but did you feel it?

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 2000)

After going through the 85 reviews or so on this film, I feel very proud. People have done an extremely good job of explaining the brilliance of Taxi Driver and the emotional experience that it evokes. And although I have little to add in those areas, I do have another perspective that I hope will be of interest. Probably the one aspect of being a cinephile that I most enjoy is finding a connection between two filmmakers that I really like. It helps explain my reaction to their work---as if to say, it's only natural that you relate to this film; this filmmaker likes the same films as you. In these terms, Taxi Driver has been a tremendously rewarding experience. Watching it again, this time as a more knowlegable cinephile, I discovered connections that I'd overlooked in the past. A couple of these observations, I think are particularly revelatory, and I'd like to share them.
But before I do so, know that these are merely conclusions that I have drawn and that they are by no means fact. If you agree, great. If you learn something, great. If you don't agree and don't learn anything, well, I hope you at least enjoyed the read.
Although Mean Streets is my favorite Martin Scorsese film, I think Taxi Driver is far more interesting from a stylistic standpoint. More than anything, I say this because of Michael Chapman's cinematography---the lighting, the framing, the camera movements, everything. Coincidentally, in recent years, of all the young cinematographers, I have been most impressed by Christopher Doyle and his work with the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai. I love the way he captures the big city and have always felt that there was something truly original about his work.
Until recently, however, I was unaware of any precursor to the Christopher Doyle style. I thought it was one of those artistic breakthroughs that come without warning and defy all claims of artistic inheritance. But then I re-watched All the President's Men. In the work of Gordon Willis, I recognized those blues and reds and greens that I had always attributed to Christopher Doyle. And now that I've gone back and watched Taxi Driver, I see that Michael Chapman was responsible for many of the other things that I'd always credited to Christopher Doyle. In 1976, he gave the nocturnal city a new look---revolutionizing the way the streets shine and the signs glow and the colors all blend into one another.
Like I said before, findings like these are one of my greatest pleasures as a cinephile. When I like a film, I want it to mean that I've been moved. Recognizing similarities like Doyle-Willis-Chapman enables me to continue filmgoing as an emotional experience. I like a certain kind of lighting. When a film is lit that way, I react. It's not a theory. And I don't have to justify my tastes in any intellectual manner. And for me, that's why I became interested in film in the first place---because it affected me emotionally. That said, back to the game of uncovering parallels between the work of Wong Kar-Wai and Martin Scorsese. As I mentioned earlier, my favorite Martin Scorsese film is Mean Streets. It's not the filmmaker's most stylistically characteristic or even most impressive work, but it is my favorite. I respond to it more than to any of his other films. It moves me, and I care about the characters. Taxi Driver, on the other hand, because of some of the truly anti-social flaws in Travis Bickle's character, leaves me cold. I don't fully respond to Travis' plight. He never exhibits the positive qualities that I need in order to be fully taken in by a character. And he doesn't ever give me a good reason to be sympathetic towards his loneliness.
I've never fully responded to Taxi Driver on an emotional level, and now I understand that it is because I don't relate to Travis Bickle. Yet I still like the film. This paradox---liking a film yet not caring about the central character reminds of Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express.

When I first saw Chungking Express (the first Wong Kar-Wai film I ever saw), I thought it was cool. Its style was new and intoxicating. But I didn't feel totally satisfied. Wong's mysterious swapping of central characters left me confused and kept me from fully implicating myself into his story. I wanted more from a film.
Then I saw Days of Being Wild. Although it lacked the excitement of Wong Kar-Wai's signature style, I found myself responding much more deeply to its characters than I had to anyone in Chungking Express.
And now it all makes sense. For a long time, I fell into one of two traps. I would see a film knowing it was classic and if I wasn't moved, I would think that I had missed something. My defense mechanisms would be set in motion and before I knew it, I'd be convincing myself that I had also thought it was a classic. Or other times I would base my opinion of a film entirely on a film's surface. I'm not saying that any of the previous reviewers have fallen into this trap, but with work of unusually exciting style like Taxi Driver (other examples include Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, The Wild Bunch, or Clockwork Orange), it is a likely pitfall. From here on out, and I don't think it'll be easy, I hope to live by the following---if the film moved me, I liked it. I don't care if it's a classic or not.