Taxi Driver

Among my favorite things about most of Martin Scorsese's movies is the way that he handles extraordinarily violent characters. Teddy Daniels (Shutter Island); Billy Costigan (The Departed); Amsterdam Vallon (Gangs of New York); Max Cady (Cape Fear); Henry Hill (Goodfellas); Jake La Motta (Raging Bull); and of course, Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) are just a few of his shockingly violent "heroes." There are so many that - I would argue - Scorsese must have committed himself to characters of this nature, from the earliest stages of his career, with the expressed purpose of presenting them in a specific way. Many of these characters have a profoundly tragic story. Their tragedy is usually brought about by their violent behavior, and in the end few of them are made to realize responsibility for their own behavior. If I hazard overgeneralizing with these characters I would still go so far as to say that - despite so many obvious flaws - we are meant to empathize with all of them.

I am left with a number of questions about what all of this means. What do these characters' lives actual mean to us? Is there more to it than simply sympathizing with their tragic situations? Are we supposed to take away some kind of insight into our own nature? Are these stories meant to shake us out of our easy faith in the relative safety of our world? Part of me says that, because conflict is entertaining these guys are a sure bet, but isn't there more to it than that? One possibility that I find particularly attractive is that Scorsese wants us to realize that villains - as they are found in so much of traditional story telling - do not actual exist in the real world.