I feel like Rambo is being a little over looked as a “literally me” character. In the first movie, he’s an outcast, a drifter just trying to pass through a town harmlessly. A man who has limitless potential but is seen as an undesirable by society.
100%. I feel the sequels overshadow this unfortunately. First Blood fits this archetype. The only problem of course is that Rambo is a bit too perfect. He is supremely skilled, and despite his violence, it is only in self defense and never actually kills anyone. He is the "Mary Sue" of literally me characters. He is not flawed enough for the hall of fame I suppose.
@@tadpoledystopia2456 I agree that the following sequels completely got rid of his character development and traded it for a generic 80s action film. I personally would say Rambo may not be flawed physically, but socially he is. He doesn’t have interpersonal relationship skills, can’t hold down a job, doesn’t trust anyone, is haunted by his time in Vietnam and feels used and subsequently forgotten by the people who trained him and the people of the United States. Like most military personnel after getting out, you go from running multi million dollar equipment or in charge of hundreds of men, to a civilian job without the same meaning and sense of purpose. His monologue at the end of the movie really shows how much of a glass cannon he is.
@@tadpoledystopia2456 I mean look at the scene when he goes to visit his buddy only to learn that he dies. That’s pretty good demonstration of his social flaws with how awkward and arms length the interaction is with someone who he ought to be able to trust more than other people
This is me. Literally me. No other character can come close to relating to me like this. There is no way you can convince me this is not me. This character could not possibly be anymore me. It's me, and nobody can convince me otherwise. If anyone approached me on the topic of this not possibly being me, then I immediately shut them down with overwhelming evidence that this character is me. This character is me, it is indisputable. Why anyone would try to argue that this character is not me is beyond me. If you held two pictures of me and this character side by side, you'd see no difference. I can safely look at this character every day and say "Yup, that's me". I can practically see this character every time I look at myself in the mirror. I go outside and people stop me to comment how similar I look and act to this character. I chuckle softly as I'm assured everyday this character is me in every way. I can smile each time I get out of bed every morning knowing that I've found my identity with this character and I know my place in this world. It's really quite funny how similar this character is to me, it's almost like we're identical twins. When I first saw this character, I had an existential crisis. What if this character was the real me and I was the fictional being. What if this character actual became aware of my existence? Did this character have the ability to become self aware itself?
Yeah, know it's an old comment but it feels like a weird takeaway based on the last scene and him clearly being back in the same spot he started in by the end of the movie.
I’ve always interpreted the ending way less positively. Travis is about to kill Palentine, but then he gets spotted with his gun and flees. It’s less him choosing a better path and more like him rolling the dice on who to let his anger out on. That’s why the ending is so dark. People are calling Travis a hero in the paper where in another universe he’s being called a monster because he executed a random politician to spite a girl that rejected him. How long is it gonna be until Travis needs to engage in violence again and who will he take it out on next time?
At least Travis took it out on people who deserved it. Travis is a good man, but a horrific war and and a life of isolation made him a broken shell of who he could be. Most people wouldn't commit the acts that he has, but we can definitely empathize with how he feels throughout the movie.
@@mrscruffles801 Travis is complicated. He definitely has the potential to be a good man. His instinct to help Iris was good and he did stop that robbery, but he also nearly killed an innocent person. Dude just needs help to work through his shit.
@@anon2427 I saw an interesting take that Travis is a deconstruction of American film heroes like Clint Eastwood. For Clint we just see him murder bad guys effortlessly and spout one liners. For Travis we see him practice his draw and practice and fumble his “badass” lines in the mirror. When someone uses violence as an outlet there comes a concern. That concern is “what will this hero do when there are no more little girls to save?”
Travis bickle is the main man of loner cinema, the dude is literally a Vietnam War veteran, dude has practiced what to do under an attack, he's always planning, always getting organizized, that's why he's literally me
@tj No, because The Punisher actually had a nice life before becoming a miserable loner and The Punisher never talked about "washing the streets clean of it's filth" whenever he saw random people on the street. Travis Bickle would've been on The Punisher's hit list at one point, let's be real.
The ending isn’t Travis becoming a better person or a productive member of society. He’s still a ticking time bomb underneath the facade of a hero. As he drives away from Betsy and looks in his rear view mirror, his reflection still shows the same old self deluded, self isolating, self sabotaging Travis. Even through all the events that take place he’s learned nothing.
@@mrscruffles801 Travis isn’t a good person all of a sudden because he freed Iris. It’s a temporary win. His happiness in the moment is a facade, the hateful bitter Travis is still under the surface. I noticed in your video you didn’t show Travis dropping off Betsy. In that scene as the camera pans to Travis expression in the mirror, it’s the same hateful face we see in the beginning of the movie. The movie is a perfect circle. He’ll stay on this path until him being a ticking time bomb gets him killed eventually. I actually made a video essay on the movie myself and hopefully you can see where I’m coming from. The audio isn’t as good as yours though.
I believe if every 18 year old man was given an opportunity to watch this film, there’d be a bit less anger and a bit more understanding from younger men who experience social anxiety. It humanizes him at first but shows how dealing with issues in the wrong way can lead to absolute horror and destruction. Like the screenwriter Paul Schrader stated, he chooses loneliness as a coping mechanism.
@@Danefrak Yeah, but it took him wanting to die and living in absolute existential agony before he did something with all that pent up hatred that luckily was good but he could as easily have gone and shot that politician and ruined everything. The point alex is trying to make is that you shouldn't let your mental sickness get to a point where violence is the only way out.
Fun fact: Scorsese wasn't originally supposed to be in the back of the taxi. The actor who was going to be in the scene was in a car accident earlier that day and marty stepped in
Rami Malek/Robert Pattinson as Travis Bickle Lily James as Betsy Julie Butters as Iris Josh Safdie as Tom Shea Wigham as Charles Palantine Macon Blair as Wizard Caleb Landry Jones as Sport Benny Safdie as The Passenger Directed by Safdie Brothers
The literally me story type really started in the 1800s with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's books, specifically Notes from the Underground and his magnum opus Crime and Punishment. These books are extremely relevant today and if you like these kinds of movies I highly recommend you to look into these. The roots of 'literally me'
I wrote a paper in college arguing that Taxi Driver is a sort of modern day retelling of Notes from Underground, there are striking similarities whether they were intended by Schrader or not
I’m incel, I’m groyper, I’m kek, I’m Patrick Bateman, I’m Ryan Gosling from Drive (2011) and the Place Beyond the Pines, I’m Joker, I’m Miles from Baby Driver, I’m Bruce Willis in Die Hard and Looper, I’m Travis Bickle. There is no voluntary or involuntary, the world just is
"Some won't even take Redditors. Don't make no difference to me." *Updated for a modern audience* Great video Kino, you're one of my favorite filmtubers!
Travis didn't change is mind about killing Pallentine. He was found out and chased away by the Secret Service guys, so he redirected his rage at the pimps.
I first saw Taxi Driver way back in 2007 at the age of 17. Even all these years later, such a simple story about a lonely, angry young man somehow still feels so ambiguous and elusive. Like, it's one of those films that even though I've loved it for years, I still always feel like there are so many things I'm missing about it, huge gaps in my understanding of Travis Bickle and what drives him. Pretty fascinating, or I'm just really dumb.
