I don’t feel qualified to analyze this movie. I’ve probably seen it at least five times and still feel like there’s so many undertones I’m still missing. I could probably watch it 100 times and realize something new every time. There’s so many different things you could deeply analyze about this movie that I can’t even begin to really get into here such as cinematography, symbols, motifs, character development, and well, pretty much anything that makes for a great film. It’s too bad this is rated R because I think it would be a great one to study in film class. Anyways, I was in the mood to watch it so I guess I’ll try to review it now and hopefully don’t embarrass myself.
I have to give credit to Joker for introducing this movie to me. I remember seeing Joker on opening night October 4, 2019. Yes, it’s quite strange I remember the date off the top of my head, but that’s only because I was literally counting the days until it came out. I’ll just say I was more than impressed by the movie. I think I saw it in theaters three times after that. When I found out that Joker was largely inspired by Taxi Driver, I just had to watch it… and I loved it even more. Joker became irrelevant. Arthur Fleck felt like a caricature of Travis Bickle. Joker’s New York felt exceedingly artificial compared to Taxi Driver’s brutal realism. But what I love first and foremost about Taxi Driver is it’s aesthetic. The colors and music are so subdued that the viewer is immersed in a dreamlike state, as Travis is throughout much of the film. The gross New York City streets at night are somehow beautiful (don’t know if this was intentional or not). The other thing I love about this movie and what I believe makes it a classic is it’s moral ambiguity. Some say he’s a hero, some say he’s a villain. Taxi Driver tries soooo hard to get us on Travis’ side from the beginning, and I fell for it the first couple times. His narration (journal entries) in the first half of the film are rather nihilistic but sensible; the kinda stuff most people think but don’t admit to. He suffers from crippling loneliness and clearly some form of mental illness that affects his social interaction. Many people resonate strongly with his struggles. The audience is so blinded by sympathy that they fail to recognize or care when he turns from creepy outcast to psychotic killer right before their eyes. People who don’t get past this will ultimately see him as the hero. In the second half of the film, his journal entries become less and less sensible and more so childlike and pathetic to represent his deteriorating sanity. The film’s ending doesn’t help this misconception of hero status, given Travis is now seen as a hero by all of New York, and his violence has seemingly solved his issues and he is visibly content. I think viewers fail to realize that this is movie doesn’t portray New York as we know it. It’s sort of dystopian in a sense. Yes, New York was corrupt and gross in the ‘70s, but it’s unlikely he would get away with murdering two people, let alone be commended for it. I see Travis as a villain. We must remember that his ultimate goal was to conduct an assassination. It wasn’t until that failed that he did the ‘right’ thing (in the eyes of everyone else) by “freeing” Iris. This clearly lays out the fact that Travis’ main goal wasn’t to do good (again, ‘good’ meaning in the eyes of the moral and sane). He was just seeking out a way to murder someone. When one plan didn’t work, he just moved to the next one which happened to somehow be culturally acceptable and earned him the hero title. If it had gone the other way, you know he’d be in jail for life if not executed. What is interesting about both of his attempted targets is that their murder had to be justified in Travis’ mind. These targets were the sources of many New York’s problems, as he believed at least. This is where the mental illness aspect comes in and confuses things. No sane person believes any murder is justified, unless for self defense. But in Travis’ mind, he was saving New York. Do intentions free one from legal or moral obligations? I think some people tend to forget about this when they watch this film because it’s convenient and they want Travis to succeed. Taxi Driver is cinema at its finest, in my opinion at least. Travis Bickle is the ultimate sympathetic villain. I believe this story will be replicated and tweaked to be the inspiration for many future villain origin stories given Joker’s massive success.
1 Comment
|
May Featured Movie QuoteBarry B. Benson: Yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black... Oh, black and yellow. Yeah, let's shake it up a little.
Yeah, I have letterboxd now
|