Scorsese is always considered the greatest living filmmaker. Whether or not you agree, even his critics consider him one of the greatest that's ever lived. Even when doing some fairly standard genre biopic material with the Aviator or remakes like The Departed and Cape Fear, he still manages to put a personal touch on the material and create the sort of film, like Taxi Driver, that simply pulls you directly into its world.
Not many directors are really as capable as Scorsese when it comes to being able to drag you into a fictional world, to build a whole atmosphere around you. You feel like you're sitting shotgun in Travis Bickle's cab right beside him. It almost feels like a documentary for its sheer realism. It is as close as you can get to "found footage" without some gimmick like having one of the characters hold the camera.
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.
In each film, a real statement on loneliness is made. This is what helps the heroes of these films to be so easy to relate to, even as they do things that most of us would never be proud of having done. Even Travis Bickle, who commits so many acts of grisly violence, is such a human and endearing character in spite of his mental illness, because we know what it is to be that desperate 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.
The film serves as a great companion piece to The Searchers and Paris, Texas, but it also goes hand in hand with Stallone's First Blood, which was similarly about an outsider, a Vietnam veteran, who turns to violence as a way to find personal validation.
Not many directors are really as capable as Scorsese when it comes to being able to drag you into a fictional world, to build a whole atmosphere around you. You feel like you're sitting shotgun in Travis Bickle's cab right beside him. It almost feels like a documentary for its sheer realism. It is as close as you can get to "found footage" without some gimmick like having one of the characters hold the camera.
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.
In each film, a real statement on loneliness is made. This is what helps the heroes of these films to be so easy to relate to, even as they do things that most of us would never be proud of having done. Even Travis Bickle, who commits so many acts of grisly violence, is such a human and endearing character in spite of his mental illness, because we know what it is to be that desperate 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.
The film serves as a great companion piece to The Searchers and Paris, Texas, but it also goes hand in hand with Stallone's First Blood, which was similarly about an outsider, a Vietnam veteran, who turns to violence as a way to find personal validation.
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