God's Lonely Man

Rating: 10/10 (14 July 2011)

Many of us enjoy films with a soupçon of controversy. But I'd wager that a film featuring child prostitution, handgun erotica, sexism, racism, bloody shoot-outs and a pervading ominous tone may be welcomed by a far smaller group.
As a teenager, 'Taxi Driver', for me, was always a deeply personal experience. It was cathartic. While other teenagers were drowning their sorrows by listening to rap music, I would revisit 'Taxi Driver' again and again. It is still, in my immodest opinion, the ultimate portrayal of loneliness ever committed to celluloid.
Travis Bickle (De Niro) is jaded with people and New York, the home he loathes yet cannot bring himself to escape. He masochistically requests to drive his taxi for long hours, 'anytime, anywhere', so as to increase his abhorrence of the seedy melting-pot of scum the Big Apple has become.
Shunned by his dream woman, Betsy, for taking her to a porn film, he decides that the presidential candidate she is campaigning for is an apt symbol for his grievances. He resolves to assassinate him using his bought-for-one-purpose-only array of handguns.
When this plan fails, he befriends Jodie Foster's unfortunate character, Iris, who Bickle urges to leave the immoral world of under-age prostitution. However, being habitually under the influence of drugs and her pimp boyfriend Matthew (a sinewy Harvey Keitel), Iris makes unconvincing assurances to Bickle. The inequity, or perhaps the rejection, is all too much for Bickle, who promises Iris he will 'stand up to', i.e. murder, all those who are illicitly connected to her.
Pacing is deliberately slow to ensure we are completely absorbed in Bickle's world. The brilliant score composed by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, who famously worked and fell out with Alfred Hitchcock, is a juxtaposition of wistful jazz and brooding drums. It serves as a reminder of Bickle's inexorable decent into insanity.
Books have been written analysing Bickle's paradoxes. Why is he laconic and sociopathic in one scene, but articulate and sane in another? Is he a metaphor for the degeneration of a society that has long forgotten how to govern itself.It's this sort of layering that provides the depth of character examination in Paul Schrader's venerated script.
'Taxi Driver' can – and has been – interpreted as an anti-war film, a social commentary, a character study, a political statement and even as a horror film. I simply regard it as a warning. A warning, as the tagline ominously reminds us that, 'On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.'
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