Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver lived up to the hype. The beautiful jazz ballad theme, dark and dingy streets of 1970s New York City, and the depressed and depraved mind of Travis (DeNiro) perfectly capture a world of crime, prostitution, drug dealing, murder, and unruly youth. Indeed, while driving through a black neighborhood, teenagers throw eggs at his cab. While driving through other seedy neighborhoods, he encounters pimps, drug dealers, whores, and what he calls 'scum' and 'degenerates,' but he himself goes to seedy porno theaters. His inability to have social interactions with women and his resulting loneliness and exclusion from society only make him angrier. After his rejection from Betsy (who is rightfully disgusted and wants nothing from him after he takes her to a porno theater for a movie), the mentally deteriorating mind of Travis decides to work out, purchase guns without a permit, and endeavor to assassinate Senator Palantine, the politician running for president and whose campaign Betsy works. His severe depression and longing for human companionship leads to him seeing Palantine as the source of all his problems. By scapegoating Palantine, who is running on a platform of drastic social change to restore power to the people, Travis probably sees Palantine as someone protecting the filth of New York City's streets. 

Don't forget the enormous irony of a man who frequents porno theaters and tries to assassinate a politician becoming a hero. After slaying Iris's pimp, the bouncer, and her client (an Italian mafioso), he tries to shoot himself, but had no leftover ammunition. The police find him lying on the couch, bleeding from his neck and in the same room, a screaming Iris and two corpses (Iris's client and the bouncer). What follows is perhaps one of my favorite scenes in the film: the camera views the room from the top, or a bird's eye view, which is utterly unique and unexpected camera work. Anywho, Roger Ebert has suggested that the end of the film is really the dying dreams of Travis. How could a man who shoots and kills 3 people but rescue a child prostitute escape jail? According to what we see in the film, he is in a coma for a few months, but then returns to his old job as a cab driver, working 12-hour shifts again. It's impossible that a man without a gun permit and killer of 3 men (even if they are criminals and low-lives) would escape prison sentence. 

Additional irony and contradictory actions in the film include Iris not wanting liberation from Travis, who is so odd she runs right back to Sport, her pimp (Harvey Keitel). And Travis's views on blacks and race are somewhat ambiguous: he hits on a black cashier in one scene, accepts 'spooks' in his cab, drives in Harlem and South Bronx at night, but he also stares at a black man in a restaurant who may be a pimp with extreme disgust (at least that's what I got) and his sweeping dehumanization of New York's underclass who are disproportionately black is also troubling. To his credit, one passenger asks him to drive to the apartment where his white wife is sleeping with a 'nigger' and the passenger tells Travis how he will shoot her in the head and her 'pussy.' Travis does not say a thing, and likely views his passenger as worse than the adulterous wife and her black lover. So Travis is a lot of contradictions: repelled by the prostitution and crime, but due to his insomnia and need for some human contact, he still works in those terrible neighborhoods. 

As soon as he purchases the guns, cowboy boots, and starts physical training, I knew Travis would soon kill one of his criminal passengers or somebody on the street. Indeed, he unconsciously tries to run two prostitutes over in his cab, likely due to his desire to purge the streets of their kind. I didn't foresee that he would 'save' the 12 year old child prostitute who ran away from home in Pittsburgh. Obviously this young woman needed to return home to her parents, but her reasons for running away are never explained. Travis casts himself into the role as her savior without ever thinking of her own wants (she truly loves her Sport, even though he does exploits her). His cowboy outfit completes the homage to the Western motif, but unlike any cowboy hero, Travis remains a depressed, mentally unstable cab driver unable to make human connections. The media exalting him to hero status after slaying the 3 men only highlights the thin line between 'morally-justified violence' and the ramblings of an insane near-assassin. 

Well, I highly recommend this film to anybody with an interest in Scorsese, DeNiro, or 1970s New York. DeNiro's lonely character, a Vietnam War veteran honorably discharged from service, remains a mysterious character. He writes dutifully to his parents for their anniversary, but has no real friends or anything to live for. I suppose what makes us all love the film so much is Travis's audacity of hope, yearning for love and a real connection to others. I'm still unsure what to think of the ending, since it's utterly unrealistic, but perhaps it's not a dream. In the final scene, Travis is driving his cab again and his passenger is Betsy, who tells him she heard about his hero status. I interpret this scene as Betsy reaching out to him, perhaps giving him another chance. But Travis doesn't charge her for the fare and drives on, perhaps accepting his fate of solitude.