I watched it when I was feeling lonesome and hated one night at 2 a.m. in 2019, I never forgot how much I related to it, I cried multiple times seeing bickle so miserable its like I was looking into a 70s mirror
Interesting to know that in the original scrip all the “villains” that Travis killed were black. I agree that the choice to change this was the right one, and the way that Travis’s racism is portrayed in the film is much more subtle but impactful. However also knowing that the screenwriter wrote this characters as “literally him” and chose to only kill black people in his version is an…interesting choice lol
Hmmm yes i wonder who was commiting the majority of violent inner city crime 🤔 surely it wouldnt be the same group of people doing it today! You confuse racism with reality
Exactly what I thought right after hearing that. Like Travis definitely isn't necessarily a progressive guy and the subtlety of his beliefs is really interesting, but specifically writing the race of all the criminals to be black seems less "Travis is racist" and more "the writer who put him there is racist"
@@pierce9870 You missed my point completely. The film shows us that Travis is at least somewhat racist. He is uncomfortable around black people. There are multiple shots of black people that are made to look menacing or creepy because thats how Travis views them. If you make a movie about him killing a bunch of black people after you show him acting this way all the other meaning gets lost because we are just watching a guy commit hate crimes for 2 hours. The writer went out of his way to specify that the criminals were black even though there race really doesn't matter to the plot. And if the writer feels like this character is him, it starts to get into the territory of some fucked up fantasy film rather then a look into the human psyche. Scorsese recognized this and made the change which I think saved the film
@@DonkeyBoyVids Exactly. I feel almost like the writer had mad Travis to be more straight forward. He was supposed to be the writer himself, and the script may have even been some kind of twisted power fantasy he made of how he would want to be seen as a hero if he actualy did shit like this. Scorcsese noticed this and made these changes to make the movie less straight forward and add a lot more depth to Travis.
@@MegaMac464 they were pimps you fn imbecile. The ones in the restaurant are pimps and the robber is a robber. His cabby colleague is blk and he doesn't look at him like that in the film.
When talkig about him being lonely almost on purpose I couldn´t help but remember the character of Rustion Cohle from True Detective i think he also fits the "Literally me" niche quite nicely. Great video man
There is a political dimension to the film, too that adds to the complexity of this masterpiece. It's part of the "American paranoia" films of the 1970s, dealing with the feeling of exterior and interior crisis (most prominently among other events: Vietnam and Watergate) shattering the positive view on America those film makers grew up with (prominent titles include THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, THE CONVERSATION, FRENCH CONNECTION, APOCALYPSE NOW, PLATOON and the first RAMBO). From this perspective, it is also a movie about a Vietnam vet, who's disillusion worsens back home when he sees that the supposed American values he was told to be defending in Vietnam don't seem to exist. He also cannot adapt to the life back home as there is no care/help for the vets coming home and a society that refuses to look at the consequences of the war and often rejects the Vietnam vets and their experience for they are a living reminder to the uncomfortable truths about the war (see also FIRST BLOOD for this part). The hate for Palentine is the hate for people who (in Bickle's eyes) talk about values, but don't mean it - like the politicians sending them to the war. Finally, Bickle finds something (someone) worth fighting for, but the only way he knows how to do that at this point is in the way the war has told him: with violence (again similar to John Rambo). All this is not meant to contradict anything said in the video, it's just a try to add another layer.
"He didn't eat, but he did drink a lot...The event that put an end to his self-destructive lifestyle, the formation of an ulcer." Literally me and a lot of college folks who are headed the same way who risked their guts for a destructive lifestyle. Schrader-sensei HAD to walk through it, too.
I first saw this movie in the latter end of the 70s when I was in my late teens and saw it many, many times (it played in repertory theaters and midnight shows almost monthly in pre-video days) and played the soundtrack album often (which had tracks of Travis’s monologues included). As I got older, made friends, got married, this movie, as a powerful metaphor for loneliness and alienation,became a mirror of a very difficult past. It is a masterpiece and I admire the artistry of Scorsese, DeNiro, and Schrader (and love some of Schrader’s variations of the themes here: American Gigolo, Mishima, Light Sleeper) but revisiting this movie hurts, and I think that speaks to its power,
I watched The Room on a first date once. Her loss honestly. But yeah it probably wasn't a great choice. The more disturbing part, is she didn't see anything wrong with Lisa's actions. In retrospect in may be a good test of character...
Taxi Driver is based on John Ford's The Searchers. Paul Schrader has explained this in interviews. In The Searchers, John Wayne is a veteran of the civil war and has to save a young girl who has been abducted by Indians. He's driven by hatred of the Indians more than concern for the girl as he tracks them down and this is revealed when he threatens to kill the girl when it becomes clear she doesn't want to be saved, the Indians having become her new family. He returns the girl to her parents, but the scene is ambivalent because we're unsure if she's actually happy about having been returned home. So, is John Wayne the hero or the villain? That's the subversive subtext to the film. The western presents an idealized heroic masculinity, but Ford's film turns this on its head and suggests the hero and villain are actually reverse. In Schrader's script, it's the same confusion. Travis only becomes the hero who "saves" Iris because he failed to be the villain that assassinated Palantine.
To me Travis felt like he was wasting away after Vietnam and was desperate to do something that would make people remember him. That's why he was gunning for the politician but ran away once spotted. So he goes with option B, be a vigilante and go out in a Blaze of Glory instead. Then he survives and is left still feeling like nothing has changed.
I've seen all the literally me movies and I relate to Travis at my soul. I think any alienated man would. No friends, no family. Just existing and wanting things to be different but feeling powerless to cause that change. I still try, but it is hard to not just quit.
IDK I did not at all feel that his attack on brothel was in any way path of creation. His attempt to assassinate Palantine has failed not because he changed his mind, but because bodyguards spotted him. But he still wants to "go and really do something". So he turns to last he has going for him - Iris and her abusers. He doesn't really care what is he going to do. I think he just wants to make some, ANY impact on this world. When Travis comes to the brothel after failed assassination, first thing he does is trying to have a friendly conversation with Sport. But when he doesn't recognize him, he gets pissed off. I'm not sure if he had an intention to kill everyone there up until that point. I think that shows that Travis just wants some connection, as does his attempt to have a conversation with bodyguard at the first Palantine's demonstration. I also don't think he ever admired Palantine before deciding to kill him. He always says he's "Not interested in political matters" and everything he ever has to say when he's asked about the senator is "I hope he wins" - the most generic shit you say when you don't really care. I think Travis picks him as a target just because he's important and he knows him because of Betsy, that's it. And also he probably did not like that "I learned more about America from driving in taxy cabs than all the limos in the country" bullshit. And about that last sequence, after the masacre at the brothel, where they show a letter from Iris' parents. I think it's all Travis' hallucination or imagination or something he expected whould happen after he 'freed' Iris. But I don't think that's how it would play out in the real world. Even though Iris' parents might have seen him as a hero of sorts, I think court would have different opinion on that. If I remember correctly, you cant go around killing pimps, even if they are criminals. He would probably go straight to prison, if he survived that night at all. What I find interesting is that in that final scene Travis is happily talking to cabees, from whom he only hears "dumbest things he's ever heard", Betsy, that he concluded was "just like the others", acknowledges him, newspapers are calling him a hero. And he likes it. To me that showed that all his righteous anger towards the 'filth' of the city isn't as fundamental to him and he doesn't mind it. As long as he is being accepted.
@@mrscruffles801 Well I mean Taxi Driver was the primary source of inspiration for Joker, with the latter having numerous direct allusions to it and being a literal homage, so...
What I find interesting is just how close Bickle's fate was from being a villain rather than a hero. The town praised him for saving Iris, but if he carried out his assassination plan, he would be seen as a monster.
If they truly understand the movie and the point of the character, then you should be beyond horrified. But, luckily most people are too stupid nowadays to get the actual point and more see the character as the cool aesthetic of a lonely guy who is also a hero.
I think you're totally right about Bickle being self-destructive, yet I always thought him taking Betsy to a porno was just a result of his social inabilities; but perhaps he was purposely and/or subconsciously sabotaging the relationship - as you stated. After watching it a couple times, I began to find that a lot of Travis's inner-turmoil is bred by a lack of purpose. Although he has his job as a taxi driver, he states that the days seem to blend together "each one indistinguishable from the next," and as a result tries implanting purpose where there isn't or shouldn't be. This is especially apparent when he proclaims himself to be "God's lonely man," thus characterizing his isolation as the will of Providence and thus out of his control. I think your interpretation compliments this scene very well, as you state that Travis finally chooses to change something he can control. Great video man!
