Martin Scorsese may well be the greatest living filmmaker. If not, he at least ranks in the top tier of greatest directors of all time. Even when working with the fairly standard biopic genre material of The Aviator, or doing remakes like Cape Fear, he always creates a film that is simply fascinating to behold. When it comes to Taxi Driver, you could watch it on mute and still be intrigued, or with the sound up and your eyes closed, and the movie would remain enchanting.
There aren't many directors so capable at effortlessly building a world around you. You'll feel as if you're really sitting in that grimy taxi cab, right next to Travis Bickle. It almost has a documentary like feel with the gritty look of the film and the spontaneous nature of the script. It is as close as you can get to the "found footage" feel without gimmicks like hand held cameras.
The film stands as the second entry in something of a trilogy of films alongside The Searchers and Paris, Texas. All three films use essentially the same outline for their stories, and both Scorsese's film and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas are considered loose remakes of The Searchers. The trilogy stands as a testament to how many different ways there are to tell a story, proving that old axiom that a movie isn't about what it's about, it's about how it's about it.
The Searchers was essentially an adventure film, a western revolving around unusually deep and personal themes of prejudice and lonesomeness. Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is about lonesomeness as well as issues of family and the American Dream. Scorsese's film is the darkest of the three, revolving around the use of violence as a means to an end of loneliness. In all three, the heroes try their best to help people find their way back home, but they always stand on the outside looking in.
Each of these films is its own statement on the nature of loneliness, and it's because of this that the heroes are all so easy to sympathize with. What Travis Bickle does in the film is certainly not something most of us would ever take part in, but you find yourself wanting him to come out okay, nevertheless, simply because we all know that lonesomeness, that need for validation.
Everyone, sooner or later, feels that intense, terrible loneliness. That feeling that, even though you're surrounded by other people, you're trapped in a little bubble and incapable of breaking out and truly connecting with anyone. This is where Travis is stuck in his life, and we know that that can drive a person crazy.
Few people are willing to talk about the darkest aspect of the film, because it involves looking at your own darker instincts: We root for Travis Bickle in the end. We shouldn't, but we do, because we wish he could be the hero, we wish the film was a western so that his simplistic moral compass would be correct. The tragedy is that it's not a western.
These three films serve as companion pieces to one another, but Taxi Driver also goes hand in hand with First Blood, which is also about a lonesome Vietnam veteran who uses violence as a way to solve issues of loneliness and seek validation.
There aren't many directors so capable at effortlessly building a world around you. You'll feel as if you're really sitting in that grimy taxi cab, right next to Travis Bickle. It almost has a documentary like feel with the gritty look of the film and the spontaneous nature of the script. It is as close as you can get to the "found footage" feel without gimmicks like hand held cameras.
The film stands as the second entry in something of a trilogy of films alongside The Searchers and Paris, Texas. All three films use essentially the same outline for their stories, and both Scorsese's film and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas are considered loose remakes of The Searchers. The trilogy stands as a testament to how many different ways there are to tell a story, proving that old axiom that a movie isn't about what it's about, it's about how it's about it.
The Searchers was essentially an adventure film, a western revolving around unusually deep and personal themes of prejudice and lonesomeness. Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is about lonesomeness as well as issues of family and the American Dream. Scorsese's film is the darkest of the three, revolving around the use of violence as a means to an end of loneliness. In all three, the heroes try their best to help people find their way back home, but they always stand on the outside looking in.
Each of these films is its own statement on the nature of loneliness, and it's because of this that the heroes are all so easy to sympathize with. What Travis Bickle does in the film is certainly not something most of us would ever take part in, but you find yourself wanting him to come out okay, nevertheless, simply because we all know that lonesomeness, that need for validation.
Everyone, sooner or later, feels that intense, terrible loneliness. That feeling that, even though you're surrounded by other people, you're trapped in a little bubble and incapable of breaking out and truly connecting with anyone. This is where Travis is stuck in his life, and we know that that can drive a person crazy.
Few people are willing to talk about the darkest aspect of the film, because it involves looking at your own darker instincts: We root for Travis Bickle in the end. We shouldn't, but we do, because we wish he could be the hero, we wish the film was a western so that his simplistic moral compass would be correct. The tragedy is that it's not a western.
These three films serve as companion pieces to one another, but Taxi Driver also goes hand in hand with First Blood, which is also about a lonesome Vietnam veteran who uses violence as a way to solve issues of loneliness and seek validation.
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