Man, Marginalized

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 2009)

I always compare great movies to dreams, and "Taxi Driver" is no exception. This is a fever-induced nightmare... indulgent coma chow, hallucination... apocalypse of the soul. This movie is about man, marginalized... the inevitable evolution of moral bankruptcy. "Taxi Driver" has endured to not only inspire other great films (SEE: Fight Club) but to sponsor a real-life assassination attempt. The dreamer waking up from the dream to realize he only exists as another dream...
Look what war and the military-industrial complex has done to the city... check out Vietnam vet Travis apply for a job as a cabbie because he can't sleep at night... hear his pathetic attempt at a joke... listen to the simmering score rise and fall, as the rage ebbs and flows through a man at odds with his job, his environment, himself...
Women might provide the solution... only our dyslexic Travis tries to defile the madonna and redeem the whore. A politician might have the answer... or he might just be a symbol of the girl who broke your heart.
This is a gorgeously disgusting movie. New York at its filthy best. Scorsese doesn't fake a frame... he never has to. He understands Travis as well as DeNiro, and with Paul Schrader's brilliant script we understand him as well. Listen to the fizzing of the alka-seltzer in the diner... laugh at Travis hitting on the popcorn girl at the porno theater... enjoy Jackson Browne on American Bandstand.
We create monsters and then stand back in shock, our mouths open in utter surprise: How could this happen? How could a man slip so far out of normal society that he becomes a violent maniac?
This is how.
GRADE: A