ANOTHER MIXED BAG: TAXI DRIVER

This was a funny film to watch… Almost unrecognizably young Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster on the verge of “being discovered” and Martin Scorsese doing his thing”. Though, as I write this another thing struck me, this was all thirty years ago of course, Martin Scorsese was pretty young too… I’m sure he hoped this film would become legendary but I wonder if he had any concept as to the legend it would become… Hmm, I’m sure there’s a quote on that somewhere… ; ) This was another film I kept meaning to watch but like so many of the great classics fell through black holes… I sincerely hope you haven’t taken as long as I have to get round to this one, and if you have, now is a good time to make a detour…
Travis Brigs (Robert De Niro) is (as the name of the film suggests) a Taxi driver. He is a taxi driver from choice, not necessity. He can’t sleep at night and therefore he works the night shift. He keeps to himself but he has strong ideas, like most people who are 26. He doesn’t really care who stops him but he hates the “scum” that dirty the city and hopes a rain will come to “wash it all away”. He’s slightly obsessive about things (like a girl who works at a party campaign headquarters he falls in love with) and slightly restless (he wants to “really do something” but is not sure what) but he’s basically a normal guy doing a dead end job. But time goes by, his ideas start getting bigger and bigger and when on top of all that eccentric patrons start giving him strange ideas as well, Travis is pushed well and truly to the edge. And if his basic good nature (buried deep beneath various obsessions and strange thoughts) keeps him from falling over entirely, it isn’t going to take much to push him over either…
“Are you talking to me? I don’t see anyone else in the room, are you talking to me?” we’ve all heard this one somewhere, right? I mean, you might not even know which film it’s from but you’ll know the line and you’ll know it was Robert De Niro. Funnily enough, that wasn’t my favorite moment of the film… No, I like the bit right at the end, when he pretends to shoot himself in the head three times. A wonderful touch, seeing as you physically CANNOT shoot yourself in the head three times. I can’t quite describe how it made me feel but it was cross between admiration and being spooked out… And then of course there’s Robert De Niro. We see a lot of him in Hollywood blockbuster romantic-comedies these days (no offence but I’m guessing the only purpose they actually serve in his career is paying the bills) but it’s great to see the master at work. And of course to see true talent in action… Travis’s part contains a delicate balance of psychology and action and De Niro pulls both of brilliantly… Jodie Foster (who appears later on in the plot) is also good and I am always slightly “creeped out” to see actors and actresses we know today when they were so young… Taxi driver, a stab at society and a cry from a generation who was looking for its place in the world… Worth watching more than once, this one…