a complete and utter success

Rating: Null/10 (9 July 2002)

"taxi driver" is the one of the most subtle and yet genuinely disturbing films i've ever seen, and you really shouldn't watch this movie if you're looking for the usual optimistic BS we're fed about life by american cinema. i'm thinking that martin scorsese was going through a difficult patch in his life when he made this one--and how. travis bickle is a young vietnam veteran and a cabbie who "can't sleep nights" as he himself puts it, and throughout the movie we basically watch him descend into madness slowly but surely, the almost unbearable tension finally culminating in a really brutal (even by today's standards)shootout.
and yet i get the sense that scorsese was doing something more than simply trying to make us feel uncomfortable with this movie, although im sure that was part of it. this isn't just some sick psychopath losing the few marbles he had to begin with: this is about the fundamental loneliness and isolation, perhaps even misery, of the human condition. communication between human beings is, in a real and concrete sense, simply impossible. the horror of it lies in the deeper truth that this can never change. travis' short lived relationship with betsy was a temporary illusion of union, but only that--an illusion. looking at it in his light, i would say that this movie has less in common with the usual vigilante crap like "death wish" and more with samuel beckett's "waiting for godot". the pitch of hopelessness and doom that this film reaches is positively frightening, and you cannot be immune to it if you are sentient life, such is the power of it. a must.
10/10