4/5

I’ve been sitting with this one for a few days trying to crystalize my feelings on Taxi Driver, usually presented as a masterpiece when referenced in other media: There is a certain texture to the Film presented in the incandescent street lights and jazzy soundtrack that has a nearly hypnotic effect on the viewer.

Like Travis we are sucked deeper down the rabbit hole of a post bankruptcy New York City. There is a certain dissonance that emerges as the rabbit hole envelopes the protagonist while we the viewer are pulled out of the dreamy first act into an increasingly confusing series of sequences that all revolve around violence and disillusion.

The crux of the film is basically fascistic, Travis commits acts of wonton violence with the thinnest veneer of justification to his madness. Ultimately, he can’t even be a Lee Harvey Oswald, and is reduced to distributing vigilante violence to people who have basically never wronged him. For this, in a totally befuddling finale he is celebrated and is granted all he desires.

Like The Coen Brother’s “Inside Llewyn Davis” we are deposited back where we began. The jazz music and incandescent lights return to lull us back to sleep, putting aside the nightmare that we witnessed in the second and third acts. But isn’t the fact that his violence is so rewarded worth pondering? Is returning to where we began even possible after what we witnessed?