Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Taxi Driver'

 

Taxi Driver is just one of those magical movies that just seems to get almost everything right. Instead of feeling like the work of one or more creative visions, it blurs away the artifice of film-making to form the purest kind of cinema. 

Schrader’s script is mortifyingly incisive, De Niro utterly disappears into its now legendary lead character, Bernard Herrmann’s (final) score ranks among the finest in film history, editor Thelma Schoonmaker makes it flow like a dream, DoP Michael Chapman shoots New York like a neon-dipped nightmare- and Scorsese’s once-in-a-lifetime direction elevates it to seamless transcendence. 

To sum it up: Taxi Driver is one of the most profound works of art we have- and a one of a kind cinematic world I will love getting lost in for as long as I live...

Is there a more instantly arresting movie opening than Taxi Driver? We cut straight into a slow-mo cloud of thick city smoke as Bernard Herrmann’s rumbling score signals the approach of a grimy yellow cab. It’s brutally effective in its sheer simplicity- and it’s that raw audacity that has kept it so immediate and intense through all these years.

I also absolutely love the way we duck out of that potent opening with yet another abrupt cut- this time to an extreme close-up of a man’s face as the crimson neon of the passing city streets washes over his features. He’s not quite looking into camera and the music has suddenly shifted to a smooth jazz ambience. It’s a change that quickly cements the chimerical mood of this film and its subject, able to turn on a dime and forever abstracted by the electric shades of night that blur his ability to see clearly.

The way our first look at New York is a warped dreamscape- but not a pretty one. It’s more like an old painting that’s been ruined by the rain, smudged beyond recognition. This old city’s bones are now the rotten roots of urban decay, societal degradation and the hazy grave for the American dream. Instead of a rapturous Hollywood vision adorned by perfectly placed lights, it’s a hideously mutated mess of weeping lights fighting to stay alive in the crushing darkness that surrounds them.

It’s only just dawning on me but, is what we’re seeing here actually the end of this story? As Travis Bickle’s eyes slowly bleed across his face from one window to another, with his head seemingly frozen stiff- is this him after the climactic shootout? Are we seeing Bickle’s last glimpse of the city that killed him, red and blue ambulance lights glazing the passing onlookers as traffic grinds away the chance of him being saved minute by minute? The last of his life spilling out across his mind and warping the streets he knows so well into a gauzy neon blur? The dreamlike final scene of this film could be a bookend: The imagined fantasy curated to comfort his dying moments that started right here, in the opening credits: As a dying man works his way back through what the fuck drove him here.

There’s something about Bickle’s evasive body language and scrunched features during his “honourable discharge” line that makes me feel like he’s trying to remember a lie he’s practiced telling- rather than an uncomfortable truth. There’s a theory that this whole marines story is a line of bullshit to get the job and a part of me believes it, especially with the fractured fantasy the movie choses to end on. A man like Travis could probably convince himself he’d been the marines just to make the time he’s spent doing nothing a little less unbearable.

I love the steady pan around the garage as Travis makes his way out of the office, taking it all in. It’s so wonderful to think Scorsese’s crew had real moments of uncertainty about the way he chose to shoot scenes like this because, quite simply, it generally wasn’t done in Hollywood. The results speak for themselves- if something hasn’t been tried then it’s better to fail at something fresh than play it safe and be forgotten. Also, love Travis reaching out to touch this cab as it slides in. An instinctive acting beat you could never predict in a script.

The way we can barely glimpse Travis in the distance of his mirror, with iron bars locking the world away behind him. He’s a barely here even in his own home.

This beautiful silent cut from Travis’ apartment to a smooth camera attached to the cab as it runs along the street (also Texas Chainsaw Massacre is playing, way to go!). I love the way Herrmann’s score alone guides this little montage, there’s no diegetic noise here. We’re in the zone now- with Travis.

The chugging repetition of Herrmann’s score as Travis describes the routine of his menial job. Day in, day out. It’s a tedium some people find suffocating- and others accept. But as Travis shows us, simply accepting the grinding monotony of life doesn’t magically keep us sane. If anything, his grim surrender to this moonwashed life of late nights and dead days is what crams his mind into such a tiny space that it can’t help but bleed out through the cracks and poison most every moment of his waking existence.

The way Travis tries to chat up the porno theatre attendant just a few steps away from the screen spraying hardcore smut straight into the eyes of a few guys with nothing better to do. There’s something deeply depressing about everyone stuck in this tiny little room- including the girl working behind the counter. Then again, this kind of thing is now a free ticket for anyone with a phone in their pocket. I’m not sure if Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver is misanthropic per se- but it certainly underlines the twisted ways we have designed our world to profit off driving eachother into the ground.

The way the quick handheld street shots before Betsy’s locked-down slow-mo intro make it hit that much harder. Always pay attention to how your shots play off eachother. And hey look, whose that sitting on the left!

Albert Brooks saying “I love you” ofscreen here. It’s hilarious- and goes against conventional editing wisdom, but the punchline of Betsy’s indifference works better because it shares the same shot. No need for a reaction cut when there wasn’t one.

