Film #94: Schindler's List (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Initial Release Country: United States

Times Previously Seen: twice (last time about twelve years ago)

Rapid-Fire Summary

For a complete plot synopsis, check here at imdb’s website.

In 1940, the Nazi machine is taking hold in Poland. They are starting to herd all Jews together and force them into ghettos. Amidst these massive and horrific changes, the Czech-German businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) arrives in Krakow with dollar signs in his eyes. Through clever business machinations and a flare for panache, Schindler quickly ingratiates himself to Nazi high commanders, secures a factory and a Jewish prisoner labor force for himself.

Over the next few years, business is good for Oskar Schindler. His factory produces quality pots and other metal goods, and his chief accountant, the Jewish Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsly) sees that the factory runs smoothly and profitably. IN the early going, the only seeming bump in the road is the assignment of Nazi officer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) as the commander of the labor camp in Krakow. Goeth is an unpredictable and homicidal maniac who kills Jews without rhyme or reason. Schindler, however, manages to become civil, if not friendly, with the treacherous killer, in the name of keeping the money flowing in.

Oskar Schindler - in the middle of one of his many negotiations. These eventually evolve from purely self interested to completely altruistic.

Gradually, Schindler begins to have a change of heart, though a somewhat quiet and slow-building one. Upon seeing the murderous brutality of the Nazis against the Jews, Schindler, on the gentle but unwavering urging of Stern, begins to bring more Jewish laborers into his factory. He tells everyone that it is simply to maintain efficiency, but those who are closest to him can see that his sympathies for the Jews are growing. Schindler even tries, unsuccessfully, to change the brutal nature of Goeth. This failure aside, he continues to take Jewish prisoners into his factory to save them from the horrors of working in the labor camp every day.

As the War enters its final year, things become more desperate. Word comes down that Hitler has ordered the complete extermination of Jews – the so-called “Solution.” In the face of this, Oskar Schindler takes all of his massive profits, and even convinces a few other businessmen to do the same, and purchases over a thousand Jewish laborers. He assures Goeth that it is merely for convenience, as these laborers and their children are known commodities. The deal is made, and Schindler even ensures their safe transport to Czechoslovakia after his Jewish workers are mistakenly sent to Auschwitz and nearly killed, along with thousands of their fellow Jews.

At the official surrender of the Nazis to the Allied forces, Schindler addresses the hundreds of people that he has saved. The following day, as an ultimate irony and sacrifice, he must flee punishment for the crime of war profiteering.

When the war ends with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, the Jews are free, but Oskar Schindler is now, officially, a war criminal for profiteering. With the blessing of the thousand that he helped save, Schindler and his wife flee into the night.

My Take on the Film (done after this most recent viewing)

This was the third time that I’ve seen this movie, and my feelings haven’t changed – it’s a very good film in many ways, but there are a few things that irk me.

Schindler’s List is definitely one of the boldest of Spielberg’s films. The movie portrays the stark and horrific actions of the Nazi regime against the Jews in a way that I had never seen before. It goes far beyond mere sensational, almost action/suspense route that could have been taken. Seeing silent, morose masses of Krakow’s Jewish citizens, lined up to be classified and segregated by the conquering Germans has much more authentic emotional power. This is one of many subtle details that the movie exhibits in order to convey the crushing reality of the Holocaust.

As always, Spielberg is a master of the technical aspects of film. The man has always known how to tell stories through the moving picture, and Schindler’s List is no exception. From the opening scenes of Oskar Schindler schmoozing his way into the good graces of the Nazi commanders, to and through Goeth’s failed attempt at becoming a forgiving overlord, the movie balances dialogue and visuals to tell the tale as well as anything Spielberg has ever done.

The maniacal Goeth and the savior Schindler, during one of their many talks. The two are dark-and-light reflections of one another. This scene displays how effectively Spielberg used the black and white medium. No one can say that the man doesn't know what he's doing with a camera.

