Taxi Driver by Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips - Essay Example

?Taxi Driver – Film Analysis Taxi Driver – Film Analysis Taxi Driver is a 1976 film coproduced by Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips. The film is directed by Martin Scorsese and is set in New York City at the conclusion of the Vietnam War. The central character is Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro. Travis is a former marine and comes across as lonely and isolated, both physically and emotionally. Travis is suffering from insomnia and copes with it by taking up a job as a night taxi driver in New York City. Travis first comes across as an ordinary, lonely young man in a large and populated city. However, mise-en-scene techniques and slow moving camera shots soon reveal Travis’s point of view, positioning a subjective view of Travis’s world. The film uses camera movement and cinematography together with mise-en-scene at the outset to establish the tensions that build up to the violence. The film opens with the credits in the foreground of a taxi coming out of the steam of a street at night. A montage reveals rain beating against the taxi’s windshield. In the meantime, the yellow taxi is accented by rain and neon lights that bring it into sharp focus. Travis’s eyes can be seen moving from one image outside of the taxi to another as he travels Times Square and 42nd Street. The viewer sees what Travis sees: prostitutes, couples, and pornographic theatres visited by men. The camera alternates from the inside of the Taxi where Travis’s watchful eyes are moving and observing, to outside of the taxi to show the audience what Travis sees. These scenes are juxtaposed against a more tranquil, ordinary and inescapably artificial world. The camera takes the viewers to a campaign headquarters with red and white colours and signs and slogans that appear to be inconsistent with the world that Travis observes from his taxi. Travis sees the world as inherently diseased and is on a mission to root out violence, disease and decadence. He becomes infatuated with Betsy, a campaign worker played by Cybill Shepherd. Point of view via mise-en-scene is displayed through scenes in which Travis’s point of view and his disconnect and social isolation comes across. For example, in an attempt to connect with Betsy, Travis gets it right the first time when he has coffee with her. On his next date with Betsy, he takes her to a seedy, sexual film. Betsy is no doubt offended by this effort at connection. By taking this approach, the viewer is drawn into and observes the distorted mind of Travis at work. Camera movements and mise-en-scene function to highlight Travis’s distorted mind and subjective point of view. For example, the camera picks up views of New York City that demonstrate just how Travis sees the world around him. A camera shot from inside Travis’s taxi picks up drug addicts and prostitutes. This is the world that Travis sees and is distracted by. He does not see beyond these images and forms his opinion of the outside world accordingly. The camera, by showing a view outside the taxi that selects drug addicts and prostitutes takes the viewer into the disturbed mind of Travis. This is world that Travis sees and is fixated on. A world diseased and decaying and in need of cleansing. Mise-en-scene is also used to demonstrate contradictions. The camera depicts a seemingly ordinary man, dressed neatly and appearing to be respectful and naive. Yet, the camera follows and depicts Travis visiting seedy theatres and writing letters to his parents that reveal that Travis would like to live an ordinary life, but is trapped by his perceptions of a diseased world. In his letters to his parents, Travis unrealistically himself as a working man on the verge of marrying a respectable woman (Betsy) when it is well known by the time of writing, that Travis has been rejected by Betsy. Therefore, the underlying message is that there are contradictions between that which occurs in Travis’s mind and the world in which he actually lives. The contradictions are reaching a fever pitch and this is artfully brought to the viewer via camera movement, cinematography and mise-en-scene. For example, in one scene in a coffee shop, Wizzard, played by Peter Boyle asks a questions of Travis who is intensely distracted by some black males who are also in the coffee shop. As Travis watches the black males he drops an Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water. The camera takes up the movement of the Alka-Seltzer, and provides a close-up look of the water as it bubbles and seemingly boils. This scene alternates to and is accentuated by low camera angle shots of the blacks in the coffee shop. Thus, via camera movements, cinematography and mise-en-scene, the camera is not so much focusing on the blacks and the boiling water, but focusing the viewer on the inner tensions and the mind of Travis. A similar mise-en-scene experience is captured following Betsy’s rejection of Travis. The camera takes the viewer to the hallway from which Travis places a telephone call to Betsy. The camera pans to the right and virtually freezes on a hallway that is seemingly vacant. A shot of Travis reveals depression, distance and isolation. The impression is that Travis is in a world of his own and he cannot realistically relate to the outside world and those that he comes into contact with. For example, Travis saw nothing wrong with taking Betsy to a raunchy, sexually offensive film on their first official date. For Travis, the sexually offensive film was a natural outing for him after a long night of work and a bout of insomnia. Rather than accept that it was not the best choice for a first date and accept responsibility for Betsy’s subsequent rejection, Travis now sees Betsy as no different from the rest of the diseased world that he has been exposed to. It is Betsy and the others that are cruel and disconnected, from Travis’s point of view. A particularly interesting mise-en-scene representation occurs inside Travis’s taxi and gives expression to the boiling point represented by camera angles and movements displayed in the coffee shot. The scenes in the coffee shop were more subtle. However a particular scene in the taxi is more overt and yet not a direct revelation of Travis’s point of view. In this scene, Travis picks up a fare played by Martin Scorsese himself. The fare asks Travis to stop at an apartment complex in which he claims his wife is having a sexual encounter with a black man. The woman can be