The rain-spattered lens that creates a bloom of bokkeh (those little blurry shapes) around the streetlamp above. It’s a shot we’ve seen a thousand times before given fresh perspective by a little bit of water.

Travis lingering on this affectionate couple. It’s a brief, bittersweet moment: Hopeful for first-time watchers and quietly tragic for those who know what happens next. Bickle would have seen a hell of a lot of this around the city- and each time it must have prickled his desire to be a little more than god’s lonely man. In light of today’s ‘incel’ sub-culture and a generation of young men in particular increasingly numb to their hope of romantic relationships by way of crippling porn addiction and the way it insidiously undermines their self-esteem, Taxi Driver’s connection between Travis’ pursuit of a relationship by taking Betsy to a porn theatre is hauntingly prescient. It’s all he knows.

The way Schrader sequenced this scene to again underscore Travis’ imminent date with Betsy. The other guys he’s mixing with are engaging in misogynistic work banter, degrading women to sex objects. To the blank slate of Travis, impressionable to the point of obsession, it’s another nail in the coffin for his capacity to contextualise a healthy relationship.

This crawling dolly push-in to subtly highlight Travis’ quiet racism. It literally makes him feel the very diner he’s sitting in is a little less comfortable- less safe. Goes to show how a prejudiced worldview can twist your basic experience of living into a painful attempt to escape from all the normal things your brain has decided are bad to be around.

We all love this zoom into Bickle’s fizzing water, so close the bubbles are breaking in our faces- and I don’t really think it has to ‘mean’ anything big. It’s just a guy whose lonely even in the company of others zoning out and staring into his drink- so desperately incapable of connecting with other people that he’s got nothing better to do.

I’ve always liked this lil’ dolly insert as Travis grandly waves his hand across Betsy’s desk to illustrate the meaninglessness of everything on it. It’s a satisfying camera move but also a grim confirmation of his debilitating depression: His own life is so empty that he can’t even comprehend someone else trying to build something in their own.

Travis rambling here, going off on a tangent about connections that quickly spirals into awquardness. I love the way he’s framed slightly further away from camera than Betsy is, as if she’s trying to connect and he’s still a half-step too far away from basic humanity to really engage with her. He might as well be sat alone, talking to himself- practicing their would-be conversation in a mirror. From what we know about Travis Bickle- that may well be the reality.

“I have learned more about America from riding in taxi cabs than all the limos in the country” Schrader skewering Palantine’s pathetic put-on compassion for the common man in one simple line. What few glimpses we see of the people elected to ‘fix’ the mess their city is in are about as far removed from relating to its issues as Travis is from other people. Ironically, they have that in common.

There’s something disarmingly bittersweet about the magick mixture of the film’s visuals with Herrmann’s score. His deliriously smooth, jazzy blanket cast over an open sewer of grime. In a way it highlights the beauty of our arts and culture being eaten away by a frenzied hive of cheap pleasures and dead-end lives. The transcendent beauty of the music is trapped in the streets with people who don’t care to hear it anymore.

The way that when Travis pulls back into the garage the morning after his car has been pelted by eggs, it’s completely clean. Is this a continuity issue, or was the previous scene just another fantasy born from Travis’ racism as he cruises through the empty streets?

This iconic shot was another example of Scorsese’s crew doubting the validity of his unique stylistic ideas. This kind of this was never done- and from a technical point of view it’s not a ‘motivated’ shot. The camera moves without a ‘reason’. But making movies is far deeper than the shit they feed you in film school- and it’s the emotion of the scene that shifts the camera across into that desolate hallway and perfectly captures the feeling of the moment. Rules don’t apply if it’s right for the moment. Also, I have to wonder if this move was pre-planned or discovered on the day. Did they do a take of the camera tracking to follow Travis once he’d hung up- and then come up with the idea of starting the move before the call had ended to hang on the empty hallway? Always be looking for gems like these.

This POV of Travis’ murderous customer. This is the view he had as he explained that he was planning to blow his wife’s face off. This brief shot is so haunting- because Travis just wants out of there. He doesn’t care about this man’s problems enough to offer even one word in response- just another head turned away from this maniac’s troubles. The guy’s plans are unconscionable- but the likely indifference of everyone he’s rambled his problems to has only cemented his violent intentions. If nobody listens, then I’ll have to make them. Schrader again elegantly sequences this scene to underscore the transformation Travis himself is about to undergo.

 Wiz’s vacuous attempt to comfort Travis. He’s clearly just as lost as the young man, railing off half-finished sentences in the search for something to say about a life he’s never learned to understand. In the end, the only certainty he can offer is “we’re all fucked”. It’s meant as a joke- but it’s the only concrete thing he says to Travis. This man, whose been doing the same job for 17 years of his life, has just as much as a clue as Bickle did on his first day. The close-up shots of Travis are disarmingly emotional- something about the bright lights glazing his face as it twists around the honesty he’s so afraid of letting loose. He needs help- and his dangerously limited circle of ‘friends’ can’t offer it.

The worried glance Wiz steals at Travis as he’s making his escape.

The haunting POV of Travis pointing his new weapon out of the window, shifting it along until he finds a suitable ‘target’. The movie jumps into this shot without warning and it hits like a truck. Bickle’s tenuous connection to reality and abstracted sense of empathy are a dangerous enough mix to make this new ‘toy’ a gateway to random murder- and the film-makers brutally underline how vulnerable individuals like this can easily gain access to things that will help them ruin other people’s lives, even on a whim. It’s also interesting that Easy Andy compares it to a “service revolver”, which has tragically proven devastating again and again when unstable people join the police with lethal intentions. If you keep these weapons out there, then the wrong people are going to keep getting to them.

I also love the connection the film-makers immediately draw between Bickle’s new gun and his sexual frustration. It’s a blunt metaphor, but as we listen to the woman on-screen moan “look at the size of that”- the allure of the gargantuan 44 Magnum becomes clear (a gun he also probably first heard about off a screen, from Dirty Harry in 1971). We can’t forget our own systems enable this lethal build-up of psychological despair: Lonely people are given porn to pump out their frustrations- but eventually even that doesn’t satisfy, it just taunts them with sex they aren’t having- and ironically have no drive to search for with cheap smut now forever at their fingertips. But they can always consolidate the disappointment hanging between their legs with a deadly hunk of steel that they hope will prove how powerful they really are. All of this pain so easily avoidable- its rotten roots so plain to see in broad daylight- but the cash that runs it all and drives human lives into the ground has to keep flowing, right?

 Travis’ face staying out of frame during this montage. This is what he’s becoming.

Travis’ little pause as he takes in the secret service man’s ploy. I can’t quite tell if he feels betrayed in some way- but he instantly sees through it and gives a false name. From the bumbling, aimless Bickle we’ve known in the film so far, this moment has always struck me as particularly frightening- because suddenly his self-appointed mission of “true force” has focused this wandering loner into a dangerously unhinged individual.

Bickle (and De Niro) ad-libbing this breakdown using lines and situations that vaguely sound like they’re copied from ‘tough-guy’ movies, into a mirror that’s stood-in for by our camera. Again, cinema is wonderful- but anything can be twisted by the wrong set of hands and the casual, aggrandized violence present in a scary majority of movies can so easily seep through the cracks of a fractured mind like this and insist that other people’s lives are less important than your ego.

Obviously the jump-cut double take as Bickle fumbles his speech and has to start again is just gold, because it’s such a human moment. Taxi Driver is a movie that beams out from inside the mind of another person- and people make silly mistakes like this, they lose their trains of thought. Too many films on tough subjects like this put a thousand laser-focused words in the mouths of their tortured anti-heroes without recognising that these people have no idea what they want from life, so how would they always know exactly what the fuck to say? They’re always searching for the next run of bullshit they can clamber onto to keep themselves ‘sane’.

Bickle meekly saying “hey” to get the robber’s attention before he shoots him dead. There’s something morbidly polite about it, like he’s asking a stranger for the time.

The shopkeeper viciously beating the robber’s corpse as Bickle escapes. I think the excuse is that he’s trying to make it look like he overpowered the guy and beat him to death, to absolve Travis of any blame, but the reality is this dude beating out his frustrations on a dead body. It’s the “fifth motherfucker this year” who’s tried to rob his store at gunpoint- just think about the psychological damage that does to a person trying to feed their family. Is the robber trying to feed his own, or just grab some quick cash to score with?

This ‘Late for the Sky’ scene is such an anomaly- and yet I’ve always found it deeply moving. There’s something disquietingly normal about Travis zoning out to a melancholic song, connecting with the way its words seem to know a little about his own life- and put it in a context he might be able to conquer. Sadly, that’s not the case- but for the soon-to-be lethal loner with a gun this small sequence brings him right here with the rest of us: Listening to the same pop music and wishing we were anywhere but here.

The eerie, faceless coverage interspersed during the start of Palantine’s speech.

Bickle walking off and briefly taking a seat after he’s shot Sport in the gut.

Travis instinctively moving to kill himself as soon as everyone else is dead. Maybe he wanted to go down in a blaze of glory- but a hero wouldn’t need to blow his brains out after he was done ‘saving the day’. Maybe this is all he really wanted.

The sheer audacity of this Taxi Driver’s abundantly unreal ending. It’s so rare to see a movie, let alone a decently sized Hollywood production, dive so deeply into the psyche of its character that it lets them control the fabric of the film’s reality. But in doing so, the film-makers are able to craft a singularly incisive portrait of a fractured mind re-drafting the world under its feet so their existence can feel a little more bearable. Taxi Driver is in part a film about loneliness, violence, toxic masculinity, social degradation and a whole host of other issues- but beyond all this it’s perhaps cinema’s most complete portrayal of the prison of the self: The twisted stories we dream up to keep our lives in balance- and distract us from doing better with them. Film was the perfect art form through which to interrogate this sickness at the heart of human storytelling- and how the lies we spread to save ourselves from facing the truth are soon repaid in a shallow grave. Stay under the spell of your dreams too long and you’ll wake up to a world that has long left you behind. Be honest- and you might just give yourself a fair shot at living them.