DRIVEN MAD
By
Darin Skaggs
The
best definition of the anti-hero is Popeye Doyle from The French Connection. He is
a New York cop, so in a sense he is a hero for keeping his city safe. He does this by any means necessary
including racing through a busy street almost hitting pedestrians and ending
the chase just by shooting the culprit on the spot. In Martin Scorsese’s 1976 classic Taxi Driver the title character Travis
Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, has been described as an anti-hero, but in
reality he is just “anti.”
Travis
is a war vet with severe insomnia so he takes the night shift as a taxi cab driver. The film starts out as a love story between
Travis and Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd.
He woos her into going on a date which is pretty successful. They go on a second date and he takes her to
a pornographic film. She is upset and
leaves the date. He tries to call her
several times but after that she has no interest in him. He takes her to the porno because he has
little to no social skills. During their
two dates he is constantly claiming he does not know much about anything including
politics, music and movies. His
apartment is nearly empty with only the basic furniture.
He
is not doing much with his life and he knows it, not understanding anything
people were talking about, he can’t seem to find a connection. He is kind of a loser of sorts. Even the film, while Travis is trying to call
Betsy to apologize, seems ashamed to be watching this poor man not be able to
connect with anyone. The camera pans
away from him for a few minutes while he is pleading to see Betsy again. After not being able to get what he wants,
Betsy, he devises a plan to assassinate a politician that she is working for. He needs to feel he has done something with
his life and he feels this will leave a mark.
Throughout
the film he sees this young girl, always out at night. He forms this bond and a protection for
her. He finds out she is a young
prostitute named Iris, played by Jodie Foster.
He takes her out to breakfast and pleads for her to run away from her
current situation. He says everything he
can to save her but just can’t convince her.
This leads him to fully decide to shoot the politician. All this man does is try to help but he can’t,
he doesn’t know the right way. He even
gives one last attempt to save Iris but still he doesn’t know how to and it
ends in a burst of violence.
The
ending on first view is tricky. Does
Travis get everything he wants? Does he
live happily ever after? Probably not, the
ending is filmed differently. It seems
the ending is all in Travis’ head. He
wants so bad to have done something right, while sitting in his jail cell or in
an insane asylum imaging that after everything he did that it would be okay.
The
film is an odd character study of socially awkward people and why those kinds
of people would assassinate someone. It’s filled with great moments like hints of
racism from our “hero” and Scorsese in a cameo directing the decisions of
Travis. There are so many ways to view
the film. It is an undeniable
masterpiece.
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