
The garbage truck is a stopgap for the lack of knowledge that old, old Noodles has about Max's fate. He never found out what became of him, but knows inevitably he will have been chewed up by death.
The scene at the end with the old cars and the young people (and God Bless America): I see this as Noodles reflecting how the misleading American Dream has been born anew. It's another unreliable memory from old, old Noodles' fractured brain.
Noodles is in fact a casualty of the American Dream, of Max's avarice.
The rape of Deborah is a telling scene. It tells us that Noodles doesn't truly love Deborah. Noodle's true love in life is his friend Max.