class conflict in the love department.

Rating: 9/10 (26 October 2015)

It always seemed to me that Taxi Driver is illustrating how class struggle is not limited to the economics, but it also extends to human relations and love. The difference in education, in cultural background, makes it nearly impossible for people of different social classes to meet and have an accomplished relation.
Martin Scorcese gathers Robert de Niro, Cybill Sheperd, Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster in this New Story's backstreet fable.
Travis (De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran, with a very limited education who finds a job as a taxi driver with night shifts. On his nightly ride though the streets of 1970's New York, his mind continuous clashes on the crude reality of lower life. One day, Travis is ravished by the beauty of Betsy (Sheperd), who acts as a campaign agent for a senator in the presidential race. Travis will attempt to prove the sincerity of is feelings, with mixed success ...
As I watch this movie again, I realize that this movie also has a political statement. The plot seems to imply that the fate of the People will not be improved by politics, that political personel is only interested in their agenda while the "real" individuals have to deal with the difficulties of the "real" life, which is an idea which is also conveyed by the movies of Clint Eastwood.