Unfortunately, as important as these things are, and as well as the movie does them, there are several gripes that I have. One is that I have always found a certain flatness to the main characters. Oskar Schindler’s soul goes through a massive transformation, and yet we are left with virtually nothing to explain why this might have occurred. Aside from a few ponderous gazers at the horrors around him, we are left in the dark as to why, exactly, this self-absorbed capitalist would abandon his fortune to save a group of people whom he has only seen as a means to his financial ends. There are moments when we get hints, but I’ve always felt a little cheated when it comes to this aspect of the film. There is also an enigmatic quality to Goeth. The character never feels completely real to me – almost more of a monster construct than a person who actually could have existed.

The idea of constructs is another problem I have with the film. Far too many times, I felt as if I could see Steven Spielberg’s hand prints on the movie, and not in a good way. He was clearly trying to present a “realistic” look at the terrors of the Holocaust, and in some notable ways, he succeeded. However, there are a few too many scenes and moments that feel very contrived to me. One is the “secretary” scene, when the libidinous Schindler is “interviewing” potential secretaries by watching them type. This sequence, with no dialogue, is a very wink-wink, nudge-nudge, humorous moment in the movie. In other words, it seems way out of place. There are several others, but none so egregious as the final scene in which Schindler is walking towards his car, about to leave behind all of the people he has saved. In a scene that seemed straight out of a hackneyed melodrama from the 1940s, the hundreds of Jews quietly stand around him as he slowly starts to cry and despair over how many more lives he could have saved, had he not been so selfish. On paper, it seems to make for a great scene. On film though, to me, it seems rather artificial.

The final scene, in which Spielberg and Neeson overplay their emotional hands (in my opinion). The melodrama becomes thick to the point that it does a disservice to the reality upon which the film is based.

Related to this is something that has been a bugaboo in virtually every Spielberg film – shying away from truly, completely shocking the audience, even when it may be appropriate. The particular scene I have in mind is towards the end of the movie, when Schindler’s Jews have all been mistakenly taken to Auschwitz. The women are all stripped naked and forced into a large warehouse, which they and we the audience all presume to be a gas chamber in which they will all be killed. Just at the height of our fears, water rather than gas rains down from the shower heads, merely cleaning the terrorized women. I don’t know whether this event actually occurred, but it struck me as strange that the director, who has already shown us multiple brutal murders in the movie, would shy away from presenting perhaps the most disturbing crimes perpetrated during those years – the mass executions of helpless innocents. I’m not saying that I would have enjoyed seeing such a thing, but this film is clearly not about enjoying what you are seeing. It is about witnessing the atrocities committed against the Jews, and it only seems right to witness the greatest of those atrocities.

Schindler’s List is one of those films on historical tragedy that merely makes me want to learn more about the actual story, not unlike The Last King of Scotland or Hotel Rwanda. In fact, the scene that has by far the most impact on me, and the only one during which I cry, is at the very end, when the credits start to roll. We shift to 1993, when the film was released, and we watch the surviving “Schindler’s Jews” and some of their descendants process towards the real Schindler’s grave and place flowers along it. This is when the reality of the story hits me, and this is when I feel a real sense of loss.

I ultimately think of Schindler’s List as a “near miss.” It tells an important story, and it does many things well. However, I feel that, had the few “Hollywood” moments been eliminated and had Spielberg gone more minimalist in a few of his techniques, the movie would have had even more power.

In other words, three times in more than enough for me. I don’t need to watch this movie ever again.

That’s a wrap. 94 shows down; 11 to go.

Coming Soon: The Legend of Drunken Master (1994)

Ahhhh. A nice breath of fresh air, after emotional weightiness of the prior three movies. Kung-fu action up the wah-zoo. As of writing this, apparently Jackie Chan is in some hot water for an anti-American rant. Whatever. I just want to see one guy jumping around, kicking the stuffing out of a bunch of other guys. 

FIlm #92: Leolo (1992)

Director: Jean-Claude Lauzon

Initial Release Country: Canada

Times Previously Seen: none

Rapid-Fire Summary

In a Montreal, Quebec slum, twelve-year old Leolo Lazone is steeped in misery. His family is impoverished, and all of his relatives suffer from some form of severe limitation. His brothers and sisters are all either mentally challenged or lapse into insanity on regular bases. His loving but completely uneducated parents obsess over their children’s bowel movements, and his grandfather not only tries to kill Leolo, but is also a sexual deviant.

