Movies I Should Have Already Seen, Vol 3, #8

Now that the blog is back, we should also bring back one of the longest running bits.

Movies I Should Have Already Seen, Volume 3, Issue 8

This is the first MISHAS installment of the Hulu era. Or, at least the era in which I watch Hulu. That means that for you readers that want to play along, you can swing over to Hulu and watch the movie right now.

Watching movies on Hulu can prove engaging because of the comments people can post on each movie or show page. Because Hulu enforces an actual name policy, the posts tend to be a bit more put together than the average YouTube comment. Older movies and shows tend to attract many comments by what I assume are younger viewers often hammering the video. These are people that are also engaging in MISHAS and they mostly hate it. I read one comment asking for the movie to be remade with today's faster pace. That would be a mess with ten minutes of setup and another hour-and-a-half of gun fights. Every individual piece of every individual gun would be separately mic'ed to intensify bullet time effects. The famous mirror scenes would be cut short to fit in another gun fight. But, we would make sure to try and get a PG-13 rating to boost profits. Robert DeNiro would be replaced by a cut-up Gerard Butler and Miley Cyrus would be Iris.

I really liked Taxi Driver and part of me would have wanted to see it during its initial 1976 run. I think that it is a wonderful character piece that stands in stark contrast to the usual plot driven popcorn thrillers. I read some criticisms that nothing much happens in Taxi Driver until the very last minutes. Agreed that it does not clip along, but it is a lingering and long descent into madness. A weaker movie or a current remake of the film would try to highlight Travis's madness with dream sequences, quick jump cuts, or green screened hallucinations. The original film does that with a loopy soundtrack that exchanged between jazz horns and a screeching bass line. The noise really gets under your skin and makes it feel like the city itself is assaulting you. Some of the scenes seemed superfluous, such as the match strike conversation in the campaign headquarters. But this also helps add to the mental anguish, as if every inane conversation is pointless and hollow. The modern equivalent would probably be blog posts. That no one reads...

Speaking of the city, NYC comes off as gritty and dirty and needing that hard rain Travis so wishes for. This is partially a sign of the times as most urban centers in the 1970s were tough places to be, but everything gets to you. Like the Nostromo in Alien, everything seems old and broken making us wonder what life is there to live. The cinematography often reuses that same shot over and over again, particularly in the driving scenes where we pass the same traffic light or movie theater crowd several times. This helps highlight Travis's fragile mindset.

I read some comments that the movie has not aged well and should be appreciated as more of a period piece that was great at the time and for the better pictures it has influenced. I can understand this mindset and often used it for previous MISHAS pieces. I found Taxi Driver to be eerily prescient. Travis was anguished because of his experiences in Vietnam and coming back to a country that he did not recognize. This drove him to violence. How is this any different than the ennui and rage that motivated school shooters at Columbine or Virginia Tech. We all seem to be angry at each other and social commentators speak of an increasingly polarized culture. Travis felt isolated and misunderstood and are those feelings that existed purely in the post Vietnam 1970s.

I also think it is a bit short sighted to dismiss older movies by what they influenced. Does that mean The Godfather is a piece of crap because it inspired Goodfellas or The Sopranos? Every gritty, or attempt at a gritty, movie now disproves Taxi Driver's worth? Fight Club was great, but I didn't know it was proof of the law of diminishing returns.

It was also nice to see a young Harvey Keitel as the muscled up pimp, "Sport." He looks like a damn tank! Cybil Sheppard was pretty foxy as Betsy, the campaign worker and infatuation for Travis. 13-year-old Jodie Foster did well with the 12-year-old prostitute role even though she comes in the final act. The movie had balls to refer to a 13-year-old that could "make your cock so hard it pops off." Good luck saying that today even in our more "realistic" world.

Peace!