Taxi Driver
is Scorsese’s classic portrait of alienation. DeNiro is Travis
Bickle, a recently discharged marine who takes a job driving a
cab in New York. The city is hell in Travis’s eyes and in his
line of work he runs into every form of degenerate the Apple can
throw at him. From pimps to politicians, he is pushed by the
degradation he sees until he explodes in a brutal orgasm of
violence.
DeNiro delivers one of his most compelling performances as
Bickle, a tortured man trying desperately to connect with the
people around him. Any kind of connection, no matter how basic,
is impossible for him. It is like he is not even speaking the
same language as the rest of humanity. Even the back-and-forth
banter between the other cab drivers is too much for him. Bickle
is completely out of touch with society.
What is interesting is when he becomes smitten with Betsy (Cybil Shepherd),
a woman working for a liberal politician campaigning under the
slogan "We Are The People." Betsy is as liberal as the man she
represents and she is more in the fold than Travis. The attempt
at a relationship is another of his attempts at connection, but
it fails miserably. He takes her to a porno movie on their first
date and cannot understand why shy gets offended. She refuses to
see him again and Bickle decides that she is just like "all the
rest."
Bickle decides that all his life needs is a "sense of someplace
to go." He finds it in what is probably the most brilliant and
important scene in the film. He picks up a fare that wants to go
watch the apartment where his wife is cheating with another man.
Scorsese himself plays the passenger to chilling perfection. The
passenger is going on about everything that he wants to do to
her, how he has a .44 Magnum pistol that he is going to use. He
starts giggling and concludes that Bickle must think he is "sick
or something." But that isn’t it at all. Bickle does not say a
word the entire scene, but he has connected with the man
completely. He understands this stranger, a man who has been
spurned by a woman and now wants to kill her. Violence is the
only language Bickle fully comprehends and there, in the solace
of his cab, he encounters a man who, in his own way, is going
through the same thing. It is interesting how this passenger,
played by the director of the film, directs Bickle’s life for
the rest of the movie.
Before going too far, Bickle makes one last, pathetic attempt at
connection. He asks Wizard (Peter Boyle), the older, wiser
cabby, for advice. He tells him that he feels lost and that he
has some bad thoughts running through his head. Wizard doesn’t
know what to tell him. He doesn’t understand a word Bickle is
saying. He gives him some of the worst advice in history, and
even Bickle has to admit, "That’s about the dumbest thing I ever
heard." Wizard does not know what to do.
From there, Bickle tumbles into the violence of his thoughts
headfirst. He buys an arsenal (complete with .44 Magnum) and
goes to work. His first target is the candidate Charles
Pallantine, Betsy’s boss. "We Are The People" is his slogan, and
by lashing out at Pallantine, Bickle is lashing out at people in
general, at the society that has shut him out. But, as
Pallantine says, “New roads are never easy,” and Bickle’s is no
different. His attempt on Pallantine fails and he shifts his
focus on Iris.
Iris (Jodie Foster), the twelve-year-old prostitute, is the only
major character in the film that is anything like Travis. Even
their names are phonetically similar. Alienated from her family
the way Travis is alienated from the world, she has come to New
York from Pittsburgh. Like Travis, Iris is lost in the world,
unable to relate, and exists on the fringe. Travis sees her as a
captive, brainwashed by drugs and her pimp, Sport (Harvey
Keitel).
Sport is the opposite of Travis. He is too hip. While Travis
does not have a streetwise bone in his body, Sport is straight
out of the urban bush. Sport laughs at Travis and how square he
is. He must be a cop, he thinks. Who else would be so stiff?
Travis’ well of violence finally erupts when he storms in and
guns down Sport and two others. He tries to kill himself but his
guns are empty. When the NYPD turns up, he simply puts his
fingers to his head and mimes pulling the trigger. The cops
would be doing him a favor by killing him. We finally see that
his outburst was deliberately self-destructive as much as it was
intended to do anything else.
In the end, Iris returns to her family and goes back to school.
Travis is branded a hero and goes back to driving a cab. This is
not to say the film has a happy ending. Travis remains, moving,
unseen by the world, burning, ticking, spinning, the vortex in
his heart continuing to swirl.
Taxi Driver
is an amazing, hypnotic film. The structure is so tight; every
scene is necessary to move the film forward. There is nothing
extraneous here. It is a masterpiece of alienation cinema, one
of Scorsese’s best films and one of DeNiro’s best performances.
There are no wrong notes in this film.
10 out of 10
The
Video
This transfer is beautiful. While it must be said that the
picture shows its age (films don’t look like this anymore), I
have seen theatrical prints that were not this clean. The
colors are perfect, so crisp the grime of Bickle’s world
radiates from the screen. The picture is free of any washed out
or bleeding-together colors. This is the best it is ever going
to get. Taxi Driver is presented in digitally remastered,
1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.
9 out of 10
The
Audio
There is not much here that would test the limits of your sound
system, but the audio has been given star treatment. The noise
of the city, which is integral to the film, comes through loud
and clear, and the hollow, nasty sounds of the gunshots at the
end are nearly perfect.
There are some interesting bonuses here. The documentary tells
the in-depth story of how the film came together, how it was
written, and how Scorsese came to direct it. Like most great
films, Taxi Driver was a series of happy accidents and
serendipitous moments.
The theatrical trailer is interesting: if this was 1976 and that
trailer was all I had to go by, I don’t know if I would have
gone to see the film. The most interesting feature is the
original screenplay. You can watch the film and look at the
corresponding page of the script at the same time. Scorsese says
over and over that the structure of Paul Schrader’s script was
so tight that they did not want to violate it and this feature
really shows what the filmmakers had to work with. This film has
not always received the best video treatment in the past, so it
is nice to finally have such a complete version.
10 out of 10
Overall
Here is one of the great films of all time, handsomely packaged
with enough bonus material to tell the story behind it all. No
collection is complete without this DVD.
