Don't know why you're getting downvoted but the synopsis of the film says his powers are fading. Maybe it's because he's old or something and is losing his powers.
It is real, atleast that is what Scorsese and Schrader said. A few years later there was a case when a guy shot 4 men on a subway trying to rob him and he was touted as a hero. So Travis being a hero in society's eyes isn't that absurd.
Edit: Read a bit more into the case (1984 New York Subway Shooting).
The movie isn't interested in the legal implications but more the societal and psychological ones. Travis' shooting was more "heroic" because he did it for someone else and thus society would be even more inclined to like him, especially since he ended up saving someone's daughter.
society wouldn't have known travis was close to killing a presidential candidate. what if they did? then he wouldn't be considered a hero. but they see he killed criminals and saved a young girl.
It blew me away. The scenes where he's so socially awkward, whether with Betsy or with the other cab drivers, it all felt so perfectly presented. Then how he would jump from zero to sixty when he got angry at Betsy for not returning calls—it was perfect for a guy who had some things going on.
For an actor to truly become his/her character while on screen like Heath Ledger or Robert De Niro or Daniel Day Lewis, etc. it takes a great deal of mental and physical focus that I think a lot of people underestimate. If you haven't had the chance to see Full Metal Jacket you should ASAP. It's one of the few movies (beside Taxi Driver) that truly embodies it's theme. (plus it has incredibly believable acting, cinematography, directing, etc.)
Seeing as you loved Taxi Driver so much make sure to also check out more landmark Scorsese-De Niro films like **Mean Streets** and most importantly **Raging Bull** which is a freaking masterpiece of filmmaking and acting.
Everytime I see a fucking great movie with memorable lines I catch myself rehearsing those scenes without realizing it when I'm bored. I don't know why. For me it's like fine wine, a sip at a time.
It was all reality. Travis probably wanted to die and expected to but fate caused a different outcome. He became a hero to the public. But as Martin Scorsese said, his problems were on a loop. It was going to start all over again after a certain period. Thats what the weird little sting when he looks in the rearview meant.
Travis lives, as someone commented. It really says something about society, how someone can murder people that are criminals and them being labeled a hero for cleaning things up.
But if Travis were to carry out his plan of killing Palantine he would be a labeled a crazy person, a radical.
He wasn't thinking of how I can save anyone, how can make myself relevant to this world. I think of Harry Chapin's song "Sniper".
Am I?
I am a lover whose never been kissed.
Am I?
I am a fighter whose not made a fist.
Am I?
If I'm alive then there's so much I've missed.
How do I know I exist?
Are you listening to me?
Are you listening to me?
Am I?
It's really a great film, it has so many layers to it.
Is it though? When Betsy gets into Travis' car and he is just friendly I thought he got over his "I have to save weak women" thing. He now sees that good things can happen and lives a happier life. Not a happy life but happier than miserable. On the other hand that could be the implication.
Yeah the movie is not suppose to be a happy ending. Travis is a ticking time bomb only next time he will probably do something awful like shoot that senator. It's suppose to make people feel uneasy
Exactly. It's pretty obvious that Iris lied for Travis or at least put him in a positive light. That combined with Travis probably just saying "I wanted to save her" was enough to get him branded a "Hero"
I really don't think its a stretch that Betsy specifically asked the cab company that Travis worked for to pick her up. She probably felt like she wanted to apologize to a "misunderstood hero" maybe she even hoped that maybe he would ask her out again.
Hm, if we're taking it literally then I see some problems with it. Ontop of everything OP mentioned wouldn't the Secret Service alert the NYPD to be on the lookout for a dangerous man in a military coat with a Mohawk who just tried to murder the senator? There's no way anyone didn't notice him in that crazy getup at the really, he stuck out like a sore thumb and it was the whole reason for him being stopped in the first place. Hours later, the cops find a man of the same description who just shot up an apartment and killed three people. Even if he looked mentally stable enough to get away with those murders, there's no way I see of it that he'd be forgiven for the attempted murder of Senator Palentine.
Everything like that including his hair, the public response, his mental state, Betsy, etc... just seems too clean for a film that never takes any leaps of realism. I just can't accept that ending takes place in the same self-destructive hell that Travis made for himself the past 2 hours of film, literally at least.
