Usually when I am assigned to watch a movie, read a book, or do anything that is assigned, I automatically assume that it has to be boring. As I sat waiting for “Taxi Driver” to download onto my iTunes, I gathered a bunch of snacks and a coffee cup filled to the brim with caffeine galore, but to my amazement, I didn’t even need it. To be honest, I’m not gonna say that this movie was the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life because it really wasn’t and I wasn’t completely and totally in love with it, but it kept me awake on a Thursday night while I was home alone and for that, it must be pretty good.
“Taxi Driver,” directed by Michael Scorsese, is about a war veteran named Travis who seems to be dissatisfied with his life and he wants to be able to make a difference. In the beginning of the movie, there were arguably some scenes that could have been cut out, but if they were I think it would have taken away from the simplicity and lonesomeness of Travis’s life. The director wanted us to see that Travis was an ordinary man, just a taxi driver, who wanted more out of his life. He wanted to be loved, to make a difference, to change the city in which he lived in, and to stand out. Travis opened his heart up to Betsy, but since he is just the taxi driver, he didn’t fit in to her overly wealthy lifestyle with glitz and glam. Travis is a part of the city; the drab life of the city. When he goes to Betsy he tries to change himself for her by dressing nicely with what is probably his only red blazer, but he still stood out like a sore thumb; similar to the way Betsy stood out in the scene at the porno movie theater.
Travis was unable to find love in the city and although this angered him, instead of sitting back and letting this heartbreak get the best of him, he stood up strong and was determined to do something else. He worked out every day, bought guns, and worked toward his goal of getting rid of the “scumbags,” the men (pimps) who encouraged prostitution rings. During these times, the cops didn’t really care about prostitution, and they might have been engaging in it themselves. At first, Travis tried talking to Iris to make her leave her pimp, but after she didn’t listen, he knew he had to take it into his own hands. Travis went from being the ordinary taxi driver, to someone who can be called a hero for what he did.
However, the idea of a hero can be taken very differently according to the people who are judging. After reading Adam Rapp’s play, “The Metal Children,” I was a little disturbed, but no matter how disturbing the content is, I couldn’t put the play down and I ended up finishing it in less than an hour. Adam Rapp’s contemporary style of writing along with his interesting plot and choice of characters, made me want to read more of his plays. In “The Metal Children,” his protagonist, Tobin is in a tough situation.
Like Travis, Tobin is lonely and mentally unstable after losing his wife and his drowning career. He has experienced losing someone who he loves, like Travis, but instead of making the best of it, he does something completely different than Travis. He doesn’t watch his health or try to be active, but instead he sits around, gaining weight and letting his apartment look like one of those on the new TLC series, “Hoarding.” When a town in PA blows up over one of his so-called “young adult” books, Tobin shows no emotion. He doesn’t feel bad about it, he doesn’t even care at all and he needs to be pushed by his assistant to go to the town’s meeting about the book.
Unlike Travis who is very passionate about problems in his city, Tobin is way more apathetic, even to the dozens of girls running around getting pregnant because of his book. Although this epidemic really isn’t his fault at all, he just wrote the book while he was depressed and high, he still became a part of it once he had sex with Vera. (I’m sure Travis wouldn’t approve of this). Tobin takes a much more different approach when it comes to his mental unstability. He is much more dependent on outside help from his assistant who pushes and encourages him, in contrast to Travis who is dependent upon himself.
However active Travis may be and however passive Tobin may be, they were both lost souls who needed something to get them back on track, or for Travis, on to a different track. Travis goes against established authority, the cops, because he realizes that if he reports the child prostitution situation to them, they would still sit on their asses and not do much about it. On the other hand, Tobin doesn’t really care about what the established authority, the school officials and church members, has to say about his book. After several passionate speeches about his book, Tobin walks up to the plate and in the most apathetic tone ever says that he wrote the book while he was high and therefore it didn’t mean anything more than that to him. Tobin really doesn’t care what the officials have to say about him or his book because the sayings are all personal opinions of what they got out of a piece of art, that unintentionally caused trouble amongst the town people.
All in all I really enjoyed watching “Taxi Driver” and reading “The Metal Children.” It’s obvious that good art has no boundaries and I don’t think that any established authority has the right to judge what is inappropriate versus what is appropriate because art can be perceived in many different ways.
NYTimes Arts