Scorsese's First Classic
Finally, one my couple dozen readers might have seen before! Yes, I am talking to you. [8/29/2023]
Reviewing Scorsese: Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a character piece, which is to say that it's voyeuristic in its attempts at objectivity upon its subject. To take it personally either misses the point or victimizes oneself. Scorsese doesn't want audiences to like Trevor; he wants them to recognize him. This approach to cinema dates as far back as the original Lumiere and Edison documentaries of everyday life (staged or natural) with banal descriptive titles like "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory" and "Feeding the Doves". There's more thematic depth here than those single shot shorts of course, but Taxi Driver simply points your gaze at something rather than manufacturing empathy.
That something in this case is a particular seemingly American archetype that continues to pervade our culture today. It is a category of human being into which we place others but understand we are more complex than. This is the holdover from America's foundation on revolution who never stopped kicking authority as a way of life rather than in response to something actually evil. Reveling in discontent, finding social injustice in every one of their struggles, this archetype exists in our minds by many names when we wish to alienate them. Watching Trevor, we can't help but think of the gun-toting proud boys, colorful SJWs, conspiratorial communists, online gamergate trolls, uptight waspy Karens, spiteful good-for-nothing teenagers - all names for what we perceive as the self-martyring opposition that must get over whatever they think is ailing them. Any group "we" disagree with that has taken their ideology to an extent we hate becomes this archetype in our mind of the obsessive rebel without a cause, spitting into the wind and forgetting that life is hard for everyone, not their group alone. Their perception of persecution enrages and terrorizes us "normal" people while taking away from what we think are real threats.
I'm sure this isn't an exclusively American persona nor is it even necessarily masculine, but Taxi Driver's specifics are. He hates that he can't get the woman he wants, that the city has an unspecified class-based grime to it, and has decided it's someone else's fault. De Niro injects boyish tomfoolery into his performance to let us know how to judge him; like a child throwing a fit, his means are destructive rather than constructive, expecting his random self-centered rebellion to incite change. When he gets a gun, he treats it like a toy, more self-satisfied with the iconography of the legacy he's created in his mind. Nothing is lamer than posing in front of a mirror to practice looking cool.
Ebert gets more occupied with Travis as an outcast than a rebel. He highlights a particular moment in which the camera turns away from Travis as he is turned down by a woman over a pay phone.
…it’s as if we can’t bear to watch Travis feel the pain of being rejected… Scorsese wanted to look away from Travis’ rejection; we almost want to look away from his life. But he’s there, all right, and he’s suffering (Ebert 41).
We hate looking at those rejects of our own minds and societies that become our pimple-ish blemishes on “decent” society. But the longer we let them alone to fester, the more likely they are to pop.
Scorsese Ranking
Taxi Driver (1976)
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)
Who’s That Knocking At My Door? (1967)
Mean Streets (1973)
Boxcar Bertha (1972)
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As always you can find me discussing films from the Criterion Collection four at a time on my podcast Always See Everything. Last week we did a very loopy episode where we ate a Michael Bay / Shakespeare sandwich with a few slices of Laurence Olivier. Please check them out!