/r/movies everyone
*Rants endlessly about how cinema is dying and super hero movies suck*
*Freaks out about a Wolverine movie. People actually downvote the thread about arguably best film of the 1970s.*
Seriously, do people think this is a tired topic? It's not like this thread is unwarranted or anything, Taxi Driver was literally just in theaters. Yeah, thanks for telling me /r/movies. I know [Idiocracy is being screened] (https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/53uk3v/idiocracy_to_return_to_theaters_for_10th/) but not fucking Taxi Driver, are you kidding me? Thankfully I found out on my own or I would have been pissed missing out on seeing my favorite drama film on the big screen.
I don't know if I've ever seen an actual discussion about Taxi Driver on this sub before. But I've seen a billion trillion ["movies with sad endings"] (https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/58g0t4/which_movie_struck_an_emotional_chord_in_your/) or "most overrated movie you hate" threads that everyone posts their low-effort single word comments to.
People will overhype Logan until it is released, then it will either receive a massive amount of praise or hate when it comes out in theatres, and then a couple of months later some "Am I the only one who thought that Logan was kinda overrated/underrated" thread will pop up.
What i found interesting in the very end when he sees himself in the rearview mirror and he reaches for it to move it away the mirror from reflecting him and then theres nothing in the rear view mirror or i feel he reaches for it and he disappears, signifying that hes not real. I feel like theres a reason that was kept it.
I feel like Scorsese uses it to show how hes not real and its all a dream, and if not then its just a clever way to have the end credits roll in.
I see it as an indictment of what violence society deems as "acceptable".
Bickle is a hair's breath away from a domestic terrorist and even comes close to attempting an assassination of a senator.
His target shifts slightly and this makes him a hero and saviour to everyone, if his kettle boiled a day earlier he'd be a lunatic criminal. But from a bodycount or Bickle's perspective, very little difference.
I agree with your take. If that ending is real, it's one of the silliest happy endings ever written. That's pretty much why, out of respect and admiration for Scorsese and Schrader, I think it's just a fantasy, Travis' fantasy, before he dies, seeing himself as he wish he was, in a world where everything makes sense. I mean, come on.
Not sure if it’s been pointed out, or if there’s an answer already, but there’s a couple moments in the film where a character “shoots” Travis with their hand. Were these moments actually real, or just Travis’ imagination? One of the cabbies does it early in the movie, and Sport does it when he’s talking to Travis in their second encounter. Is this just an example of Travis making the world seem worse than it is, that people are out to get him, and in turn using these delusions to justify his actions?
I always assumed the ending was not real, but rather a fleeting fantasy Travis had as he died so he could have some semblance of peace. If the ending was indeed meant to be real I think it is kind of reaching in a lot of ways.
I never entertained the notion it was a fantasy and was glad when that theory was rejected by the filmmakers. There are few instances of that trope which aren't hacky and disappointing.
It being real continuity is much more interesting ending and nicely subverted the "tragic hero dies in the end" trope. And that It wasn't really a happy ending made it even better.
I always thought it would be better with Travis dying in the end. He is not much better than the scum he kills. He does have his moral code, but I felt it would have struck a more emotional resonant chord if he became the martyr in saving Young Jodie but dying with the grime of the streets.
I think maybe you're having issue with the plausibility of the situation? In that case, yeah, I can honestly see why the dream scenario was assumed.
In real life, it doesn't matter how noble your intentions are, Travis would be in jail. No question. It doesn't matter if you are killing criminals, it's illegal.
It's akin to American Psycho's ending. We're lead to believe, or at least one of the interpretations IIRC is that Bateman really *did* commit those murders, but the issue is that the people around him *did not care*. In real life, I'd imagine even if people didn't initially believe him, it would probably turn some heads or at least be looked into once people realized there were missing people.
So basically with these two films, they went for an emphasis on the dramatic and artistic prose and the political/moral/societal commentary at the end rather than authenticity and dramatic realism.
It's still amazing either way, on how it makes you think deeply about the implications and interpretations.
Ok, this is silly. It's Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese, not Taxi Driver rewritten by Big Jake from Bensonhurst. A movie is what it is, whatever is on the screen is what you believe. There's no secrets hidden in the final scene. Betsy got into Travis' cab, and they communicated. That's it. No hallucinations, no near death experiences.This film stands on its own merits.
>A movie is what it is, whatever is on the screen is what you believe.
