He's God's lonely man... and we love him!

Rating: 10/10 (30 May 2007)

"Taxi Driver" comes to the screen on the year of the bicentennial of the United States of America. It should be a year of celebration, pride and solidarity. However, the atmosphere of this masterpiece from young Martin Scorsese (he was 33 at the film's release) inspires the very opposite. "Taxi Driver" wants to be depressing et pessimistic and its vision of America, especially of its supreme city, is everything but happy.
The story of "Taxi Driver" is about Travis Bickle, a young insomniac ex-Marine who takes a job as a taxi driver. He tours the streets of New York City, which are continually populated with prostitutes, pimps and 'Negros' from Harlem with the jazzy music of the pleasant Bernard Herrmann soundtrack. Travis' only wish is that someday "a real rain come and wash the scum off the streets".
It's Robert De Niro who plays Travis and he lives in his character like in a second skin. When we see him in the beginning, he seems to be absolutely normal and he looks like all of those innocent characters whose only desire is to have a good worthwhile job, even if it should be tiresome or boring. However, we can quickly perceive that he's the only person of his kind and he's also about to blow off.
Desperate to connect with others, Travis invites Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a pretty young woman who works for the electoral committee of Senator Palantine (do not confuse with the emperor Palpatine, even if the spelling looks alike), for a date. Travis, however, makes a gross mistake when he brings her to a porno movie, the only hobby that Travis knows.
After buying a rather unreasonable number of firearms from a black market vendor, Travis' mental state quickly deteriorates and he becomes addicted to violence with the miniature army that he bought and his days in Vietnam don't help him. He simulates shootouts in front of his mirror in his apartment and of these simulations lead to the now famous monologue "You talking' to me?".
Eventually, Travis tries to "save" a young 12Â½-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster) by attempting to persuade her to free herself from his pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel with long hair). It's at that moment that Travis breaks down.
He shaves his hair and adopts a Mohawk hairstyle and he becomes almost unrecognizable. He attempts to assassinate Palantine himself (which would infamously inspire John Hinckley), and in one of the most terrifying sequences I've seen in my life, Travis launches a blood bath by killing all those who want to get too close from Iris.
Describing himself until that moment as "God's lonely man", Travis then gets a lot of attention in the media for courageously killing gangsters and saving a little girl from NYC's decaying culture and then sending her back to her parents. Everybody sees Travis as a hero. But is he really? By attempting to erase the 'scum' off the streets, he practically became part of it. It's a vicious circle. It's a pessimistic vision from Scorsese on the indomitable city of New York, a world without mercy where nobody can get off without being affected.
"Taxi Driver" is very bold. And it's for that reason that it remains so striking, even more than thirty years later. It's a very crude film. Its presentation is crude. Its vision of the world and of the city are crude. And especially, its violence is crude. We see little violence, but when it comes out, it doesn't leave anybody indifferent.
The violence that Travis manifests at the end of the movie is simply the fact that he makes visible to everybody what was previously invisible because it was kept hidden in his mind. We can assist to the deterioration of his mental state and we feel that he could crack at any moment. In the end, with good thinking, the violence that he shows is shocking and terrifying, but it's not that surprising.
It's definitely a worrying look, not only upon New York, but also America in its entirety. New York is not the only city in the United States and its problems are not unique to it. "Taxi Driver" is the story of an idealist who wanted to change the world and make it better. And he decided to do it without caring too much about the means.
The movie's ending is ultra-violent, but the bad guys are dead anyway. Is it a happy ending anyway? I think it's the choice of the viewer. Everything depends on how the viewer takes on Scorsese's vision. If the viewer decides that it's a happy ending, it means that he/she is optimistic and believes that it is possible for us to change the world in a good and significant way. If the viewer believes that it's a sad ending, then he/she is pessimistic and doesn't believe that we can really free ourselves from the mess that is American society.
In the end, it can summarized this way: if you think it's a happy ending, you're like Travis Bickle. If you don't, you rather are like Martin Scorsese.
"Taxi Driver" won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival in 1976. It's a fully deserved honor, because it's a really revolutionary film. I wonder that if it didn't win the Oscar for Best Movie (an honor that rather went to "Rocky"), it's only because it was too hard for the jury's taste who wasn't ready to accept the reality or who refuted Scorsese's ideology shown in the movie. They preferred a typical film with a happy ending rather than a cold and cruel picture destined to cause some discomfort in the population.
However, it's a very enjoyable discomfort. Unless you prefer to live in your inside world.