One of the best films of all time

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2010)

Sometimes, when I have difficulty falling asleep, I'll think of Bernard Hermann's jazzy score, and the soothing sound of the saxophone will lay my mind to rest. The surreal images of Travis Bickle's dark perspective of the gritty streets of New York remain a visual wonder. The opening scene in "Taxi Driver" (1976) is an extreme close-up of Travis Bickle's paranoid eyes, eerily glancing back and forth, which inter-cuts to his vibrant, yet hellish perspective. The image of the taxi cab represents a vessel into Bickle's disturbed mind; he glides through the steam rising out of the sewers and through the colorful reflections of the streets. The opening images establish the bold color palette of a master painter; shades of red, blue, green, and yellow softly meld into a visual orgy.
Visually and aurally, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver remains the most daring piece of artistry ever conceived on 35mm film. Every camera movement, edit, sound design, and slow-motion shot is felt, not just seen, through every frame of cinematic brilliance. You can sense the master at his fingertips. Why is Taxi Driver the greatest film ever made? I can watch it over and over again, and I'll channel on different aspects of the film.
When Scorsese was shooting the film the crew members were baffled as to why he would pan the camera the opposite way of the moving subject. In the scene where De Niro's character parks his cab and walks out of the garage, the camera does a 180 degree pan the opposite way, and then stops back at the actor as he takes another look at the garage. There's a specific reason to this simple, yet daring camera movement. Visually, the director is saying, that even though the camera doesn't follow him within the moving frame, everything is seen through the character's perspective, going to, and coming away from him. In fact, majority of the film is seen through Travis Bickle's eyes.
In another scene, Travis is talking on a pay phone to Cybill Shepard's character, Betsy, the camera tracks across to the empty, adjacent hallway, which is a clever metaphor of expressing Travis's ultimate loneliness. Lastly, another memorable camera feature is when the director places the actor on a moving dolly as he glides toward the bouncer, inside the bordello. The image gives the viewer an urgent feeling, rushing to the bouncer, which foreshadows their bloody encounter at the same location. "Taxi Driver" is filled with audacious camera movements, which have influenced an entire generation of maverick directors, including Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino.
In the beginning of the film, Scorsese uses a variety of overhead shots, which include the concession items at the porn theater, paperwork cluttered on the desk at the taxicab office, and paperwork scattered on Betsy's desk at the campaign headquarters. As the film progresses and Travis's insanity gradually becomes apparent, the director cuts to a series of overhead shots of Travis's newly acquired guns. The items viewed become more deadly, but ironically, the arrangements are more structured. At the same time, Travis's body gets in better shape, and his bizarre routines provides him with the structure he thinks he needs. At this point, his delusions become a violent reality.
Robert De Niro's implosive portrayal as Travis Bickle represents a man's total alienation from society. We're never clear as to what he endured in Vietnam, but the audience certainly senses his traumas, by his sketchy behaviors. He can't sleep nights, obsessed with weapons, and isn't too keen on acting normal in a society, which, he thinks, is based on clicks, populism, music, movies, and politics. Why isn't his voice heard? Why is Senator Palentine heard and Travis kept in the dark? Why aren't porn movies the norm for a date night if they're present all over the city? How are the police doing their job if pimps, drug pushers, and prostitutes still roaming the streets of New York? These inquiries are never heard in De Niro's sincere voice-over, but are certainly worked in the subtext of his performance. Many films have tried to emulate this one-of-a-kind character, such as Edward Norton in "Down in the Valley" (2005), and Sean Penn in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004), but none of them are able to provide strong enough direction"n to make this sordid kind of character believable. You can sense the mental anguish and emotional turmoil Paul Schrader went through when he wrote this personal screenplay. The combustible relationship of script and screen makes "Taxi Driver" a powerful journey into the heart of a madman.