Thank God there are sigma male reviewers out there, was getting tired or the "toxic masculinity" readings typical of film normies, travis may not be a hero, but gave the first steps to become a real human being.
Dude seek therapy if you actually relate to people like Travis, don't fall down this anti-SJW rabbit hole. I promise you toxic masculinity is very real along with a LOT of other intersecting systems that contribute to people ending up like this.
Agreed, I hate that people just don't seem to understand how is it to be a social reject and expect us to have some sort of empathy with the people that have rejected us and treated us like shit or like a fucking animal, I've always been a lonely person since I'm physically deformed, I've never had too much friends and the ones I had just leave, when I see characters like Travis I just cannot stop myself from relating to him
When I was younger and I would have a mental breakdown, I would shave my hair into a mohawk. Even before I saw this and it became one of my favorite films
I really enjoyed your input, especially on the mental health stuff. I think I haven't seen a single video talking about Literally Me™ characters and saying "hey, you have a choice not to be like Travis." he himself is a walking contradiction for the majority of the film. Like how he says he'll work any time with anyone. And then does nothing but complain about the seediness of the city. He made that choice. I think you were right about depression and wanting to steep in it. Great video Kino!
I think it’s something not talked about much and honestly this take probably helps the loneliness more than anyone just screaming about how toxic Travis is.
Well what's he supposed to do? If he leaves new york, he won't be able to get a cab job unless it's in an equally seedy city like LA or Chicago. He's pretty much stuck in the muck.
I’ve always seen travis as a cautionary tale more than literally me trope. Yeah there’s similarities between him and lonely dudes but he goes about it in the wrong way. It’s one of my favourite movies because I relate to travois’s loneliness until the cinema date with Betsy then it becomes a character study of spiralling self destruction
Travis Bickel isn’t literally me. But I can definitely see a bit of myself in him, and I can imagine a lot of other depressive introverts like me can too. I think that’s what I like the most about Taxi Driver; it’s not just a film, it’s a warning
If the brothel operators were originally black, was Iris still written as white? Think of a cross-section of white Americans in the 1970's - how do you think THAT would've landed with them? Sure, it was changed to make race not be Bickle's most overt motivators (there's obviously still a racialized undercurrent inherent to the film, to Bickle's sense of suspicion, etc) - but along with this, make him LESS likable by the white cross-section of Americans I mentioned. As tolerant as they might seem on the street, in the day-to-day, the white citizen of 1970's New York is likely to feel strongly opposed to racial mixing, I have family members who meet the criteria, friends, co-workers, and the 21st Century has done little to moderate their sentiments. My point is - holy shit, this movie would've had a MUCH different reception and legacy had the script not been altered. Bickle as a character would've had an even more odious discourse (and impact) surrounding him than he already does. I could imagine this being to white nationalist spree shooters what Apocalypse Now's Ride of the Valkyries sequence is to military recruitment. Marty dodged a fucking bullet there. Good call, even at the expense of muddling the racialized aspects of the film - it's the better call.
Alienating yourself from others stems from a lack of self respect and awareness of yourself, finding ways to self reflect and making the decisions to better yourself are completely up to you
Taxi Driver is my favorite movie of all time simply bc of the relevance I felt when I watched it. I watched it at a time in my life when Travis Bickle was literally me. I struggled talking to people especially women. To me Taxi Driver became my comfort movie where I didn't feel out of place and could relate. Now for me the movie is a warning about the dangers of loneliness. Travis' views on the world become skewed bc of his lack of sleep and all the things he saw. His frustration grew w his advances on him and correlated to his thoughts on society as a whole
But the last scene, the one with him looking at himself in his rearview mirror only to suddenly push it away shows that Travis was not reborn. He was still manic and was on a self destructive path which was also why he didn't take the opportunity to make a connection with Betsy at the end even though she was interested again. He still wanted to be a loner.
The reason why I relate to Travis bickle is because I attempted to assassinate a presidential candidate due to the girl I was going out with voted for him. Literally me
The lesson of taxi driver is don't drink hard booze, don't pop pills. The guy cannot sleep. so he is hallucinating. He has Sybil Shepard as a fare, he hallucinates dating here. He has the politician, so he hallucinates kill him. The shootout is a dream also. He may not be a veteran, but that may be do to bad writing. The movie "Hardcore" is considered the sequel to Taxi driver. a pimp gets killed at the end. I believe that Paul Scader had some issues from high school that he had to work out.
5:40 This is me. Literally me. No other character can come close to relating to me like this. There is no way you can convince me this is not me. This character could not possibly be anymore me. It's me, and nobody can convince me otherwise. If anyone approached me on the topic of this not possibly being me, then I immediately shut them down with overwhelming evidence that this character is me. This character is me, it is indisputable. Why anyone would try to argue that this character is not me is beyond me. If you held two pictures of me and this character side by side, you'd see no difference. I can safely look at this character every day and say "Yup, that's me". I can practically see this character every time I look at myself in the mirror. I go outside and people stop me to comment how similar I look and act to this character. I chuckle softly as I'm assured everyday this character is me in every way. I can smile each time I get out of bed every morning knowing that I've found my identity with this character and I know my place in this world. It's really quite funny how similar this character is to me, it's almost like we're identical twins. When I first saw this character, I had an existential crisis. What if this character was the real me and I was the fictional being. What if this character actual became aware of my existence? Did this character have the ability to become self aware itself?
"We have to make ourselves better before we make the world better". AKA clean your room before you get any grand ideas about saving the world (jordan peterson).
Something that should be noted is Travis’ crusade to save Iris is still out of his own personal ambition to be a hero and “make a change”, so as a result his goal is short sighted and he doesn’t think about the consequences. Yeah, he saved Iris from a brothel, but he just traumatized her by gunning down a bunch of men right in front of her. Notice how terrified she is of him when he kills all of those men. He may have been a hero, yes, but he probably just damaged Iris’ mental state even further. Instead of calling the cops or taking Iris away or killing the men while she was gone, he charged in like a superhero without considering the consequences.
He only killed those men because he failed to kill the politician and was pissy about it. His obsession with Iris is a way for him to cope with his obsession with Betsy. It was never because he wanted to save her from prostitution he just wanted her for himself like he wanted Betsy for herself. The whole point of the movie is that Travis is just as screwed up as the other screwed-up people he sees but deludes himself into a hero complex. Betsy calls him a "walking contradiction" which he is.
I always thought that the morale of the story was that Travis' change was only superficial. Because of his actions society chose to condone him as a hero, but inside he was still a delusional unstable man.
I've never seen this movie, but I've seen some videos analyzing it and explaining it. From what I've seen, I can relate to Travis with loneliness, barely talking, not being able to connect with anyone, and the built up rage. My rage did come to a boil in 2019, but it calmed down the next year. I've seen the ending of the movie and how Travis adjusts his mirror after seeing his eyes light up with rage. To me, that symbolizes the restarting of the cycle. I do think Travis could have Existential Loneliness because of what the movie showed of him and his feelings. I know I have some form of Loneliness but I don't know what kind. I do know I can relate to the character of Travis.
I watched Taxi Driver for the first time 2-3 years ago , and i think i watched it at the perfect moment of my life , i couldn't help but relate to Travis on a personal level (still do)
I like how you have an optimistic view of the ending of the movie, but I think Travis still hasn’t fixed himself. Travis saving Iris is definitely a better choice than killing Pallantine but I don’t think Travis is any better in the end- at least not for real. It seems like he has more violence in his future as his life is largely unchanged.
I personally like to think that Travis does die at the end of the movie with the camera pulling away as he bleeds out. The scene afterwords is his consciousness giving a last dream where he gets the girl and the world is better for his actions when in reality he had attacked another brothel and more than likely ended up on the newspaper for just that and not being a hero of any sort but in his mind he died as one so that’s what we see.
