Travis's first face: Travis in a movie
Here is the story of the screenwriter Schrader and director Scorsese [1] who are trying to shape their "ideal" Travis image. [2]
The success of this film is that it only shows one world, the world in the eyes of Travis, and nothing else. Everything in the film is based on Travis's perspective. What Travis can't see is impossible for the audience to see. As a result, the audience lost the space of choice, and only Travis himself and Travis's present were in front of him. So, how to hold the audience in such a narrow perspective? That is to make the audience identify with Travis, so that Travis and the audience have more in common, that is, the characteristics of Travis are blurred.
In order to keep the lens language ambiguous, so that the viewer is always in a kind of tension with nowhere to start, everything about Travis is given by suggestion. The film does not give Travis's resume, his relationship with his parents, His relationship history, etc., there is no flashback in the film, and no "decisive moment" in his life has been given. When we watched the movie, we had a feeling-Travis was left alone in New York. He is a stranger. Like us, he has no knowledge of everything in this city, so we are willing to follow his taxi and pass through. All corners of the city. What the film shows us on the surface is the frustration, anger, weakness and alienation that all people share. The only difference between Travis and us is that he is more troubled and has some signs of mental illness (insomnia, talking to himself, Need to take amphetamines)-for this difference, we are also willing to accept, because our depression (frustration and loneliness) need to be released, in the illusory world of light and shadow, any excessive release does not require the audience to take responsibility, we Get the release carrier-Travis, we need a more thorough and more crazy release. We vaguely feel that this release will bring us a solution to our problems.
Schrader smiled at this time. He understands the audience’s expectations, so he avoids showing problems—everything about Travis, he is just right to stop when approaching the problem, so the audience does not see the special problems about Travis, like his religious views. , The trauma of the Vietnam War, family disagreements, etc.-this is not the cause of the development of the film’s plot. This movie is about symptoms and does not involve too many triggers of behavior. )-Motivation is all implicit. Is even Travis' loneliness due to the filth and ugliness of New York? Did he assassinate the presidential candidate because of his disappointment with those in power? I thought for a long time, and finally came to the conclusion-no. Travis himself is a lonely person. Like all lonely people, he feels incompatible with everything. He has a complete moral point of view. That point of view exists in his mind and has no connection with the entire external world that surrounds him—if He was not in New York, even in Jinan; he was so overwhelmed that he "had some bad thoughts (Travis)", but he missed the heroism of his youth (this Also make everyone have), so he deceived himself that he was exercising justice-to save a prostitute Iris who didn't need him to be nosy. His "rescue" is not so much a rescue as it is a "compulsory". He doesn't understand Iris, doesn't understand everything Iris has experienced (feminist movement, sexual liberation, Beatles), and doesn't want to understand, he just wants to accomplish himself s plan. Before the action, he wrote in his diary: "Now I understand that my whole life is toward a goal, and I realize him, I have no choice at all."-This is his irrational logic. He pushed himself to the edge of the cliff so that he had only one way to go, so that he could let go of his confusion. He was desperate, hoping to get a solution to the problem that troubled him.
Here, the audience and Travis walked into a boat, and they felt that they had something in common with each other, that is, they hoped to get their own problems solved. But Schrader smiled slyly. He said in "How to Build a Story and Characters": "Movies usually let us face a problem (problem), and deal with this problem, explore this problem, solve (or ultimately can not solve) this The problem, and the biggest tragedy of life is that it rarely makes us encounter problems, but more encounters dilemmas. There is no solution to the dilemma, but there are problems. One of the most attractive reasons for the movie is Movies provide solutions to problems (not dilemmas). Therefore, a movie will raise a problem and finally resolve it. You walk out of the movie theater and say:'Damn, life is great! There was a problem, now it's solved!' but life is not so. let us face the difficulties of life can not escape, we'll never escape. that's why I love this movie, the last scene of the movie, the dilemma continues, the film can not end, because the dilemma still. "
this This is the greatness of this movie-at the end, it turned its back to the audience, the audience's expectations fell through, and the subconscious solution went bankrupt. At the end of the movie, Travis is still driving his taxi in the dark, and there are still expressionist neon lights outside the car. The shelter in the city—the car, and the shelter of the outside world—the dark night still constitutes a metaphor of “loneliness”; Iris, who was “assisted” by him, was eventually trapped at home by her parents, as stated in the letter from the parents "We have figured out a way to prevent her from escaping again", you can feel from the tone of the letter, this does not solve any problem, Iris is very likely to leave again, but this is not what Travis cares about; Travis obviously cherishes his gains. For this honor (despite the way of obtaining the honor and its black humor), he posted a newspaper silhouette on the wall, which read "Taxi driver killed the famous mafia", "The child's parents expressed shock and gratitude", The letter from Iris’ parents and the schematic diagram of restoring the gun battle (ironically, the schematic diagram gave the audience the feeling of watching a scene for the pleasure of newspaper readers). These honors may satisfy Travis’ wanna really Do something)” wish, but has his dilemma really been solved?
It seems that there is really going to be an end. In the last scene, he met Betsy again. When he left, Betsy wanted to say something and stopped. Obviously he was moved by Travis, but he had no feelings for Betsy at this time. When he wanted to get her, he couldn't get it, and when she could get it easily, he was no longer interested. Betsy belongs to the past, she is not the source of the trouble, Travis herself is the essence. Schrader said, "I created such a movie in which Travis himself is the source of his own problems." After Betsy got out of the car, Travis pulled the rearview mirror over and made Betsy disappear from the rearview mirror, declaring It is the end of this experience, and it is only the end of this experience-at this time the noisy urban night image appears in the rearview mirror, which separates the screen from the neon light image directly in front, and Travis's eye level is clamped. Between the two images, there is nowhere to escape. At this time, the familiar and melancholic music plays once again, and the lens rhythmically switches between the close-up of Travis's eyes and the subjective lens—the same as the scene at the beginning of the movie, symbolizing one Reincarnation-This is the last set of shots in the film, and the first set of shots at the beginning of the film. We understand, we are back to the beginning. Travis is still the Travis at the beginning, and the night of New York is still blurred in the fog. As at the beginning of the film, Travis is slightly off the brink of collapse, but not far away. As mentioned above, the dilemma is still going on in the end, and the movie cannot end because the dilemma is still there.
