Taxi Driver



    
"You Talkin'; to Me? Well I'm the Only One Here."

The taxi cab as the metaphor for loneliness...

    Travis Bickle is "God's lonely man," peering at New York through the rear-view mirror of his taxi cab. Though he tries to make sincere human connections, Bickle finds himself lonelier with each awkward conversation, each rejection.

    Director Martin Scorsese saw himself in Bickle, and felt Taxi Driver was a film he had to make, even if it might not be a commercial or critical success. He and writer Paul Schrader did not expect many people to be able to identify with such a mal-adjusted character, and were surprised by the world's embrace and acceptance of the film.

    Taxi Driver was filmed from the perspective of Bickle, perfectly personified by Robert De Niro, who had just finished filming Mean Streets, also directed by Scorsese. In Taxi Driver, Bickle relocates from the Vietnam War to the filthy, morally corrupt streets of 1973 New York (thanks to Mayor Giuliani they are filthy no more) with a disgust for the majority of humanity. Bickle's perspective, one of a young, disaffected, ostracized New York cab driver, attracts audiences who seek validation for some of their most dark and paranoid thoughts.

    Scorsese mused on the world's unexpected attraction to Bickle's perception of reality: "Maybe it's just a coming of age process. But the thing is not to get stuck there. One can have those feelings and not cross the line. It's just being honest with yourself and truthful, that's all."

    Robert De Niro finds his acting range as Travis Bickle: Above and below.



    Perhaps it was the psychological trauma of war, or the insane delirium induced by driving each night through New York streets lined with dopers, dealers, trash, violence and smut, but Bickle crosses this line of acceptable behavior. During the film, Bickle idolizes two women who he sees as coerced victims of their paternal corruptors--innocents among villains. One, Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd, is a campaign volunteer for a president-elect hopeful, surrounded by people, pretending to be well-adjusted, but completely alone. The other, Iris, played by Jodie Foster, is a child prostitute, controlled by a pimp, played by Harvey Keitel. When these "damsels in distress" shock Bickle and choose to remain in their lonely lives with their "captors," the film concludes with an explosion of violence.



    "The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence," wrote Thomas Wolfe in "God's Lonely Man."

    We are all afraid to admit our loneliness, lest we be rejected by those who would rather stay in their more familiar state of denial. Therefore, we need brave movies like Taxi Driver to remind us that we are not alone, to remind us that it's ok to be disenchanted, that there's no need to feel insane.

    This article is provided coutesy of our sister site: Better Angels Now.





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