But he doesn’t get the girl? Betsy invites him into her world but he refuses, forcing himself to remain in his own fragmented reality. The scene at the very end where he catches his eyes in the windshield mirror and then quickly pushes it away is him refusing to face the truth about himself. Travis doesn’t change, he just repeats the cycle.
i like the idea of focusing on the things we can control (our behavior) rather than the things that are beyond our control ("the system") but i think we're still ignoring the fact that these two things are bound and inseparable. i think travis bickle has as much individual responsibility for his behavior as social structures do. could he have been mentally stable had there not been vietnam war? the fact that he was able to climb out of that abyss on his own, so to speak, was no easy feat. but the fact remains that there could be more travis bickles out there just like him with no one there to help them out from their own abyss. another thing is that there's nothing wrong with speaking out agaisnt systems that oppress us. i think using travis' plans of assassinating the politician as a stand-in for "crying out against systems" is a bit of an exaggeration and even a little misleading lol. honestly sounding kinda like jordan peterson when you said "we have to make our world better before we can make the whole world better". there's really no point in saying something like that, is what im trying to say. it's a reductive statement that doesn't amount to much other than making people feel bad for feeling bad about the status quo. idk loved the video, just some random thoughts i had, honestly have no idea what im saying lol bye
Reading your last 5 lines of text i gotta say you seemed to have missed the point. The thing with long lasting depression is you get sort of a Stockholm Syndrome with it. Where you wallow in feeling like shit because its the only thing you know. Thats why it takes such a long time to even realize you are depressed. And you lose faith in humanity, becoming imprisoned in your own mind. And you dont need to be a war veteran to become this way, any person who cant connect with people around you and is starved from basic validation and decency risks becoming this. So naturally anger forms towards the world around you, and dark thoughts and justifications becomes more frequent. We as a society shall work to make sure this doesnt happen, but when you get to that low point in life your whole focus must be to start accepting yourself and forgive yourself for the past.
@@Ulostdgame i get you, but what exactly from the last 5 lines made you think that i missed the point, im confused. i did hear what kino corner said about bickle's severe case of depression in that it makes him self-destructive --- im not arguing against that --- and i do think we have to self-realize despite our circumstances. but as mentioned by kino, travis was also suffering from alienation, which is partly due to his environment --- 70s new york, vietnam war, etc. etc. "you dont need to be a war veteran to become this way, any person who cant connect with people around you and is starved from basic validation and decency risks becoming this" -- you're right, but i was just using that as an example for a kind of systematic force that we have no control over. idk, what do you think?
@Chris O'halloran i agree! tho just to add: voilence is a symptom of the problem. as martin luther king jr. said, riots are the language of the unhead. this is not a justification but a sympathetic reaction, as mlk jr. himself condenms violence.
I'm not a huge fan of most of Hoffman's films, but having seen Straw Dogs, I do feel he could've played Travis Bickle. He's quite capable of playing a man whose mind is broken by life.
1. Cybill Shephard was fucking hot! 2. Scorsese had huge balls in the scene in back of the cab. 3. How exactly was Oliver stone tied into Paul Schrader's story? is it the Vietnam link??
This is kind of a meme at this point but when you mentioned being alone because if you don't have anyone it's easier to control your own life it was like you were reading my mind when I was at my lowest point, you hit the nail on the head.
Good luck if you actually do it. We need more people actually cleaning up the streets and getting rid of the scum instead of another school shooter. Putting out the anger on random kids will change nothing. Hit the people that deserve it.
Personally the way I view it is that he kills the pimps out of the same rage that he was going to kill palatine with. But after seeing the praise he received from society as a whole for his action, he realizes that most people in the society are fairly normal and good, and chooses to reintegrate himself.
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"He barely talks unless someone brings him into the conversation"
*Ok that's actually literally me*
th-cam.com/video/2FZ2AGo6Kec/w-d-xo.html
Literally we
Literally us
Not me I talk 2 any1 lol
Literally me , means you did the same as him not picking one point and saying your him
"Some won't even take Redditors. Don't make no difference to me."
Damn Travis, that speech hit different
"you know who lives in that apartment"
"a redditor"
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAA
This is a line from the script of "Uber Driver"
lmao
Redditors make up 13% of the population but commit over 50% of crimes
I feel like Rambo is being a little over looked as a “literally me” character. In the first movie, he’s an outcast, a drifter just trying to pass through a town harmlessly. A man who has limitless potential but is seen as an undesirable by society.
100%. I feel the sequels overshadow this unfortunately. First Blood fits this archetype. The only problem of course is that Rambo is a bit too perfect. He is supremely skilled, and despite his violence, it is only in self defense and never actually kills anyone. He is the "Mary Sue" of literally me characters. He is not flawed enough for the hall of fame I suppose.
@@tadpoledystopia2456 I agree that the following sequels completely got rid of his character development and traded it for a generic 80s action film. I personally would say Rambo may not be flawed physically, but socially he is. He doesn’t have interpersonal relationship skills, can’t hold down a job, doesn’t trust anyone, is haunted by his time in Vietnam and feels used and subsequently forgotten by the people who trained him and the people of the United States. Like most military personnel after getting out, you go from running multi million dollar equipment or in charge of hundreds of men, to a civilian job without the same meaning and sense of purpose. His monologue at the end of the movie really shows how much of a glass cannon he is.
@@maxrieker1591 Thats true. Good points.
@@tadpoledystopia2456 I mean look at the scene when he goes to visit his buddy only to learn that he dies. That’s pretty good demonstration of his social flaws with how awkward and arms length the interaction is with someone who he ought to be able to trust more than other people
@max rieker where’s your pfp from? I like it
This is me. Literally me. No other character can come close to relating to me like this. There is no way you can convince me this is not me. This character could not possibly be anymore me. It's me, and nobody can convince me otherwise. If anyone approached me on the topic of this not possibly being me, then I immediately shut them down with overwhelming evidence that this character is me. This character is me, it is indisputable. Why anyone would try to argue that this character is not me is beyond me. If you held two pictures of me and this character side by side, you'd see no difference. I can safely look at this character every day and say "Yup, that's me". I can practically see this character every time I look at myself in the mirror. I go outside and people stop me to comment how similar I look and act to this character. I chuckle softly as I'm assured everyday this character is me in every way. I can smile each time I get out of bed every morning knowing that I've found my identity with this character and I know my place in this world. It's really quite funny how similar this character is to me, it's almost like we're identical twins. When I first saw this character, I had an existential crisis. What if this character was the real me and I was the fictional being. What if this character actual became aware of my existence? Did this character have the ability to become self aware itself?
You're literally me
Travis would probably disagree…but then that’s you!
broh this guy is me
Get some mental help🥺😔
wish this was(n't) literally me
This is the most optimistic reading of Taxi Driver I've ever heard
Yeah, know it's an old comment but it feels like a weird takeaway based on the last scene and him clearly being back in the same spot he started in by the end of the movie.
I’ve always interpreted the ending way less positively. Travis is about to kill Palentine, but then he gets spotted with his gun and flees. It’s less him choosing a better path and more like him rolling the dice on who to let his anger out on. That’s why the ending is so dark. People are calling Travis a hero in the paper where in another universe he’s being called a monster because he executed a random politician to spite a girl that rejected him. How long is it gonna be until Travis needs to engage in violence again and who will he take it out on next time?
At least Travis took it out on people who deserved it. Travis is a good man, but a horrific war and and a life of isolation made him a broken shell of who he could be. Most people wouldn't commit the acts that he has, but we can definitely empathize with how he feels throughout the movie.
@@mrscruffles801 Travis is complicated. He definitely has the potential to be a good man. His instinct to help Iris was good and he did stop that robbery, but he also nearly killed an innocent person. Dude just needs help to work through his shit.
@@dally1398 Exactly right.
