All the animals come out at night

Rating: 10/10 (5 June 2012)

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is a perfect example of the sort of uncompromising movies that were released by the American studios in the era of New Hollywood in the 70's. It's very hard to imagine a major studio green lighting a film as transgressive as this nowadays. After all, the main character in Taxi Driver is Travis Bickle who is a racist sociopath. The other key character is a girl who is a twelve year old prostitute. These are not characters with the edges sanded down. They are deeply troubling and inhabit a world that is realistic enough to make you very uncomfortable.
Travis Bickle is an insomniac Vietnam veteran who enrols as a night time taxi driver in New York City. This is mid-70's New York though. It's a city quite at odds with the one we know now. Dirty and sleazy, these were very mean streets. Before Mayor Giuliani did what Travis wished for and cleaned the streets in the 90's, Manhattan was a very different proposition. Instead of Disney and Planet Hollywood, Times Square was a haven for XXX shows and porno cinemas. Travis wishes for a rain to wash the scum off these streets. He hates what he sees around him, made worse by the fact that he drives around these streets at night when 'all the animals come out'. His dilemma is made worse by the fact that he cannot connect with anyone. The film is as much as anything about the intense loneliness of being surrounded by people you cannot connect with. Travis is so disconnected from social norms that he takes a presidential campaign worker, Betsy, to a porn cinema for a first date. An encounter with an embittered fare leads to ideas of violence. The man, played by Scorsese himself, is a racist whose wife is having an affair with a black man. He declares he is going to kill him. Bickle simply listens and watches. It is only a matter of time before he takes his personal war to the streets.
This is a post-Watergate movie and like many other American films of the time it has a very cynical view of the U.S. political system. Going on in the background is an election campaign by a presidential candidate. At first Travis is all for this man but gradually becomes disillusioned leading him to an assassination attempt. This fails but it's not the main concern for this troubled man. His priority is saving a twelve year old girl from a life of prostitution. This leads him to arm himself to the teeth and blast his way into the lair of the gangsters blowing them away in a scene of extreme violence. The irony presented by the film is that it takes a psychotic madman to save this girl, as the authorities are entirely ineffective. I suppose we are supposed to question this act by Travis but I, for one, am fully behind him. The gangsters, who are essentially pimps and paedophiles, get no less than they deserve in my opinion. I think others must have agreed too, seeing as this film continues to connect with audiences on some level.
The direction from Scorsese is dynamic and visually bold. The world depicted is an entirely subjective one, where we see things as Travis sees them. Often this means that when we see black characters we sense his dislike simply in how the camera pans slowly over them. It's disturbing to be in the head of a racist character, but it would have been dishonest to have depicted things in any other way. It's definitely a very bold uncompromising move. Travis's disturbed mind is shown in other expressionistic ways by jump-cuts, unusual camera angles, slow motion, red lighting and Bernard Herrmann's incredible score, which alternates from dreamy saxophone to frighteningly intense music. Everything in the film – bar the very uncomfortable intimate scene with Sport and Iris – is from Travis's point-of-view. This is not picture postcard New York. There are no panoramic views, no tourist shots, and no famous landmarks. Everything is from the world that Travis inhabits. It's up close and grim. It's New York as a hell on Earth.
The dramatics are propelled by Robert De Niro's intense performance which is so famous that it's sometimes easy to forget just how good it actually is. He is ably supported by the rest of the cast, particularly Harvey Keitel as the genuinely repulsive pimp Sport and Jodie Foster in an extremely adult role as the young prostitute Iris.
It is entirely possible to interpret the ending in two ways; at face value or as Travis's dying dream. Both work, as there is a sense of unreality about the final few moments. I think the truth sort of lies in between, I think it is reality but a very subjective one; the reality of a madman. Throughout the film, the perspective of Travis has been shown to be a skewed one. His almost dream-like final encounter with Betsy is merely a further example of his damaged mind. After dropping her off, he seems normal. Or does he? Betsy is about to approach him but has second thoughts. He drives off and then suddenly glances aggressively in his rear view mirror. Something else has caught the eye of this troubled man. The darkness remains within.