Dark, melancholic and claustrophobic

Rating: 9/10 (10 March 2012)

"Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets". A quote said displeased by taxi driver Travis Bickle, a role portrayed very intensely by Robert De Niro in one of his first main roles in a Martin Scorsese film. Brickle's work takes him through New York and gives a sleepless look in the heart of the city, especially in all the dark alleys were most people don't know anything about. But he is so blunted by the world that he feels deaf-mute, invisible and very powerless.
Though, Bickle is not very angry about the social and physical decay around him because he does not know better. He is also in a conflict with himself, attracted by things that loathe him. Sick because of himself and all the things he sees, he decides to do one last attempt to return to society. But there is no escape in Paul Schraders' gloomy, held-on-earth scenario.
Bickle's downfall is very painful to see, and later on tragic and nerve-racking. He tries to befriend the beautiful campaign co-worker, Betsy (portrayed by Cybill Shepherd). When his unhandy convergence problems are rejected, his alienation becomes more powerful. Although he wanted to return to society, his new plans, now, are to destroy it. He plans an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate. Also, when this plan goes wrong, he tries to make it right with society by making a suicide-action with in the process saving the life of a under-aged hooker (portrayed by Jodie Foster) from the hands of a very aggressive pimp.
A very dark, melancholic and claustrophobic portrayal of the metropolitan malaise and lawlessness is the point of Taxi Driver. The film contains elements of film noir - Bickle's voice over, the very oppressive jazzy music by Bernard Herrman - but deviates powerfully from that genre because of the story. It is told from the perspective of an anonymous stranger who, from a distance, witnesses murder. What is going on in the mind the mind of this man? How is he going to react on this confrontation with nauseating violence? Scorsese, Schrader and De Niro seem to ask us the same question. Throughout the entire movie the film enrolls the city in front of our eyes, seen from the isolated and ruthless perspective from Bickle: only a couple of unimportant sparks give us hope of this mad spirit. He is Dostojevski's underground man who rises with a fire weapon and a death wish, a sort of militant anti-hero who takes the chance to clean the city. "Here is a man who won't take it anymore", he says triumphantly.
But is this what we want? Eventually Bickle is portrayed as a sort of crusader and it is quite difficult to say if Bickle's triumph isn't a tragedy. Because, the movie is so good in disrupting the moral compass, we keep looking for impossible answers.