Hopefully more degenerates
@@anon2427 I saw an interesting take that Travis is a deconstruction of American film heroes like Clint Eastwood. For Clint we just see him murder bad guys effortlessly and spout one liners. For Travis we see him practice his draw and practice and fumble his “badass” lines in the mirror. When someone uses violence as an outlet there comes a concern. That concern is “what will this hero do when there are no more little girls to save?”
Travis bickle is the main man of loner cinema, the dude is literally a Vietnam War veteran, dude has practiced what to do under an attack, he's always planning, always getting organizized, that's why he's literally me
Organizized, nice reference
U mean organized?
@@peterparker7649 Idk, thimk about it
@tj No, because The Punisher actually had a nice life before becoming a miserable loner and The Punisher never talked about "washing the streets clean of it's filth" whenever he saw random people on the street. Travis Bickle would've been on The Punisher's hit list at one point, let's be real.
@@Saturnia2014 That’s true but same time I can see the similarities between the two, it’s more so the extremes to which they’d both take it.
The ending isn’t Travis becoming a better person or a productive member of society. He’s still a ticking time bomb underneath the facade of a hero. As he drives away from Betsy and looks in his rear view mirror, his reflection still shows the same old self deluded, self isolating, self sabotaging Travis. Even through all the events that take place he’s learned nothing.
That’s exactly my thoughts
Is that not what most heros are? A bomb that just got pointed in the right direction?
@@mrscruffles801 Travis isn’t a good person all of a sudden because he freed Iris. It’s a temporary win. His happiness in the moment is a facade, the hateful bitter Travis is still under the surface. I noticed in your video you didn’t show Travis dropping off Betsy. In that scene as the camera pans to Travis expression in the mirror, it’s the same hateful face we see in the beginning of the movie. The movie is a perfect circle. He’ll stay on this path until him being a ticking time bomb gets him killed eventually. I actually made a video essay on the movie myself and hopefully you can see where I’m coming from. The audio isn’t as good as yours though.
@@Jahvari215 I... I didn't make the video.
@@mrscruffles801 oh shit my bad bro
I believe if every 18 year old man was given an opportunity to watch this film, there’d be a bit less anger and a bit more understanding from younger men who experience social anxiety. It humanizes him at first but shows how dealing with issues in the wrong way can lead to absolute horror and destruction. Like the screenwriter Paul Schrader stated, he chooses loneliness as a coping mechanism.
He killed the bad guys Alex. That can be hardly described as absolute horror and destruction. Do you even read the papers?
@@Danefrak Apparently violence is only okay when the media approves it.
@@Danefrak Yeah, but it took him wanting to die and living in absolute existential agony before he did something with all that pent up hatred that luckily was good but he could as easily have gone and shot that politician and ruined everything. The point alex is trying to make is that you shouldn't let your mental sickness get to a point where violence is the only way out.
@@TheSpidersider I know I was just joking
@@Danefrak Ah, apologies for my absolute sperg moment then.
Fun fact: Scorsese wasn't originally supposed to be in the back of the taxi. The actor who was going to be in the scene was in a car accident earlier that day and marty stepped in
I think he also had to sit on many blanquets in order to appear on frame
@@prisma6799 if you look closely you can actually see the booster seat
if Taxi Driver took place today, i can imagine Travis posting his training progress on /fit/
He’d definitely be on /pol/
Rami Malek/Robert Pattinson as Travis Bickle
Lily James as Betsy
Julie Butters as Iris
Josh Safdie as Tom
Shea Wigham as Charles Palantine
Macon Blair as Wizard
Caleb Landry Jones as Sport
Benny Safdie as The Passenger
Directed by Safdie Brothers
She's not lonely, he projected his loneliness onto her. She has a life, hobbies, passion, and friends
you can have all that and still be lonely... believe me :c
The literally me story type really started in the 1800s with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's books, specifically Notes from the Underground and his magnum opus Crime and Punishment. These books are extremely relevant today and if you like these kinds of movies I highly recommend you to look into these. The roots of 'literally me'
I wrote a paper in college arguing that Taxi Driver is a sort of modern day retelling of Notes from Underground, there are striking similarities whether they were intended by Schrader or not
Definitely. Especially the sense of shallow superiority Raskolnikov and the Underground Man present.
Seconded!
He explores this archetype in White Nights, The Double, and The Meek One as well.
I love this. I couldnt help but notice how many similarities there are between Raskalnikov and several of the "literally me" loner characters.
YOOOOO LETS GO THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING
The taxi driver Netflix remake is gonna take place in L.A and it's gonna be called Uber Driver
Underrated comment
It's about a afghanistan veteran who takes his anger out on all the drugies
San Francisco should have plenty of street scenes of nastiness to film.
I’m incel, I’m groyper, I’m kek, I’m Patrick Bateman, I’m Ryan Gosling from Drive (2011) and the Place Beyond the Pines, I’m Joker, I’m Miles from Baby Driver, I’m Bruce Willis in Die Hard and Looper, I’m Travis Bickle. There is no voluntary or involuntary, the world just is
@A D well he admitted to being Jewish twice
Groyper damn now that's a surprise hahahaha
In your 20s I hope
"There is no voluntary or involuntary" then how are you an incel?
@@foodistzen who did?
"Some won't even take Redditors. Don't make no difference to me."
*Updated for a modern audience*
Great video Kino, you're one of my favorite filmtubers!
Travis didn't change is mind about killing Pallentine. He was found out and chased away by the Secret Service guys, so he redirected his rage at the pimps.
I first saw Taxi Driver way back in 2007 at the age of 17. Even all these years later, such a simple story about a lonely, angry young man somehow still feels so ambiguous and elusive. Like, it's one of those films that even though I've loved it for years, I still always feel like there are so many things I'm missing about it, huge gaps in my understanding of Travis Bickle and what drives him. Pretty fascinating, or I'm just really dumb.
I watched it when I was feeling lonesome and hated one night at 2 a.m. in 2019, I never forgot how much I related to it, I cried multiple times seeing bickle so miserable its like I was looking into a 70s mirror
No buddy your not dumb. That is why this is one of the most revered and analyzed films of all time. 👌
what bluecollar825 said.
Interesting to know that in the original scrip all the “villains” that Travis killed were black. I agree that the choice to change this was the right one, and the way that Travis’s racism is portrayed in the film is much more subtle but impactful. However also knowing that the screenwriter wrote this characters as “literally him” and chose to only kill black people in his version is an…interesting choice lol
Hmmm yes i wonder who was commiting the majority of violent inner city crime 🤔 surely it wouldnt be the same group of people doing it today! You confuse racism with reality
Exactly what I thought right after hearing that. Like Travis definitely isn't necessarily a progressive guy and the subtlety of his beliefs is really interesting, but specifically writing the race of all the criminals to be black seems less "Travis is racist" and more "the writer who put him there is racist"
@@pierce9870 You missed my point completely. The film shows us that Travis is at least somewhat racist. He is uncomfortable around black people. There are multiple shots of black people that are made to look menacing or creepy because thats how Travis views them. If you make a movie about him killing a bunch of black people after you show him acting this way all the other meaning gets lost because we are just watching a guy commit hate crimes for 2 hours. The writer went out of his way to specify that the criminals were black even though there race really doesn't matter to the plot. And if the writer feels like this character is him, it starts to get into the territory of some fucked up fantasy film rather then a look into the human psyche. Scorsese recognized this and made the change which I think saved the film
@@DonkeyBoyVids Exactly. I feel almost like the writer had mad Travis to be more straight forward. He was supposed to be the writer himself, and the script may have even been some kind of twisted power fantasy he made of how he would want to be seen as a hero if he actualy did shit like this. Scorcsese noticed this and made these changes to make the movie less straight forward and add a lot more depth to Travis.
@@MegaMac464 they were pimps you fn imbecile. The ones in the restaurant are pimps and the robber is a robber. His cabby colleague is blk and he doesn't look at him like that in the film.
