Take time to hitch a ride with this eerie Scorsese masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2009)

What a wonderful and timeless film Taxi Driver is, a film that delves into the human mind and gets stuck into the psychology behind certain living conditions and past events that still haunt. The film was written by a man then on the brink in Paul Schrader, but a man with a brilliant mind all the same whilst it was directed by one of America's more up and coming contemporary filmmakers in Martin Scorsese. The two minds come together and Taxi Driver is the result, one of my personal favourites and a landmark of sorts in modern cinema.
I wonder if Taxi Driver is one of, if not the, closest examples of an American film that is an out-and-out art film. A film that is shot on everyday locales with no intent whatsoever to prolong any sort of cause and affect driven narrative and quite deliberately focusing on the development of one individual who shares every single scene the movie presents us with, bar one. It's the sort of film that could very well have been happening as it was being shot and certainly, with events involving a certain John Hinckley in 1981, dug so deep as to inspire real life. In this sense Taxi Driver could well be compared to certain famous and recognised films found in certain cannons; films like post-war Italy's 'The Bicycle Thieves' and Mexico's neo-realistic 'The Forgotten Ones'. Shooting into the 21st Century, we have a recent effort from Mali entitled 'Bamako', again a film shot on the streets with no real narrative to speak of but a progression of a situation driven by politics and study.
Taxi Driver's anchor is its study of its locale as seen through the eyes of its lead character, Travis Bickle whom is played in a globally recognised performance by Robert De Niro, himself on the verge of greatness amongst Hollywood's acting circles. The space in which Bickle inhabits could be seen as a 'post-war' space; a space of which has become decayed and of a lower 'quality' through the government's focus on Vietnam happening several thousand miles away, something few people believed in as it wore on. As a result, the government's attention to its own home has waned and the metropolis that is New York City has become what it has become according to Travis himself, who incidentally chastises a politician for the state as to which the city has got to.
Travis Bickle is a lone soul in a setting complete with the sorts of individuals that make it more unbearable. There is a lot of gazing in the film, indeed the second shot of the entire film, and the first that doesn't establish the title of the film, is Travis' eyes following something as the film's theme plays over the image. Slyly, it is a shot at the very beginning establishing the general theme of observing what's around you and figuring a subjective viewpoint. What Travis sees is what he tells us through his diary entries and voice-overs as he drives past the subjects late at night, going through a list of derogatory words. Additionally, his fellow taxi drivers talk in an un-pc manner and the resentment is consistent.
But Bickle's perspective is only as distorted as it's ever going to be. Travis doesn't choose to visit museums in order to observe works or art or indeed go to the cinema in order to watch the latest movie in an attempt to escape life for a brief few hours; instead, he delves deeper into the grime and watches pornographic films in-between bumping into underage prostitutes and their pimps as well as organising deals with gun runners. What Travis believes to be the one shining light amidst all the garbage lies in Betsy (Shepherd), a woman working as a campaign volunteer for the mayoral candidate Charles Palantine (Harris) and the same individual Travis gave a lift to. His attraction to this girl brings about some of the more harrowing scenes the film delivers and moves the film, perhaps somewhat unfortunately, into a study of the stalker. But that only runs from him getting her out on a date to a certain phone call that even the camera is supposedly too embarrassed to eavesdrop on.
Scorsese shoots the film in a grimy and gritty fashion, using low angles and utilising the steam that pours out the vents dotted around the streets - an open sewer indeed. A lot of the film is shot at night; the daytime is almost an escape from the madness we're being forced to focus on through Bickle's own unhinged perspective. Bernard Hermann's score sets a perfect pitch for the film during the opening shots of the taxi gliding by, combining a smooth and easy to listen to jazz melody with a more brutal, more hard hitting grungy theme that beautifully sets in motion Bickle's overall mindset of this 'one thing on the surface' but is able to change into something far more violent all the same. Taxi Driver is one of those films anyone serious about cinema should see and it has remained right near the top of my favourites ever since I first saw it a couple of years ago and was blown away.