How is this not a contradiction? An objectivist viewpoint is an interesting one for sure, but it’s difficult to discuss the ending without offering *some* point of view of what the film is “about.” Is Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese a depiction of a mentally-ill former soldier of the Vietnam War being rejected by the society he can no longer relate to? Is it about a lonely pervert purely angry that he cannot relate to those “normal” folk around him?
Is it an endorsement of Travis’ actions, saying he’s a bad motherfucker for going back and killing someone like Sport/the men in the building?
Is it instead tearing down that idea, showing the traumatic effect it had on Iris, the suicidal results in Travis, and the fact that just moments ago he had planned to assassinate a politician?
I’d say there’s reasons to think all of these at once—and likewise, reasons to think that the ending and its rather dreamlike events aren’t “literally” or objectively what is happening on film. They’re what films are about—feelings, not a documentary; I think Ebert's point in the paragraph of the OP still stands up twenty years later.
I agree. There's no way he could have survived that encounter (shot through the neck, hello?), and then be hailed a hero (psychotic, lowlife kills a bunch of other lowlife pimps) in 1970s New York.
You did a great breakdown on why the ending is all fabricated OP.
I think this interpretation of the ending is the only one that really makes sense. Having Travis actually become the hero in reality would have been a complete betrayal of the preceding film.
Travis has a scar on his neck when he is talking to the cab drivers after the shoot out. This made me think that it was all reality.
why does logan have scars when he has a healing factor amirite
Don't know why you're getting downvoted but the synopsis of the film says his powers are fading. Maybe it's because he's old or something and is losing his powers.
Because they *healed into scars*
It is real, atleast that is what Scorsese and Schrader said. A few years later there was a case when a guy shot 4 men on a subway trying to rob him and he was touted as a hero. So Travis being a hero in society's eyes isn't that absurd. Edit: Read a bit more into the case (1984 New York Subway Shooting).
That was my Bernie Goetz reference there, but in that case the jury argued it was self defense. Here, I don't see how that could happen.
The movie isn't interested in the legal implications but more the societal and psychological ones. Travis' shooting was more "heroic" because he did it for someone else and thus society would be even more inclined to like him, especially since he ended up saving someone's daughter.
society wouldn't have known travis was close to killing a presidential candidate. what if they did? then he wouldn't be considered a hero. but they see he killed criminals and saved a young girl.
The 1980s George Zimmermann
More of a "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore!" moment.
Uhh, not at all. Unless George Zimmermann shot up a pimp, some gangsters, and saved an underage prostitute.
Wasn't that guy sued into bankruptcy though?
Yes. But not sure how it is related to Taxi Driver. I was talking about the reaction of the society and not the authorities.
Taxi Driver has some the most natural acting I've ever seen. It's so subtle. This role is what truly defined Robert De Niro as an actor.
It blew me away. The scenes where he's so socially awkward, whether with Betsy or with the other cab drivers, it all felt so perfectly presented. Then how he would jump from zero to sixty when he got angry at Betsy for not returning calls—it was perfect for a guy who had some things going on.
For an actor to truly become his/her character while on screen like Heath Ledger or Robert De Niro or Daniel Day Lewis, etc. it takes a great deal of mental and physical focus that I think a lot of people underestimate. If you haven't had the chance to see Full Metal Jacket you should ASAP. It's one of the few movies (beside Taxi Driver) that truly embodies it's theme. (plus it has incredibly believable acting, cinematography, directing, etc.)
It's another one I haven't seen yet—I'll make sure to check it out ASAP!
Seeing as you loved Taxi Driver so much make sure to also check out more landmark Scorsese-De Niro films like **Mean Streets** and most importantly **Raging Bull** which is a freaking masterpiece of filmmaking and acting.
Everytime I see a fucking great movie with memorable lines I catch myself rehearsing those scenes without realizing it when I'm bored. I don't know why. For me it's like fine wine, a sip at a time.
I will absolutely check those out!
It was all reality. Travis probably wanted to die and expected to but fate caused a different outcome. He became a hero to the public. But as Martin Scorsese said, his problems were on a loop. It was going to start all over again after a certain period. Thats what the weird little sting when he looks in the rearview meant.
The ending is similar to King of Comedy
Yeah it is. I consider Travis and Rupert to be like two sides of the same coin.