When I heard that Joker was inspired by Taxi Driver, I checked out Taxi Driver first. It's definitely one of Scorsese's classics. Great review
Joker seems to be partly inspired by both taxi driver and another scorsese classic the king of comedy, if you haven't seen it I'd highly recommend it
When talkig about him being lonely almost on purpose I couldn´t help but remember the character of Rustion Cohle from True Detective i think he also fits the "Literally me" niche quite nicely. Great video man
Oh I’d love to see Cohle get added to the list of literally me characters. His arc is one of the most compelling things I’ve seen on TV.
My favorite character. But he is different from all the others. He is sadness. He’s more real.
The hand of god
Idk, killing child traffickers sounds pretty based...
Based AF
He only did it after his failed assassination attempt against a senator, after he got rejected by a woman who worked for him...
Whatever you say, incel edgelord.
I love this movie. And while Patrick Baleman is literally me, Travis might be me if I was born a generation earlier.
I relate 2 E.T. as I often hide in people's sheds n befriend children b4 getting caught by the government ;)
@@tonythetiger1600 i assume you also have a long and shiny finger
You read that opening monolog and I immediately thought "so this is what Maynard Keenan was going for with Aenima and that mohawk and aviators look"
Pretty sure that was 10000 days era but oh well
dude, I literally found your channel from the previous video not even an hour ago lol. I was wondering when the next taxi driver one would come out!
This is probably the only film I've seen where a training montage is a bad thing
the salo clip had me dying
Me too. So funny.
But if your date likes it then she is definitly the right person!
There is a political dimension to the film, too that adds to the complexity of this masterpiece. It's part of the "American paranoia" films of the 1970s, dealing with the feeling of exterior and interior crisis (most prominently among other events: Vietnam and Watergate) shattering the positive view on America those film makers grew up with (prominent titles include THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, THE CONVERSATION, FRENCH CONNECTION, APOCALYPSE NOW, PLATOON and the first RAMBO).
From this perspective, it is also a movie about a Vietnam vet, who's disillusion worsens back home when he sees that the supposed American values he was told to be defending in Vietnam don't seem to exist. He also cannot adapt to the life back home as there is no care/help for the vets coming home and a society that refuses to look at the consequences of the war and often rejects the Vietnam vets and their experience for they are a living reminder to the uncomfortable truths about the war (see also FIRST BLOOD for this part). The hate for Palentine is the hate for people who (in Bickle's eyes) talk about values, but don't mean it - like the politicians sending them to the war. Finally, Bickle finds something (someone) worth fighting for, but the only way he knows how to do that at this point is in the way the war has told him: with violence (again similar to John Rambo).
All this is not meant to contradict anything said in the video, it's just a try to add another layer.
"He didn't eat, but he did drink a lot...The event that put an end to his self-destructive lifestyle, the formation of an ulcer."
Literally me and a lot of college folks who are headed the same way who risked their guts for a destructive lifestyle. Schrader-sensei HAD to walk through it, too.
Notice how he looks himself in the eye at the very end of the movie and then quickly looks away from the mirror. He still doesn't like what he sees.
Shit bro. You’re gradually becoming one of my favourite film analysis TH-camrs. Keep it up dude. Looking forward to the next one.
I first saw this movie in the latter end of the 70s when I was in my late teens and saw it many, many times (it played in repertory theaters and midnight shows almost monthly in pre-video days) and played the soundtrack album often (which had tracks of Travis’s monologues included). As I got older, made friends, got married, this movie, as a powerful metaphor for loneliness and alienation,became a mirror of a very difficult past. It is a masterpiece and I admire the artistry of Scorsese, DeNiro, and Schrader (and love some of Schrader’s variations of the themes here: American Gigolo, Mishima, Light Sleeper) but revisiting this movie hurts, and I think that speaks to its power,
I watched The Room on a first date once. Her loss honestly. But yeah it probably wasn't a great choice. The more disturbing part, is she didn't see anything wrong with Lisa's actions. In retrospect in may be a good test of character...
😂😂😂
Hahaha, what a story Tadpole Dystopia!
thankyou for making a video about me 🙏, I'm truly honoured.
Taxi Driver is based on John Ford's The Searchers. Paul Schrader has explained this in interviews. In The Searchers, John Wayne is a veteran of the civil war and has to save a young girl who has been abducted by Indians. He's driven by hatred of the Indians more than concern for the girl as he tracks them down and this is revealed when he threatens to kill the girl when it becomes clear she doesn't want to be saved, the Indians having become her new family. He returns the girl to her parents, but the scene is ambivalent because we're unsure if she's actually happy about having been returned home.
So, is John Wayne the hero or the villain? That's the subversive subtext to the film. The western presents an idealized heroic masculinity, but Ford's film turns this on its head and suggests the hero and villain are actually reverse. In Schrader's script, it's the same confusion. Travis only becomes the hero who "saves" Iris because he failed to be the villain that assassinated Palantine.
To me Travis felt like he was wasting away after Vietnam and was desperate to do something that would make people remember him. That's why he was gunning for the politician but ran away once spotted. So he goes with option B, be a vigilante and go out in a Blaze of Glory instead. Then he survives and is left still feeling like nothing has changed.
I've seen all the literally me movies and I relate to Travis at my soul. I think any alienated man would.
No friends, no family. Just existing and wanting things to be different but feeling powerless to cause that change.
I still try, but it is hard to not just quit.
This channel is a diamond in the rough! Hope you blow up soon man. Excellent work
Yeah, I hope the explosion doesn't hurt any innocent people though.
IDK I did not at all feel that his attack on brothel was in any way path of creation. His attempt to assassinate Palantine has failed not because he changed his mind, but because bodyguards spotted him. But he still wants to "go and really do something". So he turns to last he has going for him - Iris and her abusers. He doesn't really care what is he going to do. I think he just wants to make some, ANY impact on this world.
When Travis comes to the brothel after failed assassination, first thing he does is trying to have a friendly conversation with Sport. But when he doesn't recognize him, he gets pissed off. I'm not sure if he had an intention to kill everyone there up until that point. I think that shows that Travis just wants some connection, as does his attempt to have a conversation with bodyguard at the first Palantine's demonstration.
I also don't think he ever admired Palantine before deciding to kill him. He always says he's "Not interested in political matters" and everything he ever has to say when he's asked about the senator is "I hope he wins" - the most generic shit you say when you don't really care. I think Travis picks him as a target just because he's important and he knows him because of Betsy, that's it. And also he probably did not like that "I learned more about America from driving in taxy cabs than all the limos in the country" bullshit.
And about that last sequence, after the masacre at the brothel, where they show a letter from Iris' parents. I think it's all Travis' hallucination or imagination or something he expected whould happen after he 'freed' Iris. But I don't think that's how it would play out in the real world. Even though Iris' parents might have seen him as a hero of sorts, I think court would have different opinion on that. If I remember correctly, you cant go around killing pimps, even if they are criminals. He would probably go straight to prison, if he survived that night at all. What I find interesting is that in that final scene Travis is happily talking to cabees, from whom he only hears "dumbest things he's ever heard", Betsy, that he concluded was "just like the others", acknowledges him, newspapers are calling him a hero. And he likes it. To me that showed that all his righteous anger towards the 'filth' of the city isn't as fundamental to him and he doesn't mind it. As long as he is being accepted.
Taxi Driver is still so much better than Joker.
The two movies have barley anything in common.
@@mrscruffles801 Well I mean Taxi Driver was the primary source of inspiration for Joker, with the latter having numerous direct allusions to it and being a literal homage, so...
@@TH3F4LC0Nx I guess. Taxi Driver is untouchable no matter what.
Missed the point of this video essay and took the movie message literally. I'm taking justice into my own hands, see you fellas on the headlines.
What I find interesting is just how close Bickle's fate was from being a villain rather than a hero. The town praised him for saving Iris, but if he carried out his assassination plan, he would be seen as a monster.
