Taxi Driver (1976)

USA
directed by: Martin Scorsese
written by: Paul Schrader
starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
comment: 27th November, 2017

I have a suspicion that almost every essential film of the New Hollywood movement gives me absolutely nothing. Taxi Driver is just another nail in the coffin, confirming my words. I learned about it in film school, I read how this is ground-breaking and that is raw and everything is career-defining and all, but when I'm watching it, I just don't see what is it about and what is going on, plain and simple, I don't see it.

I learn nothing about the protagonist and he goes through everything without any change at all. He doesn't get wiser, he doesn't get stronger, he doesn't cure himself, he doesn't find a connection with the world outside his head, he doesn't go really bonkers, he doesn't die. Nothing. Jodie Foster's character (and that goes for Cybill Shepherd as well) is present so little on screen that I wander why do people even mention her when talking about the film's reputation. Well yes, it's her life that changes the most because of the events of the film, but it happens off screen and we only hear an unreliable emotionless voice describe it in a letter. I don't understand this film.