While there is no true physical escape for Leolo from his warped environment, he is able to escape within his mind. Through a little bit of reading and a lot of his own writing, he concocts various tales about his own origins and the people around him. Envisioning himself as the son of an unknown Italian, he constantly dreams of being on the gorgeous Italian coast with his beautiful neighbor, Bianca. It is with similar imagination that he deals with the extremely strange behavior of his family and the ways that it affects him.

Leolo in two of his refuges - the bathroom and his writing. The noose around his neck can certainly be seen as a not-too subtle symbol of his life circumstance.

Eventually, the final straw is placed. After attempting to kill his perverted and unstable grandfather and bearing witness to one too many distorted sexual acts around him, Leolo finally snaps. He becomes catatonic and is placed in a mental institution, presumably for the rest of his days.

My Take on the Film

I’ll never watch this movie again.

Don’t take that completely the wrong way. Leolo is, indeed, unique and shows a wealth of skill on the part of writer/producer Jean-Claude Lauzon. In reading a brief summary like mine above, it will seem that the movie has little more than depravity and depression to offer a viewer. This is certainly not the case, but these dour themes are what I ultimately take away from the film.

For a good part of the movie, Leolo actually keeps just to the right side of the line between darkly humorous and simply dark. During the earliest scenes, depicting a very young Leolo being forced by his delusional parents to ingest laxatives and defecate on command, one is almost overwhelmed by how repulsive, desperate, and hopeless his situation is. Yet, once he begins to twist his surroundings into his own imaginative reality, some welcome levity is added. Seeing his pathetically dull older brother go from the classic “90 pound weakling” to a muscle-bound body builder is rather amusing. Also, his regular trips to the psychiatric ward to visit his other family members as they enter and exit various stages of psychosis provide some humorous moments.

One of the somewhat lighter moments in the film - Leolo (middle) about to be hurled into the sea by his brother (left) and an accomplice, so that he can retrieve fishing hooks to be resold.

Still, by the end of the film, there is nothing left at which to laugh. Once his siblings have all gone thoroughly insane and Leolo bears witness to a wretched act of bestiality by one of his peers, the little boy joins his brothers and sisters in their inescapable states of catatonia. For me, at this point, any of the lighter moments from earlier in the film had ceased to have much meaning. While Leolo’s fertile and active mind had given some entertaining and touching attempts at escape, they are all for naught in the end.

Another lesser problem I had with the film is that it is not exactly as original as one would believe, reading many of the critical reviews. One of the more notable scenes, in which the adolescent Leolo explores his sexuality with liver (no, that is not a typo – it is just the kind of thing that this film offers), is actually ripped off from Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint. More generally, the graphic nature of the sordid, impoverished sexuality is something that I have seen in other films such as Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. And so, there was not even some sense of “bravura” novelty to be taken in.

I must say that the visuals are stunning in the film. The technical merits are laudable, and there is a wealth of clever framing and shooting. The contrasts between Leolo’s stark reality and his vibrant imaginings are made very clear through the camera work and frame compositions. In many scenes, the film is pleasant to look at. However, once again, there are many scenes in which the actions taking place are repugnant enough to undermine an appreciation of the aesthetic skill.

Leolo finds warmth and refuge in this makeshift shelter with his sister. The soft glow of the candles is captured extremely well and conveys the sense of comfort.

On a final note, this film brought to mind a few other, more recent pictures – Terry Gilliam’s Tideland and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Tideland tried to pull a very similar trick, telling the story of a young girl in absolutely miserable circumstances (drug addict parents who both die of overdoses) who copes by envisioning an entire fantasy world around her. Alas, like Leolo, Gilliam failed in my mind, and the story is just far too depressing to be overcome by some bright visuals. Pan’s Labyrinth, on the other hand, actually succeeded. The overall tale is arguably just as downbeat as Leolo or Tideland, but del Toro managed to find the right balance and leave the viewer with the right amount of sweetness to accompany the bitterness.

