Shameful #5 - Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)

 What can I say about Taxi Driver?

Seriously, what can I say about it besides that it's great. Scorsese perfectly sets the dingy world of 1970s New York at night; even now where the streets are cleaned up and Times Square has (almost) no sex shops, there's still that feeling you have when you're in the back of a cab late at night, lights passing you by coming out of the darkness and momentarily flitting into your window. The soundtrack is simply a perfect addition to the visuals.

But what really stands out about Taxi Driver is, of course, Travis Bickle. He starts out as an outsider, weightlessly floating through time; he doesn't sleep, and so his existence is like that feeling of a long car ride when you're tired. He's there, but he seems to float past society without entirely understanding it; he's physically there when he's at the diner with his coworkers, but something's just sliding by him that he can't understand. His detachment causes him to look down on the majority of society, and when he tries to connect with Betsy, he doesn't get the subtlety behind human interaction. He knows on a date you're supposed to take a girl to a movie, but he really can't understand why she's upset when he takes her to a porn theater. Every negative experience he has pushes him closer and closer to the edge, until he feels that since he's the only one outside of the societal system, he has to be the one to save it. Unfortunately, because he's outside of it, he doesn't understand the consequences of assassinating a politician or killing the only protection Iris has; in particular, he can't see how complicated Iris' situation might be. We don't know why she ran away from home, but Travis can't even imagine that she might have a good reason.

Roger Ebert compares this film to John Ford's The Searchers, but I just can't agree. In The Searchers, the main character is an outsider because he's out of the times; he's a former Confederate soldier who lost his purpose once the Civil War ended. While he is on a quest to save a girl who we later find out doesn't want to be saved, and he does take her back to her parents, I feel like The Searchers doesn't have quite the same purpose as Taxi Driver. The Searchers is about a quest gone wrong and how racism and societal values have changed after the war; the main character's main issue is that he is no longer relevant. Travis' main issue is that he's always been an outsider, and that constant isolation causes him to lash out against the world. Both characters see things in terms of black and white, but for very different reasons.