Disturbing

Rating: 7/10 (28 March 2019)

Fantastic filmmaking, an outstanding cast, and cinematography that manages to be artistic and elevating, and yet also captures the grime and filth of New York City's seedier areas in the 1970's. Seriously, I felt like I needed a shower afterwards. That's also because the film is dark, and in several ways. It has an anti-hero who is a disturbed, pathetic loner. Child prostitution. Scenes that seem to glorify guns and violence. And an awful ending (and no, I'm not buying the dream theory). I believe it's all meant to be a brutal (and realistic) indictment of America, but it seems to me it also revels a bit in the mire of this grim world, and ironically glorifies some of the very things it's critiquing. I loved the shots of New York at night, and the effects with light, such as when they come through the back of the taxicab out of focus. I thought Jodie Foster at 14 was brilliant, and Robert De Niro ("You talkin' to me?") was as well. I admire Scorsese the artist, but this one was too disturbing for me to want to see again (though I said the same thing when I first saw it years ago). Poke around and see how many people view Travis Bickle as a hero, instead of seeing in him what isolation, failure, frustration, and mental illness inevitably lead to, and you may get an idea of what I mean.