I would only recommend Leolo to those who are not put off by extremely depressing movies. If such themes do not bother you, you may very well find this movie one of the more creative and engaging of its type. To me, though, one viewing was plenty.

That's a wrap. 92 shows down. 13 to go.

Coming Soon: Farewell, My Concubine (1993):

Don't know much about this one, except that it has the look of a rather sad tale. This will make number 2 in the "depresso 1-2-3 punch" of current films for me, preceded by Leolo and succeeded by Schindler's List. I'll be mixing in some Farrelly brothers movies, just to maintain some kind of balance here. 

Film # 88, Part One: The Decalogue Parts I to III (1988)

Note: The Decalogue was initially released as a ten-part television series, with each episode being a story in and of itself, though there is some crossover. As such, I will be offering my review in 3 parts – one for the first three films, another for the middle four, and a third for the final three episodes.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Initial Release Country: Poland

Times Previously Seen: none

Part I Rapid Fire Summary:

A boy of around ten years old spends time with his father. The two share a love of mathematics, and the boy seems to show a special gift for computers, electronics, and the logical thinking that is the hallmark of scientific geniuses. The boy’s mother is away, in some unknown, faraway country, for an unspecified reason.

The father clearly loves his son, and the only area of tension seems to be that the boy’s aunt seems to be disappointed in the lack of religious faith in his life. His father is a man who has put his full faith in the laws of physics and mathematics, and he seems to quietly eschew any notion of a supernatural God figure.

Father and son bond over some breakfast. The two quietly share a lover for both each other and the seemingly incontrovertible laws of science.

One evening, as Christmas nears, the boy asks his father if he can go ice-skating. The two excitedly do some calculations on the father’s computer to determine if the weather conditions and width of the ice are safe. Their computations point to the situation being safe, and so the boy goes out with a few friends to skate at night.

The next afternoon, the father notices the occasional sirens of police cars and fire trucks passing by his apartment complex. Though not concerned at first, he begins to worry when his son does not return from a planned tutoring session. Hours pass and he eventually joins a crowd standing next to the nearby river. His horror slowly mounts as he realizes what may have happened. His worst fears are realized when he sees rescue teams fish his dead son’s body out of the river. The ice had broken, and his son had fallen in and frozen to death.

The father staggers to a nearby religious shrine and shoves down the altar, enraged that his son would be taken from him.

Part I, My Take on the Film

This episode is incredible. I can’t say that it’s in any way uplifting or “fun” to watch, but it is simply a brilliant piece of film.

The telling of this father/son tragedy is so well done that the heartbreak at the end is that much more gutting. Every interaction between the two feels completely organic, and every little glance, gesture, and smile carries so much weight that it’s amazing to think of how simple it all seems. “Seems” being the operative word. I have a feeling that, were it that simple, many more filmmakers would be able to do it.

When thinking about the theme of The Decalogue – the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian faith – I have to assume that this film’s would be “thou shalt not believe in false idols,” with the “idol” being the supposed infallibility of mathematics. If so, it’s a very challenging theme, and one that doesn’t take the easy route. A cuddlier filmmaker would certainly have had the father learn a life lesson from his son’s death, and he would turn towards God. In this tale, however, the man’s atheism seems to turn to blind rage. I am reminded heavily of the final lines of the Graham Greene novel (adapted into a very good movie), The End of the Affair. In that, the atheist protagonist, much like the father in The Decalogue Part I, is all but forced to admit God’s existence and he utters the lines, “I hate you. I hate you as though you existed.”

It’s an amazingly powerful start to the series.

The quiet bonding moments between the father and son make the end of their story that much harder to watch unfold. 

Part II Rapid-Fire Summary

A middle-aged woman anxiously waits while her husband suffers from a debilitating and worsening disease. She happens to live in the same apartment complex as her husband’s attending doctor (also the same as the father and son from Part I), and she presses him for information about her husband’s condition. The doctor, in an oddly cold fashion, refuses to break hospital protocol and tell her anything. The doctor, a widower, lives alone and keeps to himself.

