Todd's Reviews
Taxi Driver
Todd McFliker
Cinema Paradiso, June 16, 2008
 Martin
Scorsese has delivered one creative masterpiece per decade since
the 1970s. He uses sensual cinematography to paint New York
City as a modern hell. The director’s work is comparable to
Dante’s epic Inferno poem about the Underworld. Every
shot is tight. Before Scorsese delivered The Departed in
2006, 1990’s Goodfellas or 1980’s Raging Bull, the
world of cinema was blessed with Taxi Driver in 1976.
Written by Paul Schrader,
Taxi Driver is the study of one’s psychosis. While Jeff
Bridges was once considered for the legendary role, Robert De
Niro was cast as Travis Bickle. He is an uneducated Vietnam
vet. The honorably discharged Marine morphs into a mentally
unstable, pill popping insomniac. He lacks social skills and
cannot relate to a single person he meets. Travis is lonely.
Not even his coworkers can see Travis’s points-of-view. They’re
more concerned with light-hearted realities, like how midgets
always want to sit up front. Bickle eventually becomes
infatuated with Betsy, a Presidential campaign worker played by
Cybil Shepherd.
The cabby keeps a diary and
voices his thoughts to the audience. “All the animals come out
at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies,
dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and
wash all this scum off the streets,” he explains. Dressed in a
military jacket with a mohawk, De Niro communicates with his
eyes, asking the famous question, “You talkin’ to me?”
The camera actually captures Bickle going insane.
Travis was a man who would not
take it anymore. Determined to clean up his diluted town, the
contemporary day cowboy becomes a ruthless vigilante. He wants
to save Betsy from prostituting herself to a campaigning
politician. He has no luck. He considers himself the savior
who stands up against the filth in the city to improve its
conditions. Betsy compares Bickle to the Kris Kristofferson
song “Pilgrim.” She says “He’s a prophet and a pusher… Partly
truth and partly fiction… A walking contradiction.”
Scorsese appears and hires the
driver to stalk his cheating wife. The enraged husband gives
vivid detail of what he’ll do to her body with a 44-Magnum. The
character is responsible for prompting aggressive violence into
Travis’s head. Bickle grows overly concerned for Iris, a
12-year-old hooker played by Jodi Foster from the mean streets
of the Big Apple. A long-haired Harvey Keitel is the
call-girl’s funny looking pimp who will never let her walk away
from his business.
On a rampage to set Iris free
from her profession, Travis blows a few fingers off of a bad
guy’s hand. It is representative of a story told to Betsy
earlier. Her coworker describes what the Italian mob does to a
thief who screws up on the job. “They’ll blow off his fingers,”
he says. Bickle obviously pictured the antagonist stealing the
lady’s body and innocence for personal gain.
Travis is successful in saving
Iris. He’s an avenging angel, making a positive difference in
the youngster’s life, as well as her family’s. He is a hero.
This fact makes Taxi Driver stand out among all of
Scorsese’s classics as the only script with a happy ending. The
uncivil servant goes on an escapade that turns him into a media
poster-boy. Similarly, Bernard Goetz shot four delinquents that
were harassing him for cash on the subway. Little did they know
he was carrying an unregistered Smith and Wesson. He served 250
days on a weapons charge for shooting the boys and became an
underground champion in the streets.
The 1976 movie almost received
an X-rating when it was released, thanks to its graphic
content. Eventually, some the bloody red images were faded in
the final scene to earn an R-rating. There are numerous jump
cuts, expressive lens movements and freaky color dissolves.
Scorsese always uses unbelievable soundtracks. In much of
flick, there is no background music used. Rather, we hear the
continuous car horns and screams of the urban jungle. The
scenes settings are then topped with Bernard Herrmann’s uncanny
score. To the director’s surprise, Taxi Driver was a
box-office success. The underage Foster even received an Oscar
nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Taxi Driver
was part of Cinema
Vérité’s
monthly showing and discussion
group in Fort Lauderdale’s Cinema Paradiso. The meeting in June
lasted 30-minutes. Participants debated if Travis is an idol, a
mental case, or both? Is he Charles Bronson or Charles Manson?
Perhaps the greatest theory brought to light was the conclusion
actually being a dream sequence as Bickle passes away. The
story’s hand-written letters of appreciation and media coverage
he received may be too farfetched. Would Bickle return to the
same daily routine of driving a cab? And he was almost too cool
when later bumping into Betsy. Giving her a free lift, he
drives her past the infamous Saint Regis Hotel, an establishment
known for high-class call-girls. Also, Saint Regis is
historically renowned for assisting prostitutes, a figure that
Travis compares himself to. Is it possible that Scorsese wanted
viewers’ final images to be figments of the killer’s wild
imagination as he dies? Whether the infamous taxi driver lives
or the happy ending is merely a hallucination of his death, the
memorable finale is open to each spectator’s interpretation.
“As with all great works of
art, the artist tells a story, paints a picture and creates a
film because it’s the best way he or she can communicate a
greater meaning,” said Rick Hunter, Debate Leader and Pastor of
Fort Lauderdale’s City Church. “Artists are artists. They are
not philosophers, scientists, or theologians. But they convey
these themes in their work. You can’t walk away without chewing
on the film for days and sometimes weeks at a time."
Cinema Verite’s screenings and
meetings take place on the third Monday of every month at 7pm
for only $5 a ticket. June will feature Peter Sellers in
Stanley Kubrik’s Dr. Strangelove on the 21st.
Crimes & Misdemeanors will show in August, followed by
September’s Sunset Boulevard. –Todd McFliker
“He’s a poet, he's a picker,
he’s a prophet, he’s a pusher
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he's stoned
He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home”
– Kris Kristofferson’s
“Pilgrim” |
