‘Taxi Driver’ is Still Relevant 45 Years Later

February 8, 2021

Am I talking to you? Well, you’re the only one here, so I must be talking to you. Forty-five years ago, a meme was born along with a few one-liners whose origins may be lost on many. It was a different world in 1976, but Taxi Driver touched on themes and circumstances that still exist today.

Modern society has done its best to sweep the crumbs under the carpet; but the mess is still there, it’s just hidden. The thing is, there is a lot to unpack in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, more than Scorsese himself cares for an audience to do. It’s supposed to be a straightforward tale of redemption for Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). It’s a simple, gritty fairy tale with a happy ending. However, the art is often an entity all its own, and separate from the artist. The writer (Paul Schrader) and director (Scorsese) may have intended one thing, but the muses behind the film may have sent a different message. Pay attention to the phones throughout the film. The first rings can be heard as he applies for a job as a taxi driver. His fate is calling.

There are heavy themes of water and fluids that carry throughout the film. The water theme comes in the form of rain on the windshield transitioning Bickle’s thoughts. Every time he’s graduated to a new stage of mental illness, the screen has been washed with liquid, as if to baptize the viewer. The trickling sound of rain in the foreground of the soundtrack is no mistake, as Travis Bickle slowly evolves from who he is into who he wants to be. Eventually, the fluidity of his fate isn’t told through water, Coca-Cola, Alka Seltzer, Budweiser, rain, or even a piece of Errol Flynn’s bathtub. Rain trickles audibly in various scenes, but the trickling sound at the end is blood. He’s done the thing, and he shares his fate with his low-life victims. The question for forty-five years has been about Travis’ fate. Does he die in the end? Scorsese says no. De Niro says no. But the post climactic scenes of Travis driving Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) home, the newspaper clippings touting a “taxi driver” as a hero, and the letter from the parents of Iris (Jodie Foster), the twelve-year-old prostitute, are far too polished compared to the rest of the film.

Travis is a former Marine, Vietnam vet who drives a taxi twelve hours a night, six or seven days a week. His narration explains that he does it because he can’t sleep. He’s whiling away his time writing about how much he hates the filthy world around him when he’s not soaking it up to fuel his inner turmoil. He has nothing and no one; only distant parents who play no part in the story other than to be referenced in his goodbye letter to the world. He says he’ll walk through their door one day, but he fully expects to die.

How did he get there? While still looking for some beauty in the world, he gets a glimpse of Betsy who works in the campaign office for Senator Palantine’s (Leonard Harris) run for the presidency. After creeping around the outside of the office for a while, he gathers the courage to introduce himself and asks her out for coffee and pie. He seems to think she’s a sad and lonely person, and he all but offers himself as a solution for her woes. He’s looking for a reason to exist. He’s looking for something other than himself to control. He judges everyone around him, and he wants to be the white knight to a damsel who isn’t actually in distress.

His sociopathic behavior goes mostly unnoticed on the first date. Betsy just thinks he’s odd. But when he takes her out to a movie, she’s disgusted to find out it’s a porno disguised as an educational film. Now she’s in distress, and he falls further into his downward spiral trying to win her affections with flowers that never arrive, and phone calls that go unanswered. In fact, phones ring throughout the film, constantly going unanswered. Is that you, fate? Travis hears the rings, but never acknowledges them. He drives by the campaign office after seeing Palantine on television, and the camera focuses on an unanswered telephone; a faint ring can be heard over traffic and through the plate glass window. The very next scene, fate finds a new way to get his attention. While absentmindedly thinking about his failure, he almost runs over a couple of prostitutes, one of them being Jodie Foster’s character, Iris.

Immediately after this scene, he continues to follow a path he thinks is the right one. He’s buying a collection of handguns from a “traveling salesman” who has a side gig selling drugs—another detestable character Travis Bickle only interacts with in order to further his vague plan to assassinate the presidential candidate Betsy is working for. He transforms himself, getting into shape, and designing apparatus to launch a pistol into his hand from inside the sleeve of his khaki jacket. Staking out the scene of an upcoming speech, he finds himself in a conversation with a secret service agent. Travis explains that he’d be interested in having that job. The agent recognizes Travis might be an issue, so he slyly asks for his name and address. Travis is cavalier in giving a false name and address, thinking he’s fooling the agent.

He continues to practice a scene that never actually goes down the way his mirror expects. He scripts his imagined heroic moment, one where he expects to be justified in a murder. “You talkin’ to me?” What we don’t pay attention to is that he’s talking to himself. “Well, I’m the only one here.” He clues in the viewer with a simple, “You’re dead.” He really means it. Once he finally meets Iris, it’s when she’s trying to get in his taxi to escape her pimp. She’s the only one he doesn’t lie to. He promises to see his parents, but his letter to Iris states that by the time she reads it, he’ll be dead, only it’s not in the way he expects. He wants to leave Iris enough money to go back home to her own parents. He’s not going to need it because he fully expects to kill Palantine. He doesn’t really have a reason other than delusions of grandeur.

He bolsters his confidence in the vigilante killing of a bodega robber, but when he arrives at the stage he set for himself, he’s made by the secret service agents. He runs away, abandoning his plan to assassinate the presidential candidate. Instead, he focuses his wrath on Sport, Iris’ pimp (Harvey Keitel). He then goes on a rampage, killing everyone inside the brownstone where Iris is kept. He even attempts to kill himself, but dry-fires an empty pistol. When the police arrive he raises his bloody finger to his head and mimics firing three times. He’s so sure he doesn’t want to continue living, he mock kills himself three times before his head falls back and he actually dies. The camera angle tells us he’s dead, but Martin Scorsese denies it. Even the music tells us a dream sequence is forthcoming, as if his last thoughts are of his heroism. The letter from Iris’ parents is read aloud, overlaying newspaper clippings celebrating the killing of the gangsters. Everything that happens after this scene feels like a fantasy—like we’ve been invited inside Travis’ head for the first and last time. It plays out how he imagines, not how it would actually go. It’s too far-fetched to imagine an outcome where the Secret Service doesn’t recognize the man in the news.

Forty-five years after the initial release of Taxi Driver, it’s still debated. Because this film is still relevant after almost a half century, I’d say that even if we think he’s dead, the character of Travis Bickle is very much alive. He’s a clear inspiration for another miserable character at the end of his rope who sees the world as something that needs to be cleansed. Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down (1993) is someone else who sees the problems with everyone else, but can’t see his own. It’s something that is all too common. Palantine’s campaign button says it all. “We are the people.”