Travis Bickle is one of the most saddest movie characters in film. He represents thousands of young men who have come back from some kind of war, and are completely thrown off. As a viewer I almost felt sorry for him throughout the entire movie because he was completely emotionally disturbed and had dillusions of happiness that could never happen to him.
In Taxi Driver, Travis was the main character, however, I believe that the city itself was a character. It was represented as a disgusting, horrible, stinky place that housed junkies, alcoholics, pimps, prostitutes, etc. Did the city itself ultimately drive Travis crazy? I don't think so, but I think it did play a major part.
The idea that Travis didn't care to drive in bad parts of town kind of gave me a background of his history. In Vietnam, he probably faced some horrific scenes, death, massacre, torturing, and he wasn't scared to go to the "bad part" of town. His physical appearence in the beggining starts off completely normal, a little messy, not well kept, he didn't really care about his appearance. As the movie moved on, his appearence changed bit bit. When he met Betsy, he tried to dresss himself up, wearing a suit jacket and tie, but failed impressing her by bringing her to a dirty movie. When his character completely turns into the slaughterer he wishes to be, he begins to tone and excercise his miscles and bulks up. His facial expressions are more vacant than before, however, his true insanity when he tries to have normal conversations with people (ex-the secret service agent, he smiles and acts TOO normal)In the finale, when he completely loses it, sporting the Vietnam jacket, the mohawk, and his gun holsters, his looks completely represent where his mind has gone. Robert De Niro brings to the screen how real mentallty unstable people are and how real murderers possibly suffering from post traumatic stress are.
Julia Andria
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The irony is that he is a trained killer, as a Marine, and also how unnatural and frankly unfair it is that Marines are trained to kill on order, and then when they are no longer needed or able, they are thrown back into society and expected to revert back to the non-killer, law abiding citizen without any real support system in place to help them. Vietnam, to me, seems like a place where at least Travis knew what was expected of him, and he knew how to achieve his goals. Here, the scummy city, he saw the enemy all around but had no idea what his mission was. Is he expected to just sit by and do nothing on the front lines of all the wrongs, or is he to stand his post as protector and do something, as he was trained. You're right that this is a story all too common, and a sad one at that. Travis has the potential to be every man, and ultimately becomes an accidental hero, rather than a psychotic killer-traitor. He got lucky, this time.....
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I wanted to dive deeper into this blog entry but unfortunately ran out of time..I had this crazy thought that maybe the part after he gets shot and they pan through the streets with all the cop cars and ambulance, maybe that was the end of the movie. I don't really think that is Scorcese's style, but i thought wouldn't it be crazy if the last part where he is portrayed as a hero wasn't real? He was so messed up in the head, maybe it was a dilusion (not too sure on the spelling there) how everything in his life was all of a sudden magically great, he saved Iris, Betsy wanted to be with him, and he thought of himself as better than her. I'm really into psychology and philosophy and they idea that the last few minutes was just a made up memory. That stuff really stimulates my thought process! lol..can't wait for into the wild!
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