The CITIZEN KANE of the new generation

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2006)

TAXI DRIVER is probably the best movie ever made. Why ? Hell, I don't know. In the seventies, CITIZEN KANE was the absolute reference. If you check today, young directors all refer to TAXI DRIVER. It is the favorite movie of Lucky Mc Kee, Guillermo Del Toro, Quentin Tarantino. Everything is perfect in TAXI DRIVER : frames, lights, acting, music, and it has probably the best script ever written. No moral. No lesson. Just pure life, dry and harsh, with a series of cult scenes, from ultra-violence (the end) to pornography (the scene at the cinema), romance, folk music, social problems, populist politicians, racist things, solitude, hippies, family, etc. The all world is contained into Taxi Driver. I watch it once a month, and it reduces me to tears every time I see it. Every single scene is perfect. The all legend about the "talking to me ?" scene is quite easy to understand. The thing is, each time people mention it, they forget to tell it is not a macho scene, it is a very very sad scene, where De Niro, alone in flat, alone in his life says : "who the hell are you talking to ? I'm the only here". God. It touches you right to the heart. When De Niro, almost mute, can just say "damn" every time cause life has become impossible for him. Everything becomes an aggression to him : whites, blacks, politics, dirt, rain, drugs, prostitution, the world. Not only a movie about solitude : a movie about the world that contains multiple solitudes. The end refers directly to the supreme violence of Peckinpah's movies : blood is almost black, editing is quick and harsh, blam, blam, and you re see the entire story, so simple at the beginning, and you realize the entire script has been guiding you into hell, though you couldn't see it. No effects. Post Vietnam war. Dry. Super real. Travis Bickle, De Niro's character, is the entire humanity. His end might be yours. Damn.