Travis has three dimensions, all of which come with their own perspective and opinion in helping to judge his character as well as attribute a unique aspect to the ending of the film. The first dimension considers Travis as a man of no action, only spectatorship and voyeurism; a watcher. His loneliness and alienation result from his inability to communicate. He is mostly silent, and when he speaks, he angers others or is unable to express himself. Travis’ loneliness is characterized extremely well through the cab’s physical construction. It’s confining, it still divides him from those who also enter it and everyone he meets is first seen as an image through a window, rear-view mirror, or TV screen.
During a crucial moment in which Travis exhibits loneliness and an element of pathetic passiveness is when he’s on the telephone with Betsy trying to get her to see him again and possibly have dinner. The way in which he speaks and tries not to step on Betsy’s words shows his consideration for her and there certainly is positive value in this but ultimately this quality is overshadowed by his failure to get her to agree to meet him. The scene ends up coming off as dismal and embarrassing. As a result, in the middle of the conversation the camera performs a special move, in which it tracks slowly to the right until it leaves the wall Travis is leaning on and takes focus toward the end of a long hallway with an open door to the street. The shot holds on this hallway for a full ten still seconds before Travis enters the frame again and leaves through the doorway. In this case the camera embodies a compulsion so strong that it interrupts and leaves Travis’s side in order to either escape his embarrassing situation or provide the character with privacy as a courtesy. It even conflicts with his nature to not take action so bad that the camera itself took action on its own. Either way this shot has a strange power granted to it that appears yet again later on. Its Travis’s loneliness and frustration however, which lead him to become a man of action in the most extreme form by the end of the movie. This dimension allows us to see an aspect in the ending as a personal triumph or change more so than a questioning of morality and right or wrong. That is, if you really think Travis changes in the end but hold on, we’ll get there.
The second dimension of Travis allows us to see the ending as heroic and honorable. A brave man stands up in a world lonely and disconnected to save a girl he doesn’t know from a life of prostitution in an attempt to do justice for all. There’s no question a part of Travis’s mind really believed he was doing the right thing. The camera in this section of the film initiates its strange separatist panning power again, this time with different purposes. In this scene we hear the thank you letter from Iris’s parents while the camera slowly pans through Travis’s apartment. We only know its Travis’s place from the familiar paint color and exposed brick but never the less the camera closes in toward the wall and rises to reveal several newspaper clippings. As we slowly pan right each clipping depicts a admirable statement positioning Travis as the good guy, “Taxi Driver Battles Gangsters,” “Parents Express Shock, Gratitude,” “Reputed New York Mafioso Killed in Bizarre Shooting,” and finally “Taxi Driver Hero to Recover.” All of these are posted like trophies with praise. Each clipping also glides into the frame in a specific order. Each headline serves as an increment of time, as well as the movement from left to right. First the event, then reactions from those closely involved, then police investigation results and finally recovery status of the hero after the event. Lastly, and what would physically get to Travis last, is the thank you letter all the while being read by Iris’s humbled father. The motions of this camera pan are thoroughly justified by the actions of left to right when concerning a timeline as well as the direction in which we read. The purpose of this pan allows us to jump forward in time through the highlights of the news in order to present us with the aftermath much later in which Travis speaks with Betsy one last time. Seen in this positive light we get a sense that Travis was indeed a hero and the film’s overall message becomes adjusted to produce this aspect of his character. However there is also a dark side to Travis’s motives twisting the ending into something completely different.
The third dimension of Travis highlights the madness, vengeance and desire for redemption within the same ending sequence. In preparation for the murderous rampage Travis shaves his head into a Mohawk to tribute the savage nature associated with Indians before a raid or rampage. During the shooting, after Travis blows a hole in the Mafioso’s head, he tries to shoot himself but runs out of bullets and so he sits down. Cops show up and as the policeman stares into Travis’s eyes we get a crazed smile and a hand gesture shaped like a pistol aimed at his own head. He repeatedly makes shooting sounds with his tired voice and continues to smile towards the officers while the music cues in the repeated strumming of a harp. These details strengthen the case that this act was meant to be a last stand or move and that he didn’t intend to survive. So what does this mean? Was he going to trade his life for Iris’s all along or was he doing it for ulterior motives like his misplaced anger from Betsy’s rejection earlier in the film. If Travis was willing to risk his life it might be considered that he felt as though he deserved what he was getting and that this seemingly crazy act was actually going to end in his redemption for sins of the past.The birds eye view or top down camera angle also has a slow and steady pan filled with dissolves that drift slowly over the crime scene, down the stairs of the blood splattered apartment and finally into the streets. This strange angle lifts the audience so high above that it’s actually through the roof and in this sense above a reality down below. The speed in which the camera drifts and turns at such a slow and analytical pace combined with the immediate timing after Travis’s violent discharge insinuate a sense of spiritual release into the above unknown. This shot suggests an element within the story that concerns Travis’s concluding aftermath.
Just like the rest of Travis’s contradictions, being essentially good or bad, he is also questioned afterward as to whether he is alive or dead. After the shooting there is a strong sense of conflicting forces within the wrap up of the plot as Travis drives Betsy back to her apartment. This feeling comes from the conflicting moralities and motives planted inside the character from his different dimensions. What’s especially strange, again however, is whether or not Travis is even alive in the aftermath. Everything goes completely in favor for Travis and just works out in a rewarding fashion. It’s almost too perfect in fact. It is likely that what we see after the shooting is actually a fantasy or imagination of what might happen to him. Either way it reveals exactly how he thought or wanted it to play out. The closing monologue of Iris’s father is the only voiceover in the film that isn’t Travis, making that an odd disruption in the pattern during this closing section of the story. The absence of an expected closing monologue leads one to believe that the character simple wasn’t present and therefore missing, changed or dead.
One last detail I’d like to cite is that after Travis drops off Betsy and drives away, for a split second before we cut away from the cab, Travis double takes into his rear view mirror with a menacing glare unique only to Robert De Niro but nevertheless extremely scary and effective. This wild expression combined with the glowing red streetlights lead us to believe that even after his murderous episode he is still on the watch for more wrong doings and crime. He will always be looking to uphold justice, unchanged and as a result, doomed to ride in the taxicab as his own personal purgatory.
I’ve been watching a lot of early violent 1970’s cinema lately and I’ve noticed structural similarities between most of these films but none were as impacting as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Lots of movies from this era were fond of violence and even had similar formulas for how they dispensed it. Many times, films such as Easy Rider (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971) used violence as finishers in which the plot would meander for a prolonged period of time, say 90% of the way in, and then finish with a violent exciting conclusion. Taxi Driver’s ending appears at first to fall into this same general category but concludes in one of the most thoroughly brilliant and psychologically violent endings ever crafted opening just as many doors as it closes.
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