Therefore, the open ending allows us to return to the beginning again and again, just like the story told by Ruzod Rizan in "One Thousand and One Nights": "A maid must tell a story to the king every night, so that the king can not kill others. The palace lady, this palace lady preached: A palace lady must tell a story to the king every night, so that..." So time repeats in the story over and over again, and stays in the story forever. "Taxi Driver" has also made such a Mobius ring. You follow Travis to wander in the dark of the city, never stopping, and never going out. According to Schrader, there is only one way to stop time in the story, that is, Travis takes the initiative to brake, but for an American facing collapse, this is basically impossible-American characteristics , Will make him seek a solution to the problem from the outside, instead of completely denying himself: "When a Japanese collapses, he will close the window and hang himself; when an American collapses, he will open the window and go out to kill with a gun. Others."
Chekhov told the story of a horseman in "Distress", who was also a lonely driver. His son had a fever and died two days ago. He wanted to express his troubles quickly, but everyone refused to listen to his story. In the end, he could only confide his sadness to his thin horse while feeding the fodder.
Travis doesn't have a thin horse, and even the taxi doesn't belong to him. He is too far away from the world, has lost communication channels, and has no thin horse. He can only talk to himself and keep a diary. He can only ask the wall "Are you talking to me?" )?". In the dialogue with himself, he intensified his problem over and over again, so the contradictory rift became bigger. His breakdown and schizophrenia will happen sooner or later.
"We are all fucked fucked, more or less." ——The
second face of Wizard Travis: a Travis in history.
Here is about, if there is a taxi driver Travis, what is his prototype? What his possible history and life are like.
Travis is only in his twenties, a veteran from the Vietnam War. He unfortunately missed the abolition of the conscript system. Under that strict system, Elvis had served for two years in his heyday from 58 to 60 years, and boxing champion Ali was deprived of the honor of the world champion because of his refusal to perform military service. For most of the film, he was wearing a Marine Corps uniform. Obviously he could not get out of the gloom of the war and quickly adapted to the feasting New York. The time in the movie is from May to November 1975[3], and because Nixon cancelled the compulsory conscription system in 1974, the active force of the U.S. military dropped sharply from 3.54 million during the Vietnam War to 2.12 million in 1975. . The defeat of the Vietnam War and the return of a large number of US troops in Vietnam to the United States brought about a series of social problems. As Palatine [4] said in the film, "We suffered in Vietnam, and now we are facing unemployment, inflation, crime and bankruptcy. ". Travis faced another world separated from him by an abyss. He has lost the memory of the past (he cannot remember his parents’ wedding anniversary or mother’s birthday, and he has not returned home after demobilization); he is incompatible with the present society. His conversations with Betsy, Iris, and even Palatine were stiff and awkward. He responded to questions that he didn’t know how to answer without saying a word: When Iris talked about the hippies’ commune, he said, “I don’t associate with that kind of people. (I donot get along with people like that.)", they are "not clean"; when talking about the feminist movement and sexual liberation, he felt incomprehensible; Palatine asked him what he thought of the current situation, and he shook his head and said, I don’t understand this thing.” He repeated that New York was “too dirty and needs cleaning.” When he was soaking up the horse, he didn’t know where to go. Burned by himself-he once paid his youth and blood for this country, but this country ruthlessly abandoned him, and he became the lonely man of God.
The tension of the war may be the cause of Travis' insomnia. In order to sleep, he went to see adult movies at night. Adorno sighed: "The cultural industry really took pains, it cuts all the logical connections that need to be thought of. ("Dialectics of Enlightenment")" The cultural industry caused the panic to the newcomers, causing Travis to retreat to the most primitive The refuge-sex.
I can’t learn more about Travis in history. The film faintly reveals his discrimination against blacks. At this time, 12 years have passed since Dr. King’s speech on "I Have a Dream". The Civil Rights Act guarantees the right to vote for blacks. The situation has improved slightly on the surface. Travis comes from an unfamiliar city in the Midwest, thousands of miles away from New York. His unfamiliarity with New York has formed his closeness to the audience.
Travis is largely a personal shadow of the screenwriter Schrader. If you want to understand Travis in history, you must first understand Schrader in history. After all, even the director Martin Scorsese said, "Taxi Driver" is Schrader's movie." Schrader himself admitted that "Taxi Driver" has gone from script to filming to editing. After filtering and rewriting, it still reflects his original intention to the greatest extent. Schrader’s life when he wrote the script is almost the same as Travis:
In 1973, only 26 years old Schrader was experiencing a twist in his life. He and his wife had just divorced and left his home to live in a car. "When I was writing that script, I was very obsessed with guns. At that time, I had a very obvious suicidal tendency, drinking all day long, and I was very fond of pornography. All these elements affected the script." It is in such loneliness. Among them, "Taxi Driver" was born. Schrader wrote the script in only ten days. The first draft took seven days and the revision took three days. "It jumped out of my head like an animal," Paul Schrader said frankly. "The protagonist Travis Bickle is me." In addition, Sartre's existentialist novel "Disgusting" is also used