When you watch Taxi Driver and The Wolf of the Wall Street (TWOTWS) back-to-back, both movies for the first time, you can’t help marvel at the genius that Martin Scorsese is. I shall now keep TWOTWS and Leonardo out of this. They are anyway getting their required due but more importantly because this is about Taxi Driver, a landmark film indeed, about Robert De Niro and his fabulous act of Travis Bickle, and of course THE man behind it Mr. Scorsese.
The film brings out the angst and existential plight of the protagonist Travis Bickle. He is an honorably discharged U.S. Marine who becomes a taxi driver to cope with chronic insomnia. He is hopelessly lonely, a vagrant without family or friends. He only has thoughts, dark thoughts for his company.
“Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man.”
Travis wants to save a 12 year old prostitute (Jodie Foster) from a sleazy life and return her to her parents in Pittsburgh. He is not an evil person but he is so disturbed with and tired of the street scum that he becomes obsessed with cleaning the New York City.
“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up.”
In some ways, I see the movie as a cross between two of my favourite books – Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. Beckett’s Godot is a masterpiece of existential angst and just like in the play Travis too feels hopeless and doomed. Though Paul Schrader was inspired by Dostoyevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground’ (I haven’t read it) I can draw parallels from his other work ‘Crime and Punishment’. The book focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov who plan to kill a pawnbroker, arguing that with her money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless vermin. In the film Travis plans on assassinating a leading candidate running for president and has his reasons for doing so. All three works focus on the lonely and desolate protagonists.
No review/writing about Taxi Driver is complete without the mention of ‘You talkin' to me’. In this scene Travis is looking into a mirror at himself, imagining a confrontation which would give him a chance to draw his gun. Schrader’s script only read, "Travis speaks to himself in the mirror", but De Niro improvised the dialogue. Who knew then that it would go on to become one of the most famous and often imitated soliloquies in film history. Indeed, a lot of this film is about De Niro’s performance! Another scene that stands out is when we see the transformed De Niro in a Mohawk haircut at a political rally.
Both Michael Chapman’s cinematography and Bernard Herrmann’s phenomenal smooth, jazzy music play an instrumental part in the success of the film. This was Herrmann’s final score before his death. He had first refused to score for the film but later took it up after reading the script. The very first shot of the yellow taxi cab moving slowly in the dark rainy streets of New York gives a glimpse of the excellent cinematography. Most of the shots are slow and deliberate, with an aim to offer an insight into Travis’ mind, his loneliness and alienation.
Taxi Driver has been shrouded in controversy ever since it released and it is no surprise to me. Jodie Foster played a highly controversial role of an underage prostitute, for which she even received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Since Foster was just 12 years old during the filming of the movie, her 19-year-old sister Connie Foster was cast as her body double for some explicit scenes. Even then, for her tender age, Jodie deals with some profound and extremely adult material and handles it very well.
The film does have an overbearing influence. One of the most controversial episodes is of John Hinckley Jr. who drew inspiration from Bickle’s character and attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 in order to prove his love to Jodie Foster.
The ending of the film also has been highly controversial and debatable. First the massacre and violence in the climax leaves a long lasting impression. After that Scorsese has given the film a very unexpected open-end. It is controversial for its vagueness and its inability to state a clear purpose of reality or fantasy. It is open to interpretations and till date there are various discussions about the same.
Despite the controversies, Taxi Driver is a classic, one of the best from the Scorsese-De Niro team. It elevated Scorsese's status as a director, and it assured Paul Schrader's reputation as a major screenwriter. 38 years and it still doesn’t seem dated, this is how brilliant it is! A must watch!
