Friday, February 22, 2008

The Films of Scorsese, Part One: Taxi Driver

This is part of a series of essays in which I will discuss Martin Scorsese's greatest films from my own point of view, looking at the things I find most interesting and important about them.

Taxi Driver
is a film that, upon a very cursory glance, appears to be one of a series of films that played into the crime-phobic, pro-vigilante feelings of the 1970s. This trend was exemplified by Charles Bronson's Death Wish, which undeniably caught the zeitgeist of the times, but is a very troubling document of them in retrospect. That film had Bronson's character, a liberal family man, turn into a vigilante after some toughs roughed up and killed members of his family, and he found no recourse to bring them to justice. For a time when crime seemed an out-of-control problem, this 1971 film struck a nerve and was quite successful, so much so that it inspired a half-dozen or so sequels, all terrible.

I've long been a firm believer in looking at what movies and TV shows were popular at a given time to understand the mindset of a given time, and there was a proliferation of movies about vigilantes due to the success of Wish. Unsurprising, of course, but what was troubling was the message that these movies sent. In essence, these vigilante films were just redressed revenge films, in which the protagonist suffered some sort of loss and went out looking for payback. The revenge story is a classic one that has been around for ages (The Count of Monte Cristo is one of many examples). But doesn't this whole setup seem a little, well, unrealistic? The moral message of these movies isn't that vigilantism is a terrible thing, or even something that the character finds necessary to procure justice for his loved ones. Instead, it is a noble action, in which the character is able to achieve some level of moral satisfaction from his deeds. Bronson's character is a good guy whose choice to start "cleaning up" the city is applauded because of his personal loss. Vigilantism then becomes a sacred duty--Bronson is just doing what he cops do not want to do, and he is rewarded for it by popular acclaim (in the film and out of it). If one wants to see the roots of the current strain of conservatism that has something less than respect for the rule of law, it was forged in crucibles not unlike this one.

The truth of the matter, though, is that real-life vigilantes were not really like Bronson. They weren't decent men pushed to the brink--more often, they were dangerous and violent psychotics like Bernhard Goetz, men (and women) whose detachment from reality, whose desire for recognition and approval for their deeds, whose essential insanity could not easily be hidden. In short, these people were not incredibly different from Travis Bickle, the protagonist of Taxi Driver. Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader create a film that serves as the ultimate deconstruction of several subgenres, the most obvious being the vigilante film. Bickle isn't a good man pushed to the brink--he's a ticking time bomb about to explode. He cannot relate to people and often views them as an alien might. He expresses loads of grief about the crime and filth he sees on the streets, but that often seems more tied to his jealousy of other people and his virulent racism than it does to a sincere desire to see people better off in the world. It's all just his mind creating a pretext for him to go out in a murderous frenzy. And it has nothing to do with any noble pretexts--he first tries to kill Senator Palantine, which fails, and it's then that he kills the mobsters to "save" Iris. The rampage is hardly depicted as noble--it's an ugly, bloody, nihilistic mess. The movie's greatest irony is that he does wind up getting an incredible amount of fame out of his murderous rampage--even more than Bronson-like folk hero status, perhaps--even though the ticking time bomb just happened to go off in the vicinity of some bad people. That's how vigilantes are, the film seems to be telling us. Don't believe the bullshit.

Another thing about Taxi Driver is how thoroughly the film deconstructs the film noir genre, to the point where it almost seems like an anti-noir. Taxi Driver is a noir, of course, and it deals with the darkness of humanity, and as with all films noir this is reflected in a very dark look for the film (though this film isn't quite as contrast-y as some of those old noirs were). Still, this movie annihilates noir in much the same way that the Sex Pistols were supposed to annihilate rock and roll--by taking the genre too far to its logical conclusion, upping the stakes such that future entries in the genre would be unable to back down from the grittiness those respective acts brought to the fore, and thus destroy the popular enthusiasm that those forms had earlier held. Taxi Driver seemed to be more successful than did the Pistols at accomplishing its goal--sure, we've seen plenty of noirs since Taxi Driver, but the form would quickly morph into the neo-noir, which often bore little resemblance to Humphrey Bogart's old films. Sure, there was crime and the dark aspects of human nature in a seminal neo-noir like Michael Mann's Thief, but Thief was stylistically miles away from classic noir in terms of scoring, lighting, etc. Even the occasional forays into straight noir in the intervening decades have largely been deliberately retro--L.A. Confidential, a terrific movie from the late 1990s, comes to mind, as does the science fiction film Blade Runner, somewhat paradoxically. There is also the case of the recent film Brick, which has many elements of the classic noir but also lacks a few, particularly the visual look of the picture. The truth is that, in the 1970s, it was still possible to create a film noir that took place in the present day with all the conventions of the genre. It is no longer possible to do that, largely because of what Taxi Driver did to demythologize the genre. There has never been so full an image of a violent, psychotic madman than Travis Bickle. You can't get any darker than him. And you can't one-up Scorsese's nightmarish New York City from the film. Film noir is, for all intents and purposes, dead, and although its influence lives on in retro-noir and neo-noir making a straight noir is no longer possible. And this is actually a good thing, as we have seen the noir genre extend into different directions--in other words, progress has been made. Contrast this with John Lydon's attempt to end rock and roll with essentially the same tactics. Lydon was instrumental in creating punk rock, which was intended to be so nihilistic and so offensive that it would simply be impossible for the public to be anything other than to be repulsed by it. At the same time, by pissing on the old idols of rock and roll (although it was The Clash whose credo was "No Beatles, Elvis or the Rolling Stones/In 1977") and by making the punk ethos so pervasive, it would be impossible for anyone else to refuse the gauntlet that the Pistols threw down. The theory was doomed, though, largely because a lot of people still liked rock and roll--far more than liked film noir as such--and the punk prickliness that the Pistols purveyed turned out to be impractical. The Pistols were gone within two years of their inception, and second-generation punk bands either cashed in (like The Jam), abandoned the pure punk ethos for new ideas and new musical styles (like The Clash), or carried punk to its logical conclusion. The last group wound up becoming the advocates of hardcore punk, a virtually unlistenable genre dead set on calling every band ever a sellout to principles whose context and intent had largely been forgotten. Then MTV came along and destroyed punk for good, only to rebuild it as an adjunct to pop music in the late 1990s. Had rock and roll been more of a boutique genre (like film noir), Lydon might well have succeeded at destroying the form. It was, however, the most popular genre of music in the world, and punk wound up servicing it in the end. Lydon did ultimately get his wish to see rock and roll die out, as it is virtually dead now, thanks to the rhythmically-oriented onslaught of hip hop.

Ultimately, Taxi Driver is a study in contradictions--it is a vigilante film that happens to be anti-vigilante, and it is a film-noir that killed its genre by upping the stakes. It is much more than just these two things, and it is ultimately a definitive and searing portrait of its subject and a unique look at the seamy side of 1970s NYC. It also happens to be a very perceptive look at the 1970s and the values and attitudes of its time, and its loss of the Best Picture Oscar to Rocky, of all films, is at once sad and instructive--would you rather see your nation as the land of Rocky or the land of Taxi Driver? Not that it's really a multiple-choice question, of course. In retrospect, looking for films that really grasped the era in which they were made is difficult. I believe that Taxi Driver is a movie that is frequently watched today partly because it affords a clear understanding of its times.