Surreal, searing, descent into hell.

Rating: 10/10 (15 April 1999)

A Catholic priest named Joseph Pirrone, who is an old friend and former teacher of Scorsese, complained that the biggest problem with Marty's movies was "too much easter Friday, not enough Easter Sunday." Indeed, with the obvious exception of Alice Hyatt , and the possible exceptions of Newland Archer and fast Eddie Felsom,very few of Marty's characters experience real happiness, or earthly salvation.The most that most them do is to survive ( Though we are to assume that one of them IS resurrected). So far, most of Scorsese's film have been tours of the circles of Dante's hell. ( He has said that this will change in the future.) One of his most harrowing tours of the Inferno is Taxi Driver.I first saw this horrific masterpiece on the big screen ten years ago.It remains burnt into my memory. Let me just note two things about the film that seem to have escaped the attention of many viewers. The first is how much black, sardonic humor there is . Albert Brooks and Peter Boyle are genuinely AMUSING. The second is how romantic it is. I dont mean romantic in in the "Harlequin romance" sense, I mean "romantic' in the Hawthorne/Melville sense. Like Ahab or Ethan Brand, Travis Bickle is a dark protagonist in a tale that SEEMS realistic, but which is actually surrealistic, fantastic, and just plain strange. Like them is he is on a dark, obsessive, demonic quest. After all, how much of what we see is really there, and how much exists only in Travis' Fantasy world? in short, there is more here than meets the eye--much more. Perhaps David Lynch had a point when he said " Kubrick is the coolest ( director),and Marty is next door." An intelligent film critic could write a great essay on the bizarre spiritual -and stylistic-affinities between the surrealist/boy scout from Missoula and the gangster/priest from New York. They have more in common than Isabella Rossellini.