Eventually, the doctor does give the anguished woman a bit of information about her ailing husband. She presses him, however, for a more honest opinion. She explains that she is pregnant with another man’s child and is contemplating an abortion, should her husband live. The doctor advises her not to have the abortion, and he tells her that her husband will almost certainly die. She follows his advice and does not receive the abortion.

Miraculously, her husband recovers. She decides to stay with him and break off her relationship with the father of her child. However, it is unclear whether she actually tells him that the child is not his.

The anxious wife and the doctor. Their interactions are often fraught with emotional tension that only become clearer as they work through their own difficulties.

Part II, My Take on the Film

This episode is just as emotionally complex and powerful, though not as straightforward, as the first. One common element is the naturalism of the acting, characterization, and environment. Even though the situation is an extreme one, just as in Part I, the way that the characters deal with them and the way they are portrayed by the actors is wonderfully absorbing. While Part I’s subject of a child’s death was no picnic, Part II doesn’t exactly let its foot off the gas pedal, emotionally. It is clear by this point that filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski is not interested in mundane emotions, but rather the raw emotions that typical people deal with when something extraordinarily trying occurs. As with Part I, this one is not what I would call “enjoyable”, but it is a great piece of film that is very compelling.

Which of the ten commandments is the touch point? Much harder to say for this episode than for the previous one. It could be “thou shalt not commit adultery,” “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” or even “thou shalt not kill”. My guess is that it will become clearer after I watch the remaining eight parts, but pinpointing the specific commandment is already becoming academic. The power of the story is not from being able to identify which commandment is associated with it, but rather it is in the story and characters’ emotions.

Part III Rapid-Fire Summary

In an episode that is a bit less dour than the first two, it is Christmas Eve. A taxi driver is called away from his wife and children under a desperate ruse by a former lover. This former mistress of his claims that her husband has gone missing, and the taxi driver allows himself to pulled along on a wild goose chase for the entire night. After driving from one place to another, searching for his mistresses’ husband, she admits that it was all a lie in an attempt to rekindle their past romance. Her husband has, in truth, left her. The taxi driver does not give in to her overtures, and the two part somewhat amicably.

The former lovers' tale is one mostly shot at night, which fits the rather murky and shadowy emotions at play. Of the three first tales, this one's characters were the most difficult for me to get a good hold of.

Part III, My Take on the Film

This part did not carry the emotional impact of the first two, but it is still fairly interesting. Director Krzysztof Kieslowski is now showing that he refuses to spell out everything for the viewer at the beginnings of his stories. There often seem to be important plot elements missing in the first ten or fifteen minutes of each tale, but they are all answered by the end. Behavior that seems totally perplexing is always explained through further actions or dialogue. Such is the case with our taxi driver in this episode. Over the course of the 55-minute tale, the nature of the pair’s relationship is slowly revealed, adding new layers to the ways that we understand their interactions.

Of the three episodes so far, this one has been my least favorite. It’s not that the acting is any weaker or that the vision is any less clear than the first two. Mainly, it is that the woman in the story was difficult for me to take. Though ultimately harmless, she was clearly an emotional wreck, which always makes me cringe to watch. There is a feeling of some redemption at the end, as the taxi driver returns to his wife and family with his dignity intact, but watching him get there was not as engaging as watching the previous two stories in the series unfold.

In relation to the ten commandments, my guess is that the inspiration is either “thou shalt not commit adultery” or perhaps “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”.

That is not a wrap. Still seven more episodes to watch and review, so come on back for my reviews of Parts IV through VII.

INTERMISSION…

Film # 75: Taxi Driver (1976)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Initial Release Country: United States

Times Previously Seen: twice (last time about 8 years ago)

Teaser Summary (No spoilers.)

Lonely cab driver tries to maintain his sanity & humanity in the grunge of 1970s New York City.

Extended Summary (More detailed plot synopsis, spoilers included. Fair warning.)

In mid-1970s New York City, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is struggling. An honorably discharged Marine, Travis is now making a living as a cabbie in Gotham City, though the going isn’t easy. His insomnia and constant headaches lead him to add night shifts to his busy schedule. To take his mind off of his nagging unrest, he tells his dispatcher that he will go “Anywhere, anytime.”

As Travis works through his shifts, he sees some of the darkest aspects of humanity. Drug pushers and abusers, prostitutes and pimps, killers and victims. Travis sees it all pass both outside and inside of his cab. He feels a desire to do something about it, but he doesn’t know what or how, and he cannot articulate his feelings to anyone. Added to this is that he has no close friends. The only people he sees regularly are a handful of other cabbies, who are as jaded and he is becoming.

Travis one day sees a stunningly beautiful woman, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) walking along the street. He becomes transfixed and begins regularly driving past her place of work, the campaign headquarters for presidential hopeful Senator Charles Palantine. He eventually musters up the courage to walk in, awkwardly introduce himself and ask Betsy to coffee. Betsy, seemingly intrigued by Travis’s unusual energy and intensity, agrees. Over coffee, Travis professes his loneliness to Betsy, but also claims that he senses the same loneliness in her. Betsy continues to be intrigued, though in a somewhat reserved way.

Travis and Betsy get to know each other a bit. Betsy is intrigued by the "contradiction" of Travis, never suspecting the darkness with which he is struggling.

A few days later, Betsy agrees to see a movie with Travis. Much to her surprise and disgust, the socially inept Travis brings her to a graphic, X-rated film. Betsy gets up and walks out. Travis tries to stop her and apologize, but she hustles away. Travis tries to call and make amends over the next several days, but Betsy does not return his calls.

Travis begins to grow more hateful towards the world around him, his personal failure with Betsy now piled on top of the degradations that he sees nightly in his job. He soon becomes totally insulated. He buys several handguns from an illegal dealer, and stays in his cramped apartment, fantasizing and acting out confrontations with invisible enemies. He even studies himself in the mirror as he vocalizes his delusional conversations.

Travis begins to focus on Senator Palantine in a strange way, noting his campaign speeches and their locations. He also goes back to the campaign headquarters, where he loudly berates Betsy and condemns her, only to be escorted out of the building. A few nights after, Travis accidentally stumbles across a robbery in progress. He guns down the thief and flees the scene at the shop owner’s urging.

Travis later has a run-in with a painfully young prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), who tries to get into his cab. She is pulled forcefully out by a rough pimp named Matthew, or “Sport” (Harvey Keitel), who bribes Travis to stay quiet about the whole thing. Travis continues to dwell on this for several days, and he eventually finds Iris and talks to her. Travis learns that she is a runaway and is not even 13 years old. He tries in his clumsy if passionate way to convince her to leave her life in New York and return to her parents. Iris leaves, considering Travis’s urging. However, Sport smooth talks Iris into staying, with Travis watching through a window.

Travis, now gone completely off the deep end. He has taken on his "warrior" garb and prepares for his suicide mission to kill the Senator.

Now seemingly devastated, Travis goes home and loads for bear. He writes a farewell letter to Iris and puts it in an envelope with all of his remaining money. He then goes to Senator Palantine’s next public speech. Sporting a wild-looking mohawk and an oversized army jacket (hiding Travis’s veritable arsenal underneath), Travis makes towards the Senator and nearly has his chance to shoot him. He is spotted just before he pulls his gun, though, and flees the scene.

That same night, Travis goes into the lower East Side of Manhattan and confronts Sport. After a heated exchange, Travis shoots Sport, then continues to shoot his way past one of Sport’s lookouts, into Iris’s room. Travis also shoots the “john” that is with Iris, but not before being shot himself, once in the neck and once in the shoulder. Bleeding profusely, Travis sits on a couch while Iris crouches in horror next to it. The police arrive to find the bloodbath.

After a short time in a coma, Travis recovers his health. He wakes to find a letter from Iris’s parents, who explain that after the shooting, they came from their home in Pittsburgh and brought Iris home. Travis is also hailed as a sort of vigilante hero in the newspapers. Once recovered, he returns to his job driving a cab, and seems to be more well-balanced. One night, his fare happens to be Betsy. When she asks Travis about it, he denies that he was any kind of hero, and he quietly and calmly does not charge her for her fare.

Take 1: My Gut Reaction (Done after this most recent viewing, before any research.)

I remember a classmate of mine back in college once telling me that he would watch Taxi Driver once every year. He explained that this was so he could keep a certain perspective on everything. In keeping with this, I understand and agree with what he meant. Taxi Driver is an incredible movie that, while difficult to stomach in several ways, should be required viewing for everyone, at least once in their lifetimes.

Watching the mental fracturing of Travis Bickle is as fascinating as it is uncomfortable. Currently, in the year 2012, we are far more familiar with the psychological profile of the classic “loner(s)-turned-madman”, as in the cases of the Columbine or Gabby Giffords shootings, just to name a few. I have to guess, though, that on Taxi Driver’s release in 1976, this was very new and frightening territory. New because it made a homicidal man the protagonist, and frightening because of just how real it all seemed. Even more, it still has the same power, 36 years later.

I was hardly a year old in 1976, but I wouldn’t time travel back there if you paid me. My general impression of that short era, based solely on films between 1976 and 1978, is that it was hell on earth. The movies are always grainy and shrouded in shadows, and the themes were often doom-saying prophecies spawned by decades of Cold War paradigms and hopelessness. Taxi Driver is, for me, the epitome of it all, boiled down and distilled into the form of Travis Bickle.

An early shot in the film. The washed-out browns, shadows, fluorescent lighting, and disheveled humans are what seemed to be part of every U.S. film made between 1976 and 1978.

Travis Bickle, however, cannot be written off as simply a maniac. Faced with depravity and degradation at nearly every turn, Travis has a powerful desire to see it made better, but he isn’t equipped to enact it. Any attempt he makes at a positive connection is stymied by his own lack of awareness or social graces. His frustration simply fuels his hatred for the things that he sees, rightly or wrongly, as cancerous elements. Eventually, it erupts into the final shooting spree and killings.

What I picked up far more on this recent viewing were not the iconic scenes of Travis doing his “You talkin’ to me?” monologue or the visceral final shootout. Instead, it was Travis’s attempts at real human connection with people. Not only with Betsy and Iris, but even with his fellow cabbie “Wizard” (played well by Peter Boyle) and Senator Palantine, Travis makes a real attempt to communicate to people his pain and frustration at watching the world die around him. The problem is that either he isn’t able to articulate it, or his listeners aren’t willing or able to really hear him. Taxi Driver is easily as much about human contact (or lack of) as it is about social ills and mental instability. Again, this is not an amusing topic, but one that this film explores in an entrancing way.

What can I say about De Niro’s performance that hasn’t been said before? Nothing, really. While he had already made his name in The Godfather Part II, his role in Taxi Driver put him in rarefied air for actors. The man’s range even within this one movie is incredible. Bickle is terrifying at times, but the real power of the movie comes from the more delicate moments when he’s trying to reach out, in his confused and reserved way. As he would show in another Scorsese film, The King of Comedy, several years later, De Niro was equally effective at conveying the vulnerability that the role demanded. As someone who has grown disappointed in Robert De Niro’s roles in the last 10 or so years (don’t get me started on the whole Meet the Parents atrocities), I was glad to go back and be reminded of exactly why he is a film acting legend.

De Niro is obviously the big draw in the movie, but even the lesser roles played by familiar faces are great. A disturbingly young Jodie Foster is perfect, and Harvey Keitel is as I can’t recall seeing him in any picture – a street-jiving pimp, complete with red velvet bellbottom pants and wide-brim hat. Even Peter Boyle in his very small role as Wizard adds to the film.

Yes, that is indeed Harvey Keitel as the long-haired pimp, Sport. Keitel's is one of several excellent minor performances in the movie.

Scorsese’s direction of this movie is rock solid. I need to research it, but I can’t imagine that he had a tremendous budget for this movie. Either way, the entire tone of it is just right for the story it tells. Granted, most of us would want to take a shower after watching it, so grungy and distasteful are the environments and behavior in it, but this is exactly the point. It is this filth that sends Travis Bickle down the road of madness, and we are riding shotgun the entire way, as much as we don’t want to.

At this point, I have seen most of Scorsese’s feature films, and he’s one of my favorites. Seeing Taxi Driver again reminds me of the man’s strengths. While he’s clearly a director of the highest order, no matter what kind of film he decides to do, his greatest seem to come from his home – New York City. Sure, nearly all of his movies set there involve crime, insanity, depravity, and any number of other deadly vices, but the stories he tells of them have always been incredibly gripping. Taxi Driver was one of his very first in this vein. I come away from this latest viewing about the same way I went in: I’m glad I watched it again, and I was able to glean several more things from it than before. I will now let five, seven, maybe ten years pass before I feel the need to watch it again. Watch it again, I will though.

Take 2: Why Film Geeks Love This Movie (Done after some further research.)

This is another film that one doesn’t have to research much, in order to learn why it has been put on the “All TIME 100” and many other “best films” lists. The craftsmanship of the tale and the acting is superb, and critics early on proclaimed it an outstanding film. The public also appreciated it; while Taxi Driver was far from a smash hit, it did make a relatively nice profit, grossing just under $30 million. I would say that this is surprising for such a dismal tale of urban decay and insanity, but I suppose it struck a chord with people.

It’s interesting to learn how Taxi Driver was a sort of unintentional bridge between two high profile assassination attempts. To write the script, Paul Schrader researched the personal diaries of Arthur Bremer, who shot presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. (Travis Bickle’s journal entries are fairly prominent as insight into his mind in Taxi Driver.) Fast forward to 1981. In a delusional effort to impress Jodie Foster, John Hinckley Jr. dons a Bickle-inspired Mohawk and shoots then-president Ronald Reagan. Life imitating art, imitating life, I guess.

Initially deemed too bloody and given an X rating, Scorsese washed out the colors a bit, lessening the visceral nature of Bickle's final suicide assault to rescue Iris. Still, it's plenty disturbing.

In researching the film’s influences, it’s hard not to think of several more modern movies that use a rough Travis Bickle template. The John Doe character in Se7en and even Tyler Durden in Fight Club are clearly cut from the same cloth. Those were also films of malcontented loners who first internalized their disgust at the world around them, and then lashed out with the force of a natural disaster.

Back to Taxi Driver. The ending is certainly food for thought. After the final, bloody shootout and Travis’s recovery, the final scenes at first seem out of place to me. Travis is back out on the street, driving his cab, seemingly in far better mental condition. After picking up and dropping off Betsy, there is a very brief flash of Travis’s face in the rearview mirror, reacting with surprise and anger to some kind of blurred motion. Before you know it, though, the moment is gone. I was left to wonder if I had even really seen it.

Well, it turns out that I did see it, and it is an allusion to the fact that Travis is far from OK at the end of the movie. This was something that sparked debate and confusion upon Taxi Driver’s initial release. However, Martin Scorsese and script writer Paul Schrader confirmed that the scene is, indeed, meant to show that Travis is still thoroughly unstable, and that final, lightning-quick flash of his contorted face portends another violent outburst sometime in his future. This also banished a theory that the final few minutes of the film were a dream sequence and we were seeing inside Travis’s mind for a short while. Not so.

And here’s a final perplexing oddity. In surfing around, I discovered that there are plans out there to make a sequel to Taxi Driver. In both 2010 and 2011, both De Niro and Scorsese confirmed this, and director Lars von Trier is rumored to be involved. Don’t ask me exactly how they plan to do this, as the only information out there says that it would be about an older Travis Bickle. If it really comes off, I don’t know what to expect. Scorsese is an absolute master, no doubt, but it’s hard for me to imagine him capturing the feel of the original setting and character without diminishing it somehow. We shall see.

That’s a wrap. 75 shows down. 30 to go.

Coming Soon: Star Wars (1977):

Talk about a thematic shift. I go from a violent loner in a scum-encrusted New York to an intergalactic hick getting wrapped up in a space opera and learning how to fight with a glowing magic wand. It goes to show how movies truly can take you anywhere…

Please be sure to pick up all empties on the way out.