What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
Taxi Driver is on the following AFI lists:
The Original Top 100 (#47)
100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies (#22)
100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains (Travis Bickle is the #30 villain)
100 Movie Quotes (#10 - Travis Bickle: "You talking to me?")
The Revised Top 100 (#52)
Courtesy of the weekly red envelope, the next AFI entry marks Martin Scorsese's second entry on the original AFI list. I had never seen Taxi Driver, and aside from the famous (or infamous?) "you talking to me" aside, I knew very little about the film, but I was eager to see how Marty's visual prowess would highlight this particular story, since this (along with Raging Bull) are the most esteemed projects of his illustrious film catalog, at least according to people who seem to know more than me.
Back when Robert DeNiro was Marty's muse in a string of films, Bobby played Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (I think it was their second pairing). When the film opens, the viewer learns that Travis is an insomniac who can't seem to fall asleep at any time of the day nor for any length of time. He's also a Vietnam veteran, and though he collects military retirement money, he decides to pass his nights by becoming a cab driver in New York. As he casually comments to anyone who asks, he'll drive anywhere, any time, regardless of his surroundings, but the problem is that, beyond certain inane questions with simple answers like "where do you drive," Travis is unable to relate to anyone, including to other cab drivers like the high-talking Wizard (Peter Boyle). This inability to interact with other humans is especially troublesome when Travis takes a fancy to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a one-dimensional, political socialite and campaign worker. While she's willing, against her better judgment and the judgment of her friend and co-worker (Albert Brooks, sporting a startling 'fro), to give Travis a chance, Travis is completely clueless and as awkward as Betsy seems to sense (and ignore) initially. Though they share a few bites and superficial chats, they can't maintain a conversation together, and Travis also takes Betsy to a pornographic movie on their first official date, innocently and ignorantly believing that this is what people do on dates. After Betsy spurns Travis thanks to his not-so-choice movie selection, Travis' antisocial behavior courtesy of his insomnia begins to transform into bona fide psychosis. He arms himself with all manner of black market firearms, believing he will clean the city of the "scum" that sullies it. He plans an assassination attempt on the presidential candidate for whom Betsy works, begins to radically change his appearance, and becomes protective of a twelve-year-old prostitute calling herself "Easy," though her real name is Iris (Jodie Foster). Iris chanced to crawl into Travis' cab one night, and he's so unable to forget her, he tracks her down and under the guise of approaching her pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel) for her services, tries to talk her into leaving her street life. Ultimately, when the assassination attempt goes awry, Travis finds another outlet to carry out his imagined heroics in an effort to save Iris from her circumstances.
Taxi Driver was an interesting movie that elicited many reactions from me. On the one hand, the audio and visual experience was truly something to behold, subtly getting under the skin. Marty never ceases to impress me, at least on some level. He's got his own unique visual style, which feels pre-planned and carefully considered for every frame (which also matches his reputation for perfectionism). Taxi Driver's visual theme directly parallels Travis' insomnia. The camera is always street level, the frames occasionally off-kilter, and the shots were taken from Travis' perspective if Travis wasn't the central focus. The cinematographical landscape is dark, hazy, sometimes blurry, accentuating the night life and gritty underbelly of the urban nightmare Travis both imagines and actually experiences. The fabulous, jazz-infused final score of Bernard Hermann was easily my favorite part of the entire film, lending not only street cred to the proceedings but adding a sense of loneliness or at least blue and contemplative isolation to Travis' situation, surreptitiously creating a thread of sympathy between the viewer and the unstable taxi driver.
That's where Taxi Driver succeeds best, as a character study of an unfortunate soul who can't help his situation and seems to have good intentions, even if his road lined with them has already reached hell and beyond. It's also a powerful examination of how deteriorating physical and mental symptoms can manifest into worse consequences for the person having them. Bobby's performance was unsetting and yet oddly captivating. Even though I was more impressed by boxer Jake in Raging Bull (and by Vito Corleone in the second Godfather), there was something instinctual and magnetic that made Bobby's Travis a fascinating character as he descended into uncertain darkness.
Travis isn't a hero or even an anti-hero, though. In reality, he's a villain, motivated as he is by progressive psychosis and violent urges. I only had one nagging question story-wise throughout the whole film: what caused Travis' insomnia? The insomnia seemed to inform all of his other problems. One can infer that the insomnia might have been brought on by some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, ex-Marine as he is, but that's only a guess. While this particular factoid may not have been overarchingly important in the grand scheme of the character study, I felt it was important to know given the particular roads down which Travis traveled once he was finally overtaken by his paranoid thoughts and delusions of grandeur.
My only other complaint about the film was Cybill Shepherd's performance. You know, I didn't even know she was in this one, and I think that's because her take on Betsy could be classified as less than memorable. Her performance, coupled with how it seems to have been written and possibly directed, makes Betsy an ambiguous character, one who seems feminine and yet strangely androgynous, smart yet superficial, savvy yet completely ignorant. I'm not sure if her character was meant to be such a veil of mystery in contrast to the fairly clear, simplistic, and animalistic tendencies of Travis, but I didn't particularly enjoy Betsy's (i.e. Cybill's) presence at any point in the film. She was uninteresting and almost minor compared to all of Travis' other pursuits.
On the other hand, seeing such a young and mature performance by Jodie Foster was kind of a treat, even if she was playing a child prostitute. This is the performance that inspired Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinkley, you know. Controversial as it must have been at the time, it also showed what amazing range Ms. Foster had and would have throughout her career, and she was able to walk that fine line between innocence and the lack of impressively.
All in all, though, the hallmark of Taxi Driver and its many AFI positions, at least aside from the thriller list since I never felt fear or tension watching this film, even during the spectacularly graphic gunfight, is owing to Marty's directorial genius. I liked Raging Bull better and feel it deserves to be rated higher because it was a tighter film that was as poetic as it was graphic, whereas Taxi Driver, perhaps owing to its subject matter, doesn't quite show the same sense of poetry. What it does show, however, is how methodical and yet abstract Marty's directorial style truly is; he's as much of a walking contradiction as a director as any of the complex characters to which he seems to be drawn. It's too bad his gift for acting is not as ample - Marty's cameo (or bit part, at any rate) in this film is kind of laughable. In the end, though, I find myself thinking that Taxi Driver rates an 8 on the patented ratings scale for having minor flaws but otherwise being very good. As to the test, however, it doesn't pass for me. It's too graphic to watch repeatedly, and I think I'm still searching for the Marty film that speaks to me on a relatable level worthy of repeated viewings and ownership. Still, Taxi Driver is a very good film on all fronts and a definite must-see for anyone looking to explore Scorsese's filmography. Plus, it turns out to be a great time capsule snapshot for 1970s New York City.