This is one of the only film channels that are worth watching
Literally me is basically the cinema version of TikTok's Empaths.
I still don't know if i should be worried or laughing that so many say Travis is literally them.
ikr?
If they truly understand the movie and the point of the character, then you should be beyond horrified. But, luckily most people are too stupid nowadays to get the actual point and more see the character as the cool aesthetic of a lonely guy who is also a hero.
@@liamshope2838 Yeah you probably would be one of those people who see Marx and Stalin as heroes
@@edwinve4112 The you talking about friend?
@@edwinve4112 The hell you talking about friend?
I think you're totally right about Bickle being self-destructive, yet I always thought him taking Betsy to a porno was just a result of his social inabilities; but perhaps he was purposely and/or subconsciously sabotaging the relationship - as you stated. After watching it a couple times, I began to find that a lot of Travis's inner-turmoil is bred by a lack of purpose. Although he has his job as a taxi driver, he states that the days seem to blend together "each one indistinguishable from the next," and as a result tries implanting purpose where there isn't or shouldn't be. This is especially apparent when he proclaims himself to be "God's lonely man," thus characterizing his isolation as the will of Providence and thus out of his control. I think your interpretation compliments this scene very well, as you state that Travis finally chooses to change something he can control. Great video man!
He didn’t reintegrate at all. You can see it in his eyes at the end of the movie
Thank God there are sigma male reviewers out there, was getting tired or the "toxic masculinity" readings typical of film normies, travis may not be a hero, but gave the first steps to become a real human being.
Dude seek therapy if you actually relate to people like Travis, don't fall down this anti-SJW rabbit hole. I promise you toxic masculinity is very real along with a LOT of other intersecting systems that contribute to people ending up like this.
@@Sharingthepain43 Sneed
@@Sharingthepain43 agreed but also he's literally me
@@Sharingthepain43 Get help? You mean like Arthur Fleck did?
Agreed, I hate that people just don't seem to understand how is it to be a social reject and expect us to have some sort of empathy with the people that have rejected us and treated us like shit or like a fucking animal, I've always been a lonely person since I'm physically deformed, I've never had too much friends and the ones I had just leave, when I see characters like Travis I just cannot stop myself from relating to him
When I was younger and I would have a mental breakdown, I would shave my hair into a mohawk. Even before I saw this and it became one of my favorite films
I really enjoyed your input, especially on the mental health stuff. I think I haven't seen a single video talking about Literally Me™ characters and saying "hey, you have a choice not to be like Travis." he himself is a walking contradiction for the majority of the film. Like how he says he'll work any time with anyone. And then does nothing but complain about the seediness of the city. He made that choice. I think you were right about depression and wanting to steep in it.
Great video Kino!
I think it’s something not talked about much and honestly this take probably helps the loneliness more than anyone just screaming about how toxic Travis is.
Well what's he supposed to do? If he leaves new york, he won't be able to get a cab job unless it's in an equally seedy city like LA or Chicago. He's pretty much stuck in the muck.
@@mrscruffles801 not shoot and kill people lol although he does the best of a bad path.
@@MarkAfterDark Hey, he saved a child from monsters who were selling her for money. If you're gonna have violent tendencies, use them for good.
@@mrscruffles801 agreed
i love when the taximan said "im the taxi driver" and drived all over the bad guys, one of the moments of all time
I’ve always seen travis as a cautionary tale more than literally me trope. Yeah there’s similarities between him and lonely dudes but he goes about it in the wrong way. It’s one of my favourite movies because I relate to travois’s loneliness until the cinema date with Betsy then it becomes a character study of spiralling self destruction
Travis Bickel isn’t literally me. But I can definitely see a bit of myself in him, and I can imagine a lot of other depressive introverts like me can too. I think that’s what I like the most about Taxi Driver; it’s not just a film, it’s a warning
I mean, I think this film just makes it all the more clear how important mental health is. How being disconnected from everything makes us rot.
If the brothel operators were originally black, was Iris still written as white? Think of a cross-section of white Americans in the 1970's - how do you think THAT would've landed with them?
Sure, it was changed to make race not be Bickle's most overt motivators (there's obviously still a racialized undercurrent inherent to the film, to Bickle's sense of suspicion, etc) - but along with this, make him LESS likable by the white cross-section of Americans I mentioned.
As tolerant as they might seem on the street, in the day-to-day, the white citizen of 1970's New York is likely to feel strongly opposed to racial mixing, I have family members who meet the criteria, friends, co-workers, and the 21st Century has done little to moderate their sentiments.
My point is - holy shit, this movie would've had a MUCH different reception and legacy had the script not been altered. Bickle as a character would've had an even more odious discourse (and impact) surrounding him than he already does. I could imagine this being to white nationalist spree shooters what Apocalypse Now's Ride of the Valkyries sequence is to military recruitment.
Marty dodged a fucking bullet there. Good call, even at the expense of muddling the racialized aspects of the film - it's the better call.
Alienating yourself from others stems from a lack of self respect and awareness of yourself, finding ways to self reflect and making the decisions to better yourself are completely up to you
This movie is a pure masterpiece/ classic perfect/accurate analysis of this movie.
Swap out the Taxi for UberEats, and yep...Travis is literally me.
8:20 I didn't think salo could make anyone laugh but you got me with that one!
I relate to Travis Bickle so much
Taxi Driver is my favorite movie of all time simply bc of the relevance I felt when I watched it. I watched it at a time in my life when Travis Bickle was literally me. I struggled talking to people especially women. To me Taxi Driver became my comfort movie where I didn't feel out of place and could relate. Now for me the movie is a warning about the dangers of loneliness. Travis' views on the world become skewed bc of his lack of sleep and all the things he saw. His frustration grew w his advances on him and correlated to his thoughts on society as a whole
I saw this film recently. It's honestly amazing. Personally, I'd be interested in seeing you do a video on Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice next
But the last scene, the one with him looking at himself in his rearview mirror only to suddenly push it away shows that Travis was not reborn. He was still manic and was on a self destructive path which was also why he didn't take the opportunity to make a connection with Betsy at the end even though she was interested again. He still wanted to be a loner.
The reason why I relate to Travis bickle is because I attempted to assassinate a presidential candidate due to the girl I was going out with voted for him. Literally me
Lmao based
My favorite movie of all time. I think I've watched it over 10 times at this point.
The lesson of taxi driver is don't drink hard booze, don't pop pills. The guy cannot sleep. so he is hallucinating. He has Sybil Shepard as a fare, he hallucinates dating here. He has the politician, so he hallucinates kill him. The shootout is a dream also. He may not be a veteran, but that may be do to bad writing.
The movie "Hardcore" is considered the sequel to Taxi driver. a pimp gets killed at the end. I believe that Paul Scader had some issues from high school that he had to work out.
“And it was all a dream…” I don’t think so
Watching Salo with a date is literally me. One time I showed it to a group of friends and served them all chocolate ice cream.
5:40 This is me. Literally me. No other character can come close to relating to me like this. There is no way you can convince me this is not me. This character could not possibly be anymore me. It's me, and nobody can convince me otherwise. If anyone approached me on the topic of this not possibly being me, then I immediately shut them down with overwhelming evidence that this character is me. This character is me, it is indisputable. Why anyone would try to argue that this character is not me is beyond me. If you held two pictures of me and this character side by side, you'd see no difference. I can safely look at this character every day and say "Yup, that's me". I can practically see this character every time I look at myself in the mirror. I go outside and people stop me to comment how similar I look and act to this character. I chuckle softly as I'm assured everyday this character is me in every way. I can smile each time I get out of bed every morning knowing that I've found my identity with this character and I know my place in this world. It's really quite funny how similar this character is to me, it's almost like we're identical twins. When I first saw this character, I had an existential crisis. What if this character was the real me and I was the fictional being. What if this character actual became aware of my existence? Did this character have the ability to become self aware itself?
