The Second Time Around

Rating: 8/10 (8 June 2003)

Ok, now I saw this movie for the first time when I was 16 and I have to admit I was rather unimpressed with it. I found it to be a leaden, disorientated trudge through the dregs of New York. I thought that Travis Bickle was an underdeveloped and incoherent character who never gave us a satsfactory reason for his psychological collapse. "But that was then - hell I liked the Matrix back then and I even gave the Two Towers a second chance" I thought. So I gave it another whirl.
I'm glad I did. Taxi Driver is one of the most atmospheric and intricately explored character studies in American cinema. Scorcese drags the audience through the gutter and pulls no punches in his portrayal of NYC and its denizens. He highlights Bickle's(DeNiro) increasing detachment from society by jamming him in the corner of his shots, even placing him off camera at times. This is offset by a more subjective POV in scenes where Bickle is alone...Bickle's fantasy of being a 'somebody' manifests itself in how he perceives himself in the guise of a movie star, best illustrated in the iconic "You talkin to me" mirror scene. This is further illustrated in scenes where entire crowds turn their heads to look at his taxi....he tells hiss parents that he cannot reveal "his location due to the sensitive nature of his work for the government." Evidently his grasp on reality has suffered a blow because of his failure to fulfil 'the American dream' - some say its the after effects of the Vietnamese war that have caused this, I don't think this is true largly because Bickle is an unreliable narrator - he may never actually have been in the army and even if he was he may never have seen combat after all his gunmanship certainly leaves a lot to be desired. Essentially Bickle has deluded himself into believing that he may be "the rain to wash all this filth away". Look at his intervention with Jodie Foster's young prostitute or his relationship with Cybil Shepard. Clearly he sees himself in the guise of a modern day messiah. When it ended I was left in awe at the skill with which this movie was made the acting and direction was first class and Paul Schrader's screenplay was wonderfully ambiguous. The moral? Give things a second chance, you may be surprised