Is the Classic Film ‘Taxi Driver’ More Disturbing Now Than Ever?

Zhanna Slor February 20, 4:25 pm

TAXI DRIVER, Robert De Niro, 1976 — Courtesy of Everett

I don’t know where to start with this one. For anyone who considers this a beloved film, I just have one question: Have you actually watched it?

With Taxi Driver‘s main leads Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster (and director Martin Scorsese) all nominated for Oscars this year, the dark 1976 drama has been brought back into the public sphere of conversation. Foster’s breakout role, which resulted in an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the film was nominated for four Oscars, but didn’t win any — a decision which I can understand.

Pros

Jodie Foster. At age 12, Foster portrayed a young prostitute abused by her pimp (Harvey Keitel) who develops a relationship with De Niro’s character, Travis Bickle (which until today I only knew because of a Rancid song title), and Foster has publicly discussed how De Niro was a mentor to her on set, so for them, it will be a sort of reunion. Which, I guess is one positive thing to come from this movie?

TAXI DRIVER, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro, 1976

Courtesy of Everett

Contextually, I understand that for its time the portrayal of a Vietnam war veteran with PTSD who is completely disconnected from reality was a subject that was sort of groundbreaking to even approach, so I’ll give it that, too. But watching it now, almost 50 years later, I don’t really see Bickle as a man with PTSD so much as a man who has spent so much time alone and angry that there is no way for him to find his way back into normal society, and this describes plenty of modern men who have not fought in any wars. Isolation is his problem, as is self-awareness. He blames everyone else for his problems without taking into account his own actions and behavior, and I have a strong feeling he was this way before Vietnam.

I can’t think of many more pros, so we will just leave it at that.

Cons

Just about everything else. Mentally unstable taxi driver loses his mind and goes on a shooting spree that eventually manages to save one girl from a life on the streets mostly by a twist of luck? What’s to like?

Everett Collection

Where I Attempt to Understand What There Is To Like

Okay, this could be a matter of massive generational divide, but I think people (ahem, men) liked this movie because at the end, Travis Bickle becomes a hero who saves a child prostitute (if one is to believe the ending is real and not a figment of Bickle’s imagination). Yes, rescuing a child from prostitution is certainly commendable. However, this was not his original intention, and either way the guy was going to go out in some perceived blaze of glory. Let’s not forget he was about to shoot a politician, just because he felt like using his new gun (great idea, fellow cabbie, just send a person who is clearly going off the rails to a black market gun dealer!). The only reason he ends up killing some creeps who take advantage of preteen girls is because he, too, is a creep, and anyone with a brain can spot that, such as the security personnel attending the rally where Bickle’s first assassination attempts are thwarted.

Travis Bickle is not a hero. This character, to me, felt like a walking advertisement of what happens to people who have undiagnosed/untreated mental health issues. Serious mental health issues. He is socially awkward, angry at the world, depressed, and likely has PTSD from Vietnam. Probably part of why he starts to lose his mind entirely is that he never sleeps, which is not good even for people who are otherwise stable.

Which he is not.

Courtesy of Everett

Was I surprised to learn that a man by the name of John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981 because of this movie? Nope, not at all. If I got into a cab with a man who was that unresponsive to conversation and had the same far-off look in his eyes as Travis Bickle, I would get out of the car immediately. When he set his sights on Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), I was worried for her even before he took her to watch porn on a first date (you cannot blame PTSD on that one; this guy is just not all there). His efforts at conversation with her were cringeworthy, and mostly had to do with convincing her to date him because only he can see her for who she is. That’s coming straight from the Men Try to Manipulate Their Way Into Your Pants handbook right there. You don’t even know her, Bickle, you just think she’s pretty. She doesn’t owe you her time or affection because you have eyes. Come on.

Everett Collection

Final Thoughts

Anyway, I could go on, but I won’t. I found Taxi Driver to be very uncomfortable to sit through, and maybe discomfort was the point, to shine the light on your everyday man and the darkness they might hold, but I didn’t care for it, probably for the same reason I don’t watch horror movies; a good film is not just a portrayal of the world’s ugliness. Accuracy isn’t the point of art, if there’s nothing more beyond it. At least throw in some good dialogue if you’re going to depress viewers with reality and irredeemable characters. Furthermore, making an unhinged bloodthirsty man into a hero for an entire generation, which was an unintended side effect of this film, is probably the biggest pitfall here. Seemed more like a movie built up entirely to end in a bloody shootout for shock value.

Frankly, I don’t know how anyone was able to get into a taxi in the 1970s after this came out. I sure wouldn’t!

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

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For most of her childhood, all Ukrainian-born millennial Zhanna Slor ever watched was a cartoon about a chain-smoking wolf chasing a bunny around Soviet Russia. This has the tendency to both amuse and horrify her coworkers. “No, I have not seen Star Wars.” “No, I have not seen Rocky.” “The Shining? Caddyshack? Animal House? Nope.” In this column, using ignorance as a challenge, she debates how iconic films hold up in the new century, when watched completely out of context for the first time. For more of these reviews, click here.