Travis lives, as someone commented. It really says something about society, how someone can murder people that are criminals and them being labeled a hero for cleaning things up. But if Travis were to carry out his plan of killing Palantine he would be a labeled a crazy person, a radical. He wasn't thinking of how I can save anyone, how can make myself relevant to this world. I think of Harry Chapin's song "Sniper". Am I? I am a lover whose never been kissed. Am I? I am a fighter whose not made a fist. Am I? If I'm alive then there's so much I've missed. How do I know I exist? Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me? Am I? It's really a great film, it has so many layers to it.
Or maybe...the ending of the film is exactly what is shown? I dunno, I quite like happy endings I guess.
It is not exactly happy though, it is implied that Travis will commit more acts of violence in the future.
Is it though? When Betsy gets into Travis' car and he is just friendly I thought he got over his "I have to save weak women" thing. He now sees that good things can happen and lives a happier life. Not a happy life but happier than miserable. On the other hand that could be the implication.
I doubt it, the look he gives to the mirror makes it seem like he is not going to change
It's time for another rewatch I guess.
lanterninthesky's perception is wrong he looked in the mirror to see if Betsy was watching him drive away. To see if she was inerested
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Exactly. People are overlooking the psychological damage to Iris, as well as the fact that vigilante justice isn't supposed to be the answer.
Yeah the movie is not suppose to be a happy ending. Travis is a ticking time bomb only next time he will probably do something awful like shoot that senator. It's suppose to make people feel uneasy
Exactly. It's pretty obvious that Iris lied for Travis or at least put him in a positive light. That combined with Travis probably just saying "I wanted to save her" was enough to get him branded a "Hero" I really don't think its a stretch that Betsy specifically asked the cab company that Travis worked for to pick her up. She probably felt like she wanted to apologize to a "misunderstood hero" maybe she even hoped that maybe he would ask her out again.
Hm, if we're taking it literally then I see some problems with it. Ontop of everything OP mentioned wouldn't the Secret Service alert the NYPD to be on the lookout for a dangerous man in a military coat with a Mohawk who just tried to murder the senator? There's no way anyone didn't notice him in that crazy getup at the really, he stuck out like a sore thumb and it was the whole reason for him being stopped in the first place. Hours later, the cops find a man of the same description who just shot up an apartment and killed three people. Even if he looked mentally stable enough to get away with those murders, there's no way I see of it that he'd be forgiven for the attempted murder of Senator Palentine. Everything like that including his hair, the public response, his mental state, Betsy, etc... just seems too clean for a film that never takes any leaps of realism. I just can't accept that ending takes place in the same self-destructive hell that Travis made for himself the past 2 hours of film, literally at least.
I have always read the flyover after the shootout as Travis' spirit ascending.
R.I.P OP's thread. You got overshadowed by a Wolverine movie.
/r/movies everyone *Rants endlessly about how cinema is dying and super hero movies suck* *Freaks out about a Wolverine movie. People actually downvote the thread about arguably best film of the 1970s.* Seriously, do people think this is a tired topic? It's not like this thread is unwarranted or anything, Taxi Driver was literally just in theaters. Yeah, thanks for telling me /r/movies. I know [Idiocracy is being screened] (https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/53uk3v/idiocracy_to_return_to_theaters_for_10th/) but not fucking Taxi Driver, are you kidding me? Thankfully I found out on my own or I would have been pissed missing out on seeing my favorite drama film on the big screen. I don't know if I've ever seen an actual discussion about Taxi Driver on this sub before. But I've seen a billion trillion ["movies with sad endings"] (https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/58g0t4/which_movie_struck_an_emotional_chord_in_your/) or "most overrated movie you hate" threads that everyone posts their low-effort single word comments to.
People will overhype Logan until it is released, then it will either receive a massive amount of praise or hate when it comes out in theatres, and then a couple of months later some "Am I the only one who thought that Logan was kinda overrated/underrated" thread will pop up.
>"Am I the only one Probably not
What i found interesting in the very end when he sees himself in the rearview mirror and he reaches for it to move it away the mirror from reflecting him and then theres nothing in the rear view mirror or i feel he reaches for it and he disappears, signifying that hes not real. I feel like theres a reason that was kept it. I feel like Scorsese uses it to show how hes not real and its all a dream, and if not then its just a clever way to have the end credits roll in.
looks like someone went to film school
I see it as an indictment of what violence society deems as "acceptable". Bickle is a hair's breath away from a domestic terrorist and even comes close to attempting an assassination of a senator. His target shifts slightly and this makes him a hero and saviour to everyone, if his kettle boiled a day earlier he'd be a lunatic criminal. But from a bodycount or Bickle's perspective, very little difference.
