Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062452
80 DGA QUARTERLY SCREENPULLS: SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT; (BOTTOM) PHOTOFEST Bickle comes back in fi ring a fucking gun in your face. Almost like he's pissed that scene just happened, and he's going to stop it from happening again." We know an assassination attempt is coming when the action turns to Palantine's campaign in the park, but Scorsese saves Travis' mohawk as a pan-up surprise after a few disembodied shots of him at the back of the crowd. "Classic fi lm reveal, a Harry Lime sort of entrance," says Chazelle, referencing Orson Welles' role in The Third Man. But Travis himself ? It's now a monster movie, he says. "The paleness of his bald head, coupled with that gaunt physique, makes me think of vampires. The movie has become demonically possessed." When he's thwarted by the Secret Service, Travis puts plan B into action, which leads to the movie's bloody, stylish brothel climax. Kill- ing Sport on the steps out front is a long, mostly fi xed take from a distance—from the driving up to a portentous chat to the shooting, then Travis walking next door. Knowing what's to come, Chazelle considers the restrained fi lming style of Keitel's death admirable. "Of course, now we get into much more fl amboyant shots and moves, canted, expressionist angles and fast cutting," says Chazelle as Travis makes his way inside, guns blazing to save Iris. "So it's re- ally smart that he sets the scene with a long one-shot outside. It's as if you know violence is going to erupt if you just hold it without cutting." Scorsese had to desaturate the images, notably the blood, to get an R rating, but Chazelle thinks it's a creative compromise that worked. "Darkening the blood gives it this garbage brown color, and you can refl ect the light in it in beautiful ways," he says. The famous slo-mo overhead that freezes the carnage to survey it from above before craning away outside as the cops arrive, is Scors- ese reformulating the narrative, Chazelle says. "It's as if the whole movie was the origin story of a crime scene photograph, one of those tabloid stories about fi ve people killed that you put out of your mind, where you don't think of anyone as human beings. And we've just traced back the whole circuitous journey." But is the epilogue—Travis back at work, called a hero in the pa- pers, Betsy riding in his backseat, maybe fl irting with him—a reality or a dying man's dream? Chazelle points to the otherworldliness of the ending's rear-view mirror shots—Shepherd's face, De Niro's eyes looking back. "It's a long enough lens that everything becomes the same plane of view, and it's all out of focus except for her, with the edges like an optical e ect, and it's all surrounded by orbs of light. It's so beautiful, breathtaking. But is it unreal? Are we in a feedback loop, where that's what he imagines doing for infi nity?" As the credits appear, and the jazz motif glides in, Chazelle continues, "It's like we're back to the beginning of the movie, Herrmann's score, these credits. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. So if you take it as real, what's next? Has a walking time bomb been set on the road again and told he's A-OK?" Looking back again, Chazelle marvels at how Taxi Driver's por- traiture remains a one-of-a-kind melding of Scorsese's cinema mind, performance and music. "There's something about the homages, they're dissonant from each other, but they stand out, with jagged edges," he says. "And De Niro, for such a crazy character he plays, how little he plays 'crazy' is beautifully subtle. A lot of it's a silent movie performance. And then the repetitiveness of the music. I defi nitely learned from this movie how the score can be the soundtrack of the character's mind. I'm as big a fan of Herrmann as can exist. Even the doom and gloom of this score is romantic. There's a lushness to the scariness. It luxuriates in the fear." ®