What really is the difference between a movie and play? Both have a text. Both have themes, symbols, and characters. Both have specific scenes and imagery. I will sometimes watch a movie and analyze it as though it were a book, by paying attention to little nuances or to specific language. To quote Vera, from “The Metal Children,” as she so wonderfully paraphrases Shakespeare, “…storytelling’s function, whether is be spoken by the mouths of actors on a stage or discovered in the pages of books, is not to simply entertain…but… to help us understand the complexity and confounding realities of what it means to be human.” Whether it be through writing a play, directing a movie, or acting in one, Adam Rapp, Martin Scorsese, and Robert de Niro each embody this notion of telling a story in order to shed light on the intricacies of reality and the complexities of man.
These ideas are really what make “The Metal Children” and “Taxi Driver” each so raw and filled with reality. Normally in a movie or play, there will be this ideal hero, with all the characteristic, heroic qualities. Shiny hair, great body, gets all the girls, basically a Greek god. What I found interesting about these works is that each of their stories center around a fallible character. In the “Metal Children,” I see Tobin’s main flaw to be his passivity as a person. His wife left him and he just mopes around instead of getting his life back together. He has a book due to be written; yet he is unable to write it by his deadline because his is completely paralyzed from his own despair. His aggressive manager is merely used as a foil to highlight Tobin’s own passivity. All these things build up to the moment he visits Midlothia, the town that wants to ban his book. Yet, the moment he gets there, instead of having some classic epiphany and becoming a hero, he is, shocker, still passive. He does essentially nothing when he is vandalized and has the same reaction when he gets beat up one night. His response to the authority of this town is no different. He does not make any extra effort to stand up to them. He just does what he came to do. Speak about his book. As a writer all the action is up in Tobin’s head, never materialized.
Even though on the outset they may seem like completely different characters, I think Tobin and Travis are actually really similar. The beginning of the movie Travis says in a voice over that he wanted to drive a cab because he wanted long hours. The fact that he just sits in his cab and drives around all days makes him extremely passive. In his taxi he is a people watcher. When people come in, he does not interact with the people he picks up. The most his does is look in his mirror.
Unlike Tobin, Travis has a rough interior that begins to germinate into something more as the movie progresses. He argues with Betsy’s campaign friend after she dumps him. And he boldly tries to get the 12-year-old prostitute, played by Jodie Foster, to flee her predicament. Unlike Tobin, Travis wishes to emerge from his own shadows and be noticed.
The theme of society vs. individual, of being a loner vs. part of a community, is what unites “Taxi Driver” and “The Metal Children” the most. Both characters are loners in their own right. Each one separated from their immediate surroundings. The Beginning scenes in “Taxi Driver” perfectly depict Travis as a loner. Walking the empty streets on his own, living alone, Travis is isolated. The audience can feel this by the way the camera is always inside the cab. Travis is stuck in his own world.
Tobin also is trapped. The part of the play that depicts his daily life only takes place in his apartment. To me, there is no better isolation that being constantly homebound. Travis though, ends up taking action. His practice in front of his mirror actually comes to fruition. Tobin’s last action in the play is crying alone in his apartment.
Normally this would be the end of my blog, but last night I watched a really great movie called “A Single Man,” directed by designer Tom Ford. It was really interesting because he used eyes in his film similar to the way Scorsese uses eyes in “Taxi Driver”. He always narrows in on people’s eyes and when the main character is in the car, Ford focuses on his eyes in the mirror, just like Scorsese does with Travis.
Something else to note, is that I felt a similar pain and excitement about Colin Firth’s performance in “A Single Man,” that I felt while watching de Niro in “Taxi Driver.” When an actor makes his character seem so real, so raw, so fallible, I feel it much deeper than I do with a typical acting performance. These kinds of performances make me want to act myself. They make actors seem like they understand something more about living and about man’s existence.