"We have to make ourselves better before we make the world better".
AKA clean your room before you get any grand ideas about saving the world (jordan peterson).
The days go on and they never end. I'm gods lonely, man.
Something that should be noted is Travis’ crusade to save Iris is still out of his own personal ambition to be a hero and “make a change”, so as a result his goal is short sighted and he doesn’t think about the consequences. Yeah, he saved Iris from a brothel, but he just traumatized her by gunning down a bunch of men right in front of her. Notice how terrified she is of him when he kills all of those men. He may have been a hero, yes, but he probably just damaged Iris’ mental state even further. Instead of calling the cops or taking Iris away or killing the men while she was gone, he charged in like a superhero without considering the consequences.
He only killed those men because he failed to kill the politician and was pissy about it. His obsession with Iris is a way for him to cope with his obsession with Betsy. It was never because he wanted to save her from prostitution he just wanted her for himself like he wanted Betsy for herself. The whole point of the movie is that Travis is just as screwed up as the other screwed-up people he sees but deludes himself into a hero complex. Betsy calls him a "walking contradiction" which he is.
The fact that out of the 9 movies I've purchased on this platform, 7 of them are literally me movies, is a bit concerning to me lol.
I always thought that the morale of the story was that Travis' change was only superficial. Because of his actions society chose to condone him as a hero, but inside he was still a delusional unstable man.
I've never seen this movie, but I've seen some videos analyzing it and explaining it. From what I've seen, I can relate to Travis with loneliness, barely talking, not being able to connect with anyone, and the built up rage. My rage did come to a boil in 2019, but it calmed down the next year. I've seen the ending of the movie and how Travis adjusts his mirror after seeing his eyes light up with rage. To me, that symbolizes the restarting of the cycle. I do think Travis could have Existential Loneliness because of what the movie showed of him and his feelings. I know I have some form of Loneliness but I don't know what kind. I do know I can relate to the character of Travis.
Suffering with depression, I always say that I'm at my happiest when I'm miserable.
Being happy is great. It's the comedown that isn't.
I watched Taxi Driver for the first time 2-3 years ago , and i think i watched it at the perfect moment of my life , i couldn't help but relate to Travis on a personal level (still do)
I like how you have an optimistic view of the ending of the movie, but I think Travis still hasn’t fixed himself. Travis saving Iris is definitely a better choice than killing Pallantine but I don’t think Travis is any better in the end- at least not for real. It seems like he has more violence in his future as his life is largely unchanged.
I personally like to think that Travis does die at the end of the movie with the camera pulling away as he bleeds out. The scene afterwords is his consciousness giving a last dream where he gets the girl and the world is better for his actions when in reality he had attacked another brothel and more than likely ended up on the newspaper for just that and not being a hero of any sort but in his mind he died as one so that’s what we see.
But he doesn’t get the girl? Betsy invites him into her world but he refuses, forcing himself to remain in his own fragmented reality. The scene at the very end where he catches his eyes in the windshield mirror and then quickly pushes it away is him refusing to face the truth about himself. Travis doesn’t change, he just repeats the cycle.
We’ve all been up late one time at 3 in the morning staring in the mirror, feeling the relation to Travis.
He is based off of the person I am named after. He literally is me
SHOUT OUT TO MY MAN ARTHUR BREMER FOR INSPIRING THE CHARACTER OF TRAVIS BICKLE AKA LITERALLY ME!!!!
This is genuinely a movie written about my life
Wow, this video is literally me.
No seriously, I watch mostly analysis content on youtube because it's literally me.
Oh hi Digi
How's life
I thought the camera panning to the right when he is on the phone is to say that even the camera is embarrassed for him.
Inserting 120 days of sodom was epic
i like the idea of focusing on the things we can control (our behavior) rather than the things that are beyond our control ("the system") but i think we're still ignoring the fact that these two things are bound and inseparable. i think travis bickle has as much individual responsibility for his behavior as social structures do. could he have been mentally stable had there not been vietnam war? the fact that he was able to climb out of that abyss on his own, so to speak, was no easy feat. but the fact remains that there could be more travis bickles out there just like him with no one there to help them out from their own abyss.
another thing is that there's nothing wrong with speaking out agaisnt systems that oppress us. i think using travis' plans of assassinating the politician as a stand-in for "crying out against systems" is a bit of an exaggeration and even a little misleading lol. honestly sounding kinda like jordan peterson when you said "we have to make our world better before we can make the whole world better". there's really no point in saying something like that, is what im trying to say. it's a reductive statement that doesn't amount to much other than making people feel bad for feeling bad about the status quo. idk loved the video, just some random thoughts i had, honestly have no idea what im saying lol bye
Reading your last 5 lines of text i gotta say you seemed to have missed the point.
The thing with long lasting depression is you get sort of a Stockholm Syndrome with it.
Where you wallow in feeling like shit because its the only thing you know.
Thats why it takes such a long time to even realize you are depressed.
And you lose faith in humanity, becoming imprisoned in your own mind.
And you dont need to be a war veteran to become this way, any person who cant connect with people around you and is starved from basic validation and decency risks becoming this.
So naturally anger forms towards the world around you, and dark thoughts and justifications becomes more frequent.
We as a society shall work to make sure this doesnt happen, but when you get to that low point in life your whole focus must be to start accepting yourself and forgive yourself for the past.
@@Ulostdgame i get you, but what exactly from the last 5 lines made you think that i missed the point, im confused. i did hear what kino corner said about bickle's severe case of depression in that it makes him self-destructive --- im not arguing against that --- and i do think we have to self-realize despite our circumstances. but as mentioned by kino, travis was also suffering from alienation, which is partly due to his environment --- 70s new york, vietnam war, etc. etc.
"you dont need to be a war veteran to become this way, any person who cant connect with people around you and is starved from basic validation and decency risks becoming this" -- you're right, but i was just using that as an example for a kind of systematic force that we have no control over. idk, what do you think?
This is something I've always thought.
@Chris O'halloran i agree! tho just to add: voilence is a symptom of the problem. as martin luther king jr. said, riots are the language of the unhead. this is not a justification but a sympathetic reaction, as mlk jr. himself condenms violence.
Your jacket in this rocks and I will roam the ends of the earth to find one like it
I wouldn't take Redditors.
I'm not a huge fan of most of Hoffman's films, but having seen Straw Dogs, I do feel he could've played Travis Bickle. He's quite capable of playing a man whose mind is broken by life.
"It's drivin time!"
And he taxid all over them.
1. Cybill Shephard was fucking hot!
2. Scorsese had huge balls in the scene in back of the cab.
3. How exactly was Oliver stone tied into Paul Schrader's story? is it the Vietnam link??
This is kind of a meme at this point but when you mentioned being alone because if you don't have anyone it's easier to control your own life it was like you were reading my mind when I was at my lowest point, you hit the nail on the head.
I feel like my life has come to a much too early stand-still, I'm going to attack a brothel in my city.
Good luck if you actually do it. We need more people actually cleaning up the streets and getting rid of the scum instead of another school shooter. Putting out the anger on random kids will change nothing. Hit the people that deserve it.
My life is no longer at a standstill, and I didn't have to attack a brothel to get it moving again.
Personally the way I view it is that he kills the pimps out of the same rage that he was going to kill palatine with. But after seeing the praise he received from society as a whole for his action, he realizes that most people in the society are fairly normal and good, and chooses to reintegrate himself.
And the world was a little bit better after the shootout.
this, joker, and american psycho take place all exactly 5 years after eachother
I feel like Travis was on the verge of friendship with wizard but held back
That Salo scene is the first time I've laughed out loud to a TH-cam video in a long time. Thanks
To rainy, south congress, i take Em To round rock 😂😂😂😂😂😂
I really like this interpretation; you did a good job!
It would of been even more realistic if they would have kept the original planned characters.