Movie review: Taxi Driver (1976)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Harvey Kietel
Another one of Scorsese’s best. For the first few minutes, I felt that the movie was a bit slow. I am not a great fan of slow paced movies, but boy, was I wrong. It tells the story of Travis Bickle (De Niro), 26, a mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran who works as a night time taxi driver. Travis is unable to sleep & he doesn’t know why. He is deeply affected by the sleazy night life in the city & the degrading society all around him.

“12 hours of work & I still cant sleep…DAMN…days go on & on . They don’t end..all my life needed was a sense of some place to go”.

He maintains a journal where he enters all his feelings & thoughts. He finds himself attracted to a political campaigner Betsy (Cybill Shepherd).

“I first saw her at Palantine campaign headquarters at 63rd in Broadway. She was wearing a white dress, she appeared like an angel…out of this filthy mess, she is alone…THEY CANNOT TOUCH HER”.

He tries to woo her, but fails to do so. Betsy doesn’t answer his calls after he takes her to a porn movie on their first date. Travis, who doesn’t understand this as he is “not fond of movies”, feels that she is like all the other women he has come across.
Travis feels that he needs to reinvent himself. He wants to do something that will give him an identity.

“You got a job & you become that job”

Travis buys four handguns & sets out to assassinate Senator Palantine, but he fails to do so & is chased away by the bodyguards.
Meanwhile, he forms a strong attachment with a child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), who he tries to rescue from a pimp Matthew (Harvey Kietel). His efforts to persuade Iris to go back to her parents & rejoin school turn out to be futile. Travis finally ends up killing Matthew & his gang. Iris goes back to her parents & slowly moves towards leading a life of normalcy. Meanwhile Betsy realizes that indeed has feelings for Travis, who is now famous because of his struggle with Matthew’s gang.
The soundtrack & camera work are absolutely in sync with the story & add to the fantastic performance dished out by De Niro. The movie eventually lost out at the Oscars in the Best Movie category to Sly Stallone’s “ROCKY”, but there is no questioning the fact that it’s another gem of a movie from a gem of a director. You cannot miss this if you are a De Niro fan.

Quotes from the HOUSE...

Recently, I took the risk of watching a parliamentary debate on national television. The debate was for the Nuclear deal (123 agreement) between India & the US. Some speeches & remarks made by our honoured parliamentarians left me baffled to say the least. Here are some which I could remember...

"This deal is Anti-Indian"- No figures quoted, no numbers to prove the same, just a single blank statement, which was then repeated, again & again, without any other substantial subject matter.
"We have huge resources of coal, why not concentrate on building more thermal power plants to harness this, rather than focus on Nuclear technology?"- Progressive thinking at its very best, I would say! And coal is supposed to last, like FOREVER!!!!!!! So, lets just allow our neighbours to make use of nuclear technology, and if we run out of power in the future, I am sure our helpful neighbours would give us some of their electric power for cheap, coz they love us so very much!
And finally...my favourite of the lot:
"It will make us slaves of the US for 400 years" - And how exactly did you arrive at an exact figure..I mean 400?....are u sure its not 347.5678 years or something? If I could have the algorithm for this calculation, I could earn billions, and may be, become the next Bill Gates.
Many more hilarious quotes, but these are the ones that strike my mind right now.Poems were read, stories were told & even verses from Holy books were quoted,most of which were quite irrelevant & a waste of time. Not one person from the opposition spoke something which could be of any significance to the topic being discussed (atleast for the duration I watched the debate).
I finally budged when my mom entered the scene. "Why do you waste your time listening to them?", she said & changed the channel, so that she could watch her daily quota of saas-bahu drama. All I could say was, "Thanks mom....you just saved my life..a couple more speeches & I would've died laughing"!!

The Darker Joker….

After having watched “Batman Begins”, my expectations from “The Dark Knight” were sky high, to say the least. And as it turned out, the sequel was even bigger& better than the first installment. Enough has been said & written about the movie & about the performance of Heath Ledger, so I won’t be getting too much into it. But I must say, I was feeling a cold shiver running down my spine at times, while watching the movie. Its not that I was afraid, just the sadistically sarcastic personality of the Joker had some effect on me. An enjoyable experience in fact. It’s a pity that we would be deprived of seeing Heath reprise his role in the future. Thanks a lot for this performance Heath; it certainly has immortalized you in a way!
P.S: This post was written a long time back, after watching the movie “The Dark Knight”