This essay will contain spoilers from here on. It makes sense. And both are models for the kind of story Phillips is paying homage to in his retro gloss on the tried-and-true Joker myth: hard psychological portraits in which, as in Taxi Driver in particular, the central antihero is as much a product of his environment as he is a deranged aberration from it.
The strange thing is how hard it is to imagine this Joker metastasizing an equal but opposite hero in the form of Batman, even as Phillips peppers the film with indications that this will be so.
But where does this Joker go from here? He has no game, no hijinks, only traumas and ugly feelings. The movie fills in the black hole of his origin—something usually left mysterious—with a story. He was an abused child whose mother is also mentally ill. He gets bullied seemingly wherever he goes and no matter what he does; one woman even scolds him for trying to make her child laugh.
His angst is overwhelming. The movie rightly grants him membership in a vulnerable political class, as anyone with a disability, or anyone beholden to the bureaucratic contingencies of social services, surely is.
If your theory is that a film like this might prove dangerous, the associations between Joker and Taxi Driver —thus potentially between Joker and Hinckley—prove no comfort. I was in middle school when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine High School shooters, opened fire on their classmates and teachers, killing 14 people, including themselves, and injuring 21 more. Despite evidence to the contrary. Despite the obvious irony that though video games are a worldwide phenomenon, mass shootings are a disease practically endemic to the United States.
I saw Joker —another worldwide phenomenon—twice. But what mostly struck me both times was how rotely, how condescendingly, the movie animates the tortured soul at its center. This is a movie that knows how far it can get by appearing to be serious and wears this as a badge of distinction.
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Non-necessary Non-necessary. He is so lonely that when he asks, "Who you talkin' to? This utter aloneness is at the center of "Taxi Driver," one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes.
We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are better at dealing with it. Martin Scorsese's film re-released in theaters and on video in in a restored color print, with a stereophonic version of the Bernard Herrmann score is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis' underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger.
It is a widely known item of cinematic lore that Paul Schrader's screenplay for "Taxi Driver" was inspired by " The Searchers ," John Ford's film. In both films, the heroes grow obsessed with "rescuing" women who may not, in fact, want to be rescued. They are like the proverbial Boy Scout who helps the little old lady across the street whether or not she wants to go. The thought of Debbie in the arms of an Indian grinds away at him. When he finally finds her, she tells him the Indians are her people now, and runs away.
Wayne then plans to kill the girl, for the crime of having become a "squaw. The dynamic here is that Wayne has forgiven his niece, after having participated in the killing of the people who, for 15 years or so, had been her family. As the movie ends, the niece is reunited with her surviving biological family, and the last shot shows Wayne silhouetted in a doorway, drawn once again to the wide open spaces. There is, significantly, no scene showing us how the niece feels about what has happened to her.
Sport wears an Indian headband. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored. The buried message of both films is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices.
In "Taxi Driver," this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong. Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized Cybill Shepherd , from the Palatine campaign.
That goes wrong with the goofy idea of a date at a porno movie. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine.
The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film.
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