You always hear that Martin Scorsese is the best living filmmaker, and while that's really up to the individual viewer, you have to concede that he at least ranks in the top tier of movie directors of all time, alongside Kubrick, Hitchcock and Coppola. Whether he's doing his own original material as in Mean Streets or remakes like The Departed, he always puts a personal touch on the film. Taxi Driver is one of his best.
Not many directors are really as capable as Scorsese when it comes to being able to drag you into a fictional world, to build a whole atmosphere around you. You feel like you're sitting shotgun in Travis Bickle's cab right beside him. It almost feels like a documentary for its sheer realism. It is as close as you can get to "found footage" without some gimmick like having one of the characters hold the camera.
The film stands as the second entry in something of a trilogy of films alongside The Searchers and Paris, Texas. All three films use essentially the same outline for their stories, and both Scorsese's film and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas are considered loose remakes of The Searchers. The trilogy stands as a testament to how many different ways there are to tell a story, proving that old axiom that a movie isn't about what it's about, it's about how it's about it.
Where The Searchers is primarily an adventure film revolving around themes of prejudice and loneliness, where Wim Wenders chose to make a real, but sweet-hearted film about the reuniting of a family, Scorsese opts to highlight the darker aspects of the story, the sheer lonesomeness of the hero, the outsider. In all three stories, the lead takes it upon himself to do something he sees as heroic. In all three, the real morality of what he does is questionable, and in all three, the hero retreats from those he's saved at the end, always trying to find validation in heroics, but never able to join in.
Each of these films is its own statement on the nature of loneliness, and it's because of this that the heroes are all so easy to sympathize with. What Travis Bickle does in the film is certainly not something most of us would ever take part in, but you find yourself wanting him to come out okay, nevertheless, simply because we all know that lonesomeness, that need for validation.
Everyone has been at a point in their lives where they feel trapped in their own little bubble. Loneliness doesn't just mean being alone, being single or living out in the middle of nowhere. Loneliness can happen even when you're surrounded by people all day. We know where Travis has been.
Few people are willing to talk about the darkest aspect of the film, because it involves looking at your own darker instincts: We root for Travis Bickle in the end. We shouldn't, but we do, because we wish he could be the hero, we wish the film was a western so that his simplistic moral compass would be correct. The tragedy is that it's not a western.
While the film serves as part of a trilogy to The Searchers and Paris, Texas, it's also something of a companion piece to First Blood, another film about a lonely Vietnam veteran who uses violence as a means of personal validation.
Not many directors are really as capable as Scorsese when it comes to being able to drag you into a fictional world, to build a whole atmosphere around you. You feel like you're sitting shotgun in Travis Bickle's cab right beside him. It almost feels like a documentary for its sheer realism. It is as close as you can get to "found footage" without some gimmick like having one of the characters hold the camera.
The film stands as the second entry in something of a trilogy of films alongside The Searchers and Paris, Texas. All three films use essentially the same outline for their stories, and both Scorsese's film and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas are considered loose remakes of The Searchers. The trilogy stands as a testament to how many different ways there are to tell a story, proving that old axiom that a movie isn't about what it's about, it's about how it's about it.
Where The Searchers is primarily an adventure film revolving around themes of prejudice and loneliness, where Wim Wenders chose to make a real, but sweet-hearted film about the reuniting of a family, Scorsese opts to highlight the darker aspects of the story, the sheer lonesomeness of the hero, the outsider. In all three stories, the lead takes it upon himself to do something he sees as heroic. In all three, the real morality of what he does is questionable, and in all three, the hero retreats from those he's saved at the end, always trying to find validation in heroics, but never able to join in.
Each of these films is its own statement on the nature of loneliness, and it's because of this that the heroes are all so easy to sympathize with. What Travis Bickle does in the film is certainly not something most of us would ever take part in, but you find yourself wanting him to come out okay, nevertheless, simply because we all know that lonesomeness, that need for validation.
Everyone has been at a point in their lives where they feel trapped in their own little bubble. Loneliness doesn't just mean being alone, being single or living out in the middle of nowhere. Loneliness can happen even when you're surrounded by people all day. We know where Travis has been.
Few people are willing to talk about the darkest aspect of the film, because it involves looking at your own darker instincts: We root for Travis Bickle in the end. We shouldn't, but we do, because we wish he could be the hero, we wish the film was a western so that his simplistic moral compass would be correct. The tragedy is that it's not a western.
While the film serves as part of a trilogy to The Searchers and Paris, Texas, it's also something of a companion piece to First Blood, another film about a lonely Vietnam veteran who uses violence as a means of personal validation.
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