observed from the window and the fare is heard telling Travis that he has a .44 Magnum and intends to use it to destroy his wife’s face and genitals. Nyce argues that this scene with the fare played by Scorsese is “full of sexual laceration” (42). It is a: …a fantasy of violent sexual revenge, Scoresese plays the role of a substitute figure for Travis. He’s an extension of Travis’ rage, but a more articular and uncensored one (Nyce, 42). According to Nyce, it is by design that the fare’s wife is having a sexual encounter with a black male. As Nyce goes on to explain: …from the fancy-dressed pimps in the coffee shop to the kids hassling the whores in the street nearby to the robber in the market, blacks are a focus of Travis’ anger and paranoia (42). In other words, the fare played by Scorsese was deliberately placed in the taxi to share a scene with Travis as a means of giving expression to the tensions building up inside of Travis and to show the audience just how violent Travis thoughts and intentions have become. The mise-en-scene captured in this scene also goes a long way to informing the audience that Travis’s mind is so disturbed and complex, that the cannot give expression to it himself. Another mise-en-scene shot drives the point home. Travis attempts to reveal his thoughts of violence to Wizzard, a co-worker, but can’t go beyond telling his co-worker that he has “some bad ideas in” his head and he “just want to go out and really do something” (Taxi Driver, 1976). The message is mixed in that it is unclear whether or not Travis considers his ideas bad or his subsequent responses to them bad. The fact that he wants to do something, reveals that he wants to correct the bad ideas and thus suggest that his subsequent responses are not bad, but the factors that give expression to this responses. The mise-en-scene however, arising out of the fact that Travis’ admission is not so much about his seeking some advice or attempting to warn Wizzard of his plans. Rather, the scene is placed to reveal another idea: Travis is so disturbed that even Travis cannot articulate the depths of his disturbed mind. The fact that Wizzard immediately believes that Travis is referring to a problem with work, also indicates the extent of Travis’ social and mental disconnection from the world around him. Travis mental decline is brought into visual focus by camera movements and shots that culminates in cinematography narratives. For example, the camera picks up Travis as he begins a physical regimen seemingly to do something about the disease that he observes and perceives around him. What he intends to do becomes clearer when it is coupled with Travis’ purchase of guns, his construction of a gun sleeve and his practice sessions where he practices withdrawing the gun and making commands. Travis shaves his head and leaves a Mohawk. This narrative revealed in this cinematography can also be described as mise-en-scene as Travis can be said to be preparing to wage war on the diseased world that he sees. One scene is particularly revealing in that it demonstrates Travis final descent into madness and yet it captures a sympathetic side that might have justified and rationalised Travis growing tensions and violent responses. This scene takes place between Travis and Sport played by Harvey Keitel. Sport is a pimp for Iris, a child prostitute played by Jodi Foster. Travis has made it his mission to free Iris from prostitution and to return her to her parents. This alone should speak to the authenticity of Travis’ disenfranchisement of the world in which he lives. However, in the scene referenced, it becomes clear that Travis’ desire to protect Iris is merely a side effect of his hatred and contempt for Sport and his ilk. In the scene, Sport goes into distasteful detail as he tells Travis what he could enjoy in a session with Iris. The camera moves to Travis who is only partially facing Sport. Travis is wearing dark sun-glasses and is masking his inner rage with a smile which is transformed into an angry expression as he moves away from Sport and moves toward Iris. As he walks away with Iris, he pointedly turns and looks toward Sport many times. The mise-en-scene expresses an underlying theme: Iris is not the object of Travis’ growing anger. It is people like Sport that represents everything that it is wrong with the world and reflects the character of the city as a whole that is the object of Travis’ growing rage and anger. A scene follows in which Travis is in Iris’s room and the exchange a brief dialogue in which Travis has his only and most real connection to another human being. This scene lasts for just under 5 minutes and consumes nearly 50 individual shots. The shots capture the speaker and focus on what the speaker is saying and how it is received by the listener. In other words, the audience sees the speaker from the perspective of the listener in a subjective way, as opposed to how the speaker should be seen by the audience. Here Travis is seeking to talk a young girl out of prostitution, but he is not very good at relating to others, and Iris might be amenable to the suggestion, but is too immature to give it serious thought. The audience experiences Travis’ world and knows that Travis attempted to assassinate a politician after shaving his head, but his involvement went undetected. The audience also observes through mise-en-scene, camera movements, and cinematography that Travis is on a downward spiral of self-destruction. However, by coincidence, Travis emerges a hero because he sends a letter containing money to Iris urging her to leave prostitution and predicting his death and he subsequently confronts Sport with a weapon. Sport shoots Travis in the neck wounding him and Travis in turn, shoots and hills Sport. Iris is a witness to the event and she watches, terrorised as Travis’s attempt to commit suicide fails. The film ends with Travis hailed as a hero for saving Iris from a life of prostitution and apparently ridding the streets of New York of a pimp. Travis however, reveals to Betsy, who is a fare, that he is no hero. This scene leaves open the question that Travis’ reality is more genuine than the artificial world constructed around him. The final mise-en-scene appears to suggest that while Travis lives in a world of his own, as crazy as it is, it is perhaps more reflective of the world as it actually is. Bibliography Nyce, Ben. Scorsese Up Close: A Study of the Films. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2004. Scorsese, Martin. Taxi Driver, 1976 (Film). Read More