Thomas is a big fan of the recent Joker, which, from all the reviews, is very much influenced by a couple of Martin Scorsese movies, Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. So, before we give in and give Joker a watch, I thought it would be good finally to check out Taxi Driver. I've sort of been meaning to since the incredibly quiet kid (Stephen Duffy - I remember his name because his namesake had a hit at the time) in my English A-Level class said it was his favorite film (two of the approximately ten words he said the entire two years - it's always the quiet ones). Well... it's certainly... of its time. Actually, in some ways, it's of an earlier time too, because the (rather intrusive) score is the last one Bernard "Psycho" Herrmann completed, and it sounds more 50s than 70s, to my ears. Obviously the acting and content is very 70s - you couldn't have such graphic descriptions of various acts of sex and/or violence in any earlier decade, and you've got DeNiro (amazing) and Keitel (hard to take seriously, just because his face doesn't match the hair pimp getup he's in) at the height of their powers, not to mention a young and stunningly beautiful Cybil Shepherd and a young and almost puppyish Albert Brooks (and throw in Peter Boyle two years after Young Frankestein) and of course, a barely teenage Jodie Foster, and it couldn't be made 5 years earlier or later. But man, is it slow. It truly was the age when art movies could have mainstream success, because this one meanders. Essentially, we follow DeNiro's Travis Bickle as he takes a job driving cabs, prepared to go anywhere (including Harlem, the Bowery, et. al. - and remember, the other way this is essentially 70s is that New York was at its very seediest) just because he is incapable of sleeping. (And I'd be willing to bet that DeNiro, method as he famously is, stayed up for a week before filming, because he legitimately looks like shit.) He drives around and sees Cybil Shepherd going to her job at the campaign office of a Senator running to be the (presumably, given his rhetoric) Democratic nominee for president, and falls for her. (Albert Brooks, much more suitable, is her co-worker who clearly also has the hots for her.) He asks her out, she's intrigued (although, why? He gives off seriously "dangerous creep" vibes) and agrees to go out to a film, so he takes her to the porn films he usually tries to go to sleep in front of on his nights off (having also struck out with the woman working the concession). She is, fairly naturally, disgusted, and never wants to see her again, although he continues to pester her over the phone and sending her flowers, and shows up and makes a scene at the office after a while. (I don't know if this is meant to be humorous, but when Albert Brooks is hustling him out the door, Bickle adopts a karate stance. It made me laugh, anyway. Apart from his service in the Marines, he surely is an incel forerunner.)
Then his attention moves on to Jodie Foster, whom he sees as somebody he should save. But not before he buys two suitcases of guns from a squirty little "salesman" (who wears a suit and seems to sell everything from crystal meth (even back then!) to Cadillacs, and who assures him that he's getting a better deal than the "Jungle Bunnies" would (sidenote: the casual racism that pervades this film would be less worrisome (as in: just a realistic depiction of shitty people) if there were more than one black character who gets lines. Scorsese himself drops the N-word as an unhinged cuckold who makes Bickle park the taxi outside the apartment of his wife's black lover and fantasizes about shooting her in the vagina.))
and bodges together a Rube Goldbergian device to propel one of them from his sleeve into his hand when needed. The final stretch of the movie has him showing up to one of the rallies of the politician Shepherd's and Brooks' characters were campaigning for, clearly intent on shooting him, before his secret service bodyguard recognizes him as the weirdo who was hanging around an earlier one and he's chased off.
From then it's off to "rescue" Foster's Iris by getting into a shockingly violent shootout with her pimp and various hangers one (fingers are graphically shot off). When the cops show up to find him bleeding out, he smiles and puts two blood-soaked fingers to his temple, as Iris is screaming in the background.
Now, if it ended there, I think it would be more palatable, but there's a tacked on ending that reveals that he's been hailed as a kind of proto-Bernard Goetz "hero," Iris's parents can't thank him enough, and he's back at his taxi driving job. Even weirder, Shepherd's Betsy shows up to ride in his cab, and they chat about what a great guy her politician boss is. Huh? It almost seems tacked on by a nervous studio eager for a happy ending, but I'm sure I'm missing the point. Anyway, it's easy to see how this film could be misread (say, by the guy who shot Ronald Reagan) although it's clearly a cautionary tale, much as the recent Joker is supposed to be. Are we glad we watched it? Well, now I've finally seen the "you talkin' to me?" scene in context, I suppose.
And DeNiro is amazing. But I worry about teenage Stephen Duffy, I really do.
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