Allow me to react like Woody Allen and assume his pose from one of my favourite moments in Annie Hall, when Christopher Walken drives him home.
They are like a union. You are going to burn in hell with the reat of them. Jager you gotta learn how to play the game and adopt social custom. It is all a silly game but don’t let it play you. Look beneath the surface of theings. What do you want I am no Betrand Russell. I don’t know go out get drunk get laid. You got your whole life in front of you. I mean we are all fucked more or less.
i too will assume the woody allen pose…
I’ve got to get organizized.
I know exactly what Jaeger means. It truly is one of the most honest films ever made. It captures that feeling of loneliness and isolation so incredibly perfect.
I think many people have been in that state (including myself), so it doesn’t mean Jaeger is going to snap like Travis.
@Doinel: Many do. Should films only capture what “most people do”? What do “most people do” when they get the blues? I think you’d be hard pressed to even answer that without generalizing and simplifying experience.
Doinel, Throughout most of the film it shows Travis in a way that most can relate to. He continues to spiral lower and lower, and despite me never reaching that low, many have. Think about all of the news stories where someone snaps and kills a group of people and themselves. It sadly isn’t that rare.
I stand by my statement.
I agree with Doinel, to an extent. Taxi Driver is much more a portrait of a man descending into madness due to his constant forced isolation and his delusions of grandeur. As a film that portrays those events it is untouchable. One of the greatest films America ever produced.
But
A Filmmaker like Tsai Ming-liang depicts loneliness and isolation to an extent Scorsese and Shrader could have only dreamed of. The characters in Tsai’s work are much more lonely, and much more easy to relate to. I can say that I, personally, have done some of the exact things depicted in Tsai’s films, but I have never thought of killing a politician to force the world to see me in the mold that I see myself.
Vive L’Amour is a perfect example of that, Dax. There’s a scene at the end of that film that is so human it’s shattering. The film is really on another level from the one being discussed here, though I do love it.
The genius of Taxi Driver is that most people can relate to Travis Bickle. Most people are lonely, most people are angry, and even if they are not as disturbed as Travis those feelings are still there.
I’ve never understood the “I have done some of the exact same things” argument because rarely have any of us done any specific action done by a character in a film. I’ve never had my famous husband and daughter killed in a car accident, let out my inner turmoil by swimming, sold off my multi-million dollar home to auction and moved into an apartment to live the rest of my days in isolation, met a benevolent stripper, let a cat eat the rats in my apartment, been haunted by me dead husband’s never finished symphony, etc. but I do know what it’s like to be sad and want to avoid human connection. I don’t think Kieslowski’s film Blue suffers because of its specifics, and indeed it does seem like a very human story. You can’t depict anything without being specific.
Has no one else ever been in a state of loneliness where their mind is filled with violence?
Travis actually acts out what was on his mind, but God when I was at rock bottom I wanted so badly to beat someone to a bloody pulp. I used to fantasize about smashing this one kid’s face into a wall every time I walked by him. Did I do it? No. Am I relatively normal despite at a time being in that state? Yes.
It’s not an argument, it’s a statement of fact. It’s easier to relate to characters that have done something you have than someone that hasn’t. It’s not at all a statement of the quality of the film, in fact I said Taxi Driver is one of the greatest American films ever made, but it’s still just the truth.
Taxi Driver as a portrait of an poor lonely isolated man killing people is a pretty weak film, but Taxi Driver as a film depicting the gradual demise of a man’s mind is, as I’ve said before, one of the greatest in all of film.
Taxi Driver is both universal and specific. We have all felt like Travis at times. Very few of us (thank God) respond to those feelings as Travis does. Taxi Driver’s genius, as communicated through DeNiro’s performance, is that it puts us in the headspace of someone who’s headspace we would never want to be in. We look directly into our own dark side (the universal) and then we are shown what could happen if we acted on our darkest insticts (the specific).
Col. Dax, But you say yourself the gradual demise so can’t I relate to the character in the beginning and middle, and then be even more disturbed at the end, because unlike me he doesn’t control himself?
Like I said Dax, I don’t think there is anything a character has done in any movie that any of us have done in the very specific way it is presented. Inevitably we have to generalize the action. For instance, you’ve said that you’ve never thought of killing a political figure. That’s not what’s universal about that part of Taxi Driver, what’s universal is a) having violent thoughts and b) wanting to do something important, etc. When you generalize the action into a statement, it becomes universal, but its specifics are what makes the artist unique.
I think Taxi Driver is a real mess, albeit a powerful mess, with many expressive sequences. While I think it is, ultimately, about Bickle’s descent into madness, there’s a way that Schrader/Scorsese (and some audience members) seem to get off on his actions in a way that doesn’t seem to me to be completely ironic. Funnily enough, on another comment thread today I wrote that I thought the movie was most interesting as a look at Schrader and Scorsese’s fantasies and pathologies.
I don’t get off on his actions. I am disturbed by his actions. He lacks the control not to do what is floating around in his head, and that scares me.
“…I don’t think there is anything a character has done in any movie that any of us have done in the very specific way it is presented. Inevitably we have to generalize the action.”
I see what you’re saying. I may not agree totally, but I see it.
I never said there aren’t universal qualities about Travis Bickle that we can relate to. I just don’t think that’s the point of the film. If the point of the film is for us to relate to Travis then the ending of the film destroys that point in its totality. However, if the film is about a realistic depiction of madness (which is, and should look like, “a mess,” Mr. Hastings), if the realism adds to both Travis’ humanity (hence our ability to relate to him) and the overall disturbing quality of the film, then its a perfect portrayal of that.
I don’t think it’s the point of the film, either, but I do think his loneliness is part of where the madness springs. I thought that HHH’s portrayal of loneliness and fractured identity was the point, more or less, of Goodbye, South, Goodbye. Where Scorsese presents us with expressionistic, stylistic sequences of Travis’s inner world, HHH infects us with atmosphere. Both were effective for me, and I admire both approaches.
“Should films only capture what “most people do”?”
Perhaps not, but far too many films only focus on the few and the extreme. I learn from Travis Bickle exactly what I learn from John Hinckley, which is nothing. Sometime we all get a bit crazy, and crazy people stay that way, big deal. I would be more interested to see what Drew did a few second after fantasizing about smashing that kid’s head. Probably forgot about until the next time he saw him, and got a sandwich.
Drew’s story is 1000 times more interesting than Bickle.
Has no one else ever been in a state of loneliness where their mind is filled with violence?
Uh no, and what do those two things have to do with each other?
I agree Mike EDIT that Drew’s story is probably more relevant. What is interesting, though, from person to person, is entirely subjective. Although you’ve nearly persuaded me at this point that to find Drew’s story more interesting is a mark of maturity in an artist and viewer.
I disagree, Mike. Drew’s story may be more universal but it is hardly more interesting. While many of us have been in a situation where we wanted to cause someone harm, most of us haven’t acted on it. That’s exactly why the story is compelling: it shows us what happens when someone does act on it. I know what happens when they don’t; I want to know what happens when they do.
“I want to know what happens when they do.”
They harm someone. It’s exploited on the new as a sign of the end of days. The local masses eat it up. The rest of us go on with navigating our daily lives. Another banal movie may be based of it while great art about our daily lives is ignored. The end.
The media hardly goes as deep as a film does. The newspaper clippings at the end tell nothing of the story that the movie told up to that point. And are you calling Taxi Driver banal?
Yes. That may be a bit harsh but i really don’t think it offers much insight.
What remains of Taxi Driver for me is how Scorsese’s hot Roman Catholicism tussles with Schrader’s more icy Dutch Calvinist sensibility. Scorsese himself might not have employed a diary structure. Possibly the story would have unfolded in a less distanced manner. It was Schrader’s narrative which rendered the quotidian in a way which appeared almost…dare I say it…transcendent. Schrader was the underground of that piece.
JAEGER INKMAN
Surely the best film of the 70’s and arguably Scorsese’s best. I currently find my mentality in a state not very different from Travis Bickle’s but perhaps not as radical. This is the depiction of a good-hearted albeit idiosyncratic young man who tries but hopelessly fails to disentangle himself from the ‘norms’ of society. I currently find myself in that same obstinate phase of going against most societal propositions and hopefully I won’t be so colossally defeated as to pick up a .44 and try to assassinate a politician (a pimp on the other hand won’t be a terrible idea).
As for the title of this thread, well, those great words were said in my favorite scene in the film.