Taxi Driver Movie Analysis
...ovie from this perspective, we can see that the Bickle is very much like us. He is frightened by what he does not understand. He is alienated by a seemingly cold society that rejects his attempts at intimacy. Perhaps we have all not been alienated in this way, but surely all of us have felt alone and sometimes afraid. At certain times we agree to him as a sophisticated idealist, while other times we portray him as a psycho. The story makes his inner mentality all too realistically believable. Robert De Niro brilliantly portrays his character right down to the core, intensifying the oh so shockingly real personality of Travis Bickle. He has exploited every aspect of his character and from his on screen performance; he has embodied himself into Bickle’s delirium. De Niro even went as far as actually getting a taxi driving license, to get a sense of what the his character is feeling as he drives down the rotten, filthy, disgusting streets of that other city, “Noir York City.” The taxi itself is not just a mere vehicle, but nonetheless a character of loneliness and isolation, just as Bickle is. Within the taxi, Travis is shielded from the dangers of the outside world, but inside, he is always warped by his inner mental illness. Camera techniques are used very voyeuristically to depict the Inferno that rages in Bickle’s mind as well as on the streets. The windshield of the taxi is the lens through which Travis views the city, therefore Travis never sees the world as it actually is. Through the windshield and Bickle’s interpretation, Scorsese is presenting to us this “apocalypse now” image. The fast cuts in the editing, as when he practices with the guns, make us enter in his mental catastrophe. There are many shots where it seems like Travis is very far apart from his peers, which shows his isolation and disconnection with those people. The dizziness of the colors and the fact that the background is often out of focus in the whole movie reminds us that there...