In terms of my mental state, the summer of 2009 was one of the darkest periods of my life, and instead of trying to fight my depression with the distraction of vintage sitcoms and game shows, which I have done during some of my other bad down times, that year I dove deep into the darkness - and the film I turned to the most at that time was director Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Taxi Driver was written by Paul Schrader when he was having a bad streak of his own. He lost his job, he was getting divorced, his girlfriend broke up with him. Suffering from insomnia, he ended up hanging out at porn shops and porn theatres, the only places open late at night. He worked as a food delivery person, but other than that he was living in isolation. He began writing about a character similar to himself, except this character takes a job as a New York City taxi driver as a way to keep himself busy during his sleepless nights. He also made the character a Vietnam veteran, which he wasn't himself. The taxi driver Schrader wrote about was a young man named Travis Bickle, who is intensely lonely, so much that he describes himself as "God's lonely man", but he's not really able to connect with other people in a way to help combat that loneliness. He sits in his apartment all day, writing in his journal, obsessing over his situation in life, diagnosing himself with imagined illnesses and saying he wants to improve himself. At night, he drives taxi and watches porn because he can't sleep.
Online trivia says that Schrader began to realize that he was writing not just about loneliness, but about "the pathology of loneliness", the idea that some young men "subconsciously push others away to maintain their isolation, even though the main source of their torment is this very isolation". It's true. I was one of those young men. I lived in isolation myself for several years, an isolation of my own choosing, and I paid a mental and emotional price for it. I created my own loneliness, and during my time of being disconnected from people I lost any social skills I had ever had, making it difficult to reconnect with people and get rid of the loneliness. I developed severe social anxiety, and the darkness of '09 came about because I had made an attempt to connect with someone and it had fallen apart after a few months. So while Travis becomes more unhinged than I ever could, he was something of a kindred spirit at that time, especially since my usual sadness and loneliness was now accompanied, for a while, by a degree of anger and disgust. Early in the film, Travis says, "Thank God for the rain, which has helped wash away the garbage and the trash off the sidewalks." He follows that by saying that some day "a real rain" will come and wash the human scum off the streets as well. I felt a level of disgust like that, in my own way.
Since I'm talking about relating to him so much, I should also take a moment to say that Travis Bickle is not a great person. I don't condone the things he does or says. He displays some racism and homophobia, and he eventually starts plotting to kill people. He's not someone to emulate, he's not a role model. But he is a fascinating character to watch for 114 minutes.
Travis really goes off the deep end after he meets Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who is working with the campaign to get Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris) elected President. One of her co-workers at campaign headquarters is Tom, played by Albert Brooks, who brings some of the only comic relief into the film through his interactions with Betsy. Betsy agrees to go on a couple dates with Travis, but he blows it big time when he figures it would be a good idea to take her to one of the porn theatres he spends his time off in. After Betsy ends things, Travis tells her goodbye by saying, "You're in a Hell, and you're gonna die in a Hell." While reeling from the Betsy thing, Travis reaches out to fellow taxi driver Wizard (Peter Boyle), telling him he has "bad ideas" in his head... and really doesn't get any help. So his mental state continues to deteriorate.
Soon, Travis is planning to assassinate Palantine. One of Schrader's inspirations when he was writing the script was the published journal of Arthur Bremer, a disturbed young man who had planned to assassinate either then-president Richard Nixon or George Wallace, who was running against Nixon, in 1972. After finding Nixon too well guarded, Bremer did shoot Wallace four times, leaving him paralyzed. Five years after the release of Taxi Driver, another disturbed young man - John Hinckley Jr. - said the film had inspired his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley thought that if he did something like that and got a lot of news coverage, it would impress Jodie Foster enough that she would want to go out with him.
Hinckley became obsessed with Foster after seeing her in Taxi Driver, which she made when she was just 12 years old. Her character is Iris, a prostitute Travis becomes acquainted with around the time he realizes that it's going to be too difficult to take a shot at Palantine. He finds out that Iris is put on the streets by a pimp called Sport (Harvey Keitel), who "romances" her and tells her she's his "woman"... And at this point, the movie shifts from following Travis into insanity to kind of starting to encourage him to kill someone as a heroic act. Not Palantine, not the senseless assassination done in retaliation for Betsy rejecting him, but the murder of Sport. If Travis kills Sport, he'll be saving a young girl from a predator. The viewer's feelings change, too. It was deeply disturbing to see Travis preparing to kill Palantine in cold blood, but it could provide a satisfying conclusion to see him take down Sport.
Martin Scorsese is one of the most highly regarded directors of the last several decades, but I don't count him among my personal favorites. He has absolutely made some great movies and he has worked in a lot of different genres, but overall the number of Scorsese movies that actually appeal to me is substantially smaller than the list of movies he has made. Of the Scorsese movies I do like, Taxi Driver is at the top of the list. This is one I get wrapped up in every time I watch it, and I can watch it (and have watched it) again and again. The story of Travis Bickle is a captivating and troubling one. Schrader wrote a great script, one that should have earned him an Oscar nomination, but somehow didn't. Scorsese brought that script to the screen perfectly, assembling a terrific cast - led by De Niro giving a masterful performance as Travis - and taking the viewer on a dark journey. The gritty visuals are accompanied by an awesome score composed by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, who passed away a couple months before the film had its premiere. And it all builds up to one hell of an ending.
De Niro and Foster earned Oscar nominations for their roles, Herrmann was nominated posthumously for his score, and Taxi Driver was also up for Best Picture. Unfortunately, there was some stiff competition that year, so it didn't win in any of those categories. Despite the losses, it still endures as an all-time classic that reflects the lives of way too many young men. Some of us really need to work harder to find a way to ditch our self-imposed loneliness and stop being Travis Bickles. Being able to relate to him is a miserable place to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment