‘Here is a man who would not take it anymore…’
It’s been several years since I last watched Taxi Driver until today, but this most recent viewing cemented why it’s a masterpiece. This is a timeless film. A shocking howl of anguish and despair at the state of things. Nihilistic. Bleak. Vital. Martin Scorsese’s cinematic behemoth feels just as prescient now as it must have done back in 1976…
The titular taxi driver is Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) – a man disgusted by the world and on the edge of a breakdown. Veering between 12 hour shifts and late night porno theatres, Bickle develops an obsession with Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), a lonely woman who spends her time campaigning for Charles Palpatine (Leonard Harris), and this obsession eventually contributes to Bickle’s inevitable murderous rampage at the film’s unforgettable conclusion.
De Niro has become a bit of a parody of himself in his later years, but it is not hyperbolic to suggest that his performance here is one of the finest in all of cinema. He looks, feels and sounds like a man on the very edge of sanity. His clenched jaw and wild eyes have echoed throughout cinematic history. Helped along by Paul Schrader’s astonishingly despairing script and Bernard Herrmann’s sparse and haunting score, Taxi Driver is a nightmarish death ballad that eventually becomes one man’s existential dread writ large across the screen. You can see Travis Bickle everywhere from Patrick Bateman, to Tyler Durden to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, but while the character has often been imitated, he has never been bettered.
It’s a testament to Scorsese’s incredible talents as a director that Taxi Driver is probably not his finest accomplishment, but it remains a masterpiece – filmmaking at its most vital.