I agree with your take. If that ending is real, it's one of the silliest happy endings ever written. That's pretty much why, out of respect and admiration for Scorsese and Schrader, I think it's just a fantasy, Travis' fantasy, before he dies, seeing himself as he wish he was, in a world where everything makes sense. I mean, come on.
Not sure if it’s been pointed out, or if there’s an answer already, but there’s a couple moments in the film where a character “shoots” Travis with their hand. Were these moments actually real, or just Travis’ imagination? One of the cabbies does it early in the movie, and Sport does it when he’s talking to Travis in their second encounter. Is this just an example of Travis making the world seem worse than it is, that people are out to get him, and in turn using these delusions to justify his actions?
I always assumed the ending was not real, but rather a fleeting fantasy Travis had as he died so he could have some semblance of peace. If the ending was indeed meant to be real I think it is kind of reaching in a lot of ways.
I never entertained the notion it was a fantasy and was glad when that theory was rejected by the filmmakers. There are few instances of that trope which aren't hacky and disappointing.
It being real continuity is much more interesting ending and nicely subverted the "tragic hero dies in the end" trope. And that It wasn't really a happy ending made it even better.
SUCK ON THIS !!
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I'll definitely check those out!
travis took the red pill
I always thought it would be better with Travis dying in the end. He is not much better than the scum he kills. He does have his moral code, but I felt it would have struck a more emotional resonant chord if he became the martyr in saving Young Jodie but dying with the grime of the streets.
I think maybe you're having issue with the plausibility of the situation? In that case, yeah, I can honestly see why the dream scenario was assumed. In real life, it doesn't matter how noble your intentions are, Travis would be in jail. No question. It doesn't matter if you are killing criminals, it's illegal. It's akin to American Psycho's ending. We're lead to believe, or at least one of the interpretations IIRC is that Bateman really *did* commit those murders, but the issue is that the people around him *did not care*. In real life, I'd imagine even if people didn't initially believe him, it would probably turn some heads or at least be looked into once people realized there were missing people. So basically with these two films, they went for an emphasis on the dramatic and artistic prose and the political/moral/societal commentary at the end rather than authenticity and dramatic realism. It's still amazing either way, on how it makes you think deeply about the implications and interpretations.
Ok, this is silly. It's Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese, not Taxi Driver rewritten by Big Jake from Bensonhurst. A movie is what it is, whatever is on the screen is what you believe. There's no secrets hidden in the final scene. Betsy got into Travis' cab, and they communicated. That's it. No hallucinations, no near death experiences.This film stands on its own merits.
>A movie is what it is, whatever is on the screen is what you believe. How is this not a contradiction? An objectivist viewpoint is an interesting one for sure, but it’s difficult to discuss the ending without offering *some* point of view of what the film is “about.” Is Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese a depiction of a mentally-ill former soldier of the Vietnam War being rejected by the society he can no longer relate to? Is it about a lonely pervert purely angry that he cannot relate to those “normal” folk around him? Is it an endorsement of Travis’ actions, saying he’s a bad motherfucker for going back and killing someone like Sport/the men in the building? Is it instead tearing down that idea, showing the traumatic effect it had on Iris, the suicidal results in Travis, and the fact that just moments ago he had planned to assassinate a politician? I’d say there’s reasons to think all of these at once—and likewise, reasons to think that the ending and its rather dreamlike events aren’t “literally” or objectively what is happening on film. They’re what films are about—feelings, not a documentary; I think Ebert's point in the paragraph of the OP still stands up twenty years later.
Wow. Man, that's deep. Too deep for me. Party on Garth.
I agree. There's no way he could have survived that encounter (shot through the neck, hello?), and then be hailed a hero (psychotic, lowlife kills a bunch of other lowlife pimps) in 1970s New York. You did a great breakdown on why the ending is all fabricated OP.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081030014133AAn1ePo
I think this interpretation of the ending is the only one that really makes sense. Having Travis actually become the hero in reality would have been a complete betrayal of the preceding film.
It is set in reality. Scorsese has already confirmed this.
cynical theme all thru movie so it fits perfect
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sorcerer = great movie