Taxi Driver follows 26 year old, Travis (Robert De Niro) living in New York as an honorable discharge and a taxi driver. Like Alice, I think this is a sort of coming-of-age film, but in a darker aspect. For one, he goes looking for work as a taxi driver because he’s already sitting on mass-transportation vehicles for free, secondly, he tells the man in charge that he can work “whenever, wherever”. This scene gives us a sense of the type of person Travis is, and upon hearing that he was in the Marines, we can infer that he may be having trouble adjusting to life outside of the battleground; thus, explaining his signs of mental instability.
An Opinionated Analysis If There Ever Was One!
I also believe he’s living vicariously through the streets of New York, that or he’s just really into people watching and reading people. Though, it’s worth to note that he finds New York disgusting and repulsive (but I’m not sure that he hates it) , as well as the “animals” that come out at night, so I don’t know if I can stand by my claim that he’s living vicariously. But, he does make an effort to tell Senator Palantine (Leonard Harris) that he believes he’s the one that’s going to clean the scum off the streets; this belief and support is brief though, as he goes through a major character change once Betsy leaves him after the pornography movie “date” fiasco. Speaking of, because of Travis’s unstable nature and loneliness that “has followed” him his whole life, I wouldn’t blame him for taking Betsy to that movie. In the beginning, he buys candy for himself and sits in a theater watching a similar film, he has no expression as the moans and grunts overflow the theater. When I saw this, I figured this was either his way of staying awake or trying to find some sort of activity to keep him from thinking about his alienation. Plus, the activity just seemed so pointless but routine, it’s clear that he goes to this theater often and though I can’t say he gets pleasure from it, it’s something to fill the void.
On top of going to the movies, driving aimlessly for his next pick-up, and talking to his taxi-driver friends that provide no help when he expresses serious concern, I think he saw Betsy as another token to fill the void he had. He looked as though he was progressing in the moment that he had her, but once she cut him off, that’s when he went ballistic. Travis lost that filler and because of that, he finds himself looking for another way to fill his time.
Introducing: Jodie Foster
Thus, we welcome Iris (Jodie Foster). After Iris falls into the backseat of Travis’s cab, to then be yanked out by Sport (Harvey Keitel), he receive a wrinkled 20 as a bribe of silence— a 20 that feeds his fuel and fire all throughout the rest of the movie. He hesitates to pick it up until the morning comes where he quickly grabs it and puts it in his pocket. At this point, we know that he isn’t going to keep it, he stares at it with the intensity like that very bill killed his whole family and then took his dog; this was his new filler. Iris and the 20 are one entity, he uses the bill as a reminder that he has to help Iris escape and then the other entity that fuels Travis is Palantine. I am assuming he now hates Palantine because Betsy works in support of him and when Betsy denies him at her workplace for the final time, he calls them all scum, thus inferring that Palantine is also scum.
Something worth noting is how Scorsese utilizes the rear-view mirror as more than a mirror. Because I believe that Travis is someone looking for their next “thrill”, and searching for an escape, I stand by the notion that Scorsese had several scenes of both Travis’s eyes and his eyes on the mirror because it signifies Travis’s search for new opportunity, new “adventure”, and quite possibly a new life.
My Ramble Ends:
Last but not least, I want to mention the music theme. Bernard Herrmann provides a beautiful piece to accompany our lone-ranger’s journey. During the first half of the film, there’s a variation of the Taxi Driver theme, meaning the movie uses both the dark and ominous parts of the song and then the light-hearted saxophone piece. But, whenever things start to go south, or we know that Travis didn’t have the best time in the previous scene, the deep percussion (and other instruments I regrettably don’t know) starts to play, signifying that something may or may not happen. Towards the middle, we hear the ominous sound more than anything because this part of the movie is dark, and Travis is putting himself through hell.
Alas, after his coma and brave victory, we hear the saxophone and violins play, Travis has won. Betsy even comes back in the picture—briefly—but since Travis knows he’s a top-notch fella now, he drives away from her, leaving her with just a smirk. Is it because he doesn’t need to fill that void anymore?
