August 6, 2010: Taxi Driver
I promised back in April that I would return to watching Martin Scorsese movies, having realized that in a year and a half of writing reviews, I hadn’t seen a single film from the man I sometimes proclaim to be my favourite director. I’m finally living up to that promise, and where better to start than with one of his great films?
Taxi Driver (1976) is commonly accepted to be one of the top 10 American films of the 1970s. It is clearly the product of a brilliant and daring filmmaking mind, and it also indelibly captures the state of the nation’s post-Vietnam psyche at the time, being in fact one of the first films to seriously explore the effects of that war on the soldiers after returning home. As a bonus, it’s a searing portrait of the ongoing decay of New York City at the time, ironically viewed now with nostalgia by some, in comparison with the modern-day revitalization of the scummy Times Square backdrop which is so vividly depicted in the film.
There’s a surprisingly large and talented supporting cast here, but make no mistake, this is the Robert De Niro show. De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran who has clearly been damaged by his experience abroad, though he doesn’t seem to realize it and instead aims his rage at the faults of others. On the occasions when he acts out this anger with the state of the world, things get messy. Rendered sleepless at nights by whatever is haunting him, he takes a job driving a taxi, which only serves to immerse him even deeper in the seedy side of society. He fixates on saving a teenage prostitute as the way he wishes to contribute to the betterment of the world. The destruction he wages at the climax of the film is as brutal and misdirected as anything imaginable, enhanced by the jarring tone of the coda as we discover that no punishment came of it. An angry, violent and socially maladjusted loner is still far and away more palatable to society than a lot of the other undesirable elements walking the streets.
Getting back to the supporting cast, up and coming faces abound in Taxi Driver, most notably then-teenager Jodie Foster playing the young prostitute. Foster’s acting chops are clearly evident even at this tender age, and it was no surprise to see her go on to win a couple of Oscars. Harvey Keitel, who earlier worked with Scorsese and De Niro on Mean Streets (1973), has a small but intense role as Foster’s pimp. Comedian Albert Brooks works in a political campaign office and shows signs of the neurotic and underconfident (is that a word?) character upon which he would base many of his later film roles. Peter Boyle is almost treated as a throwaway but has a couple of good scenes as another cab driver who is known to offer good advice. Cybill Shepherd is the closest thing there is to a co-star here, as Bickle’s love interest, and she plays smart and charming in her trademark way. It’s unclear to me why her film career didn’t quite take off through the 1970s, though she’s found success elsewhere in the decades since.
Travis is a lonely man who sees people as being cold and distant, never realizing that he might really be the one who fits that description. One wonders what he would think of the eventual fulfillment of his wish for a real rain to someday “come and wash all this scum off the streets”, as the Disneyfication of midtown Manhattan and Times Square in particular is such a huge shift from the New York of a few decades earlier, while beneath the surface it’s still the same in so many ways. There’s a lot to see in Taxi Driver, and I discover new layers upon each viewing. I think this is a result of both the fundamental philosophical questions raised, as well as the constant changing of that living, breathing city which always provides a different point of comparison to the unforgettably captured moment in time which the film provides.
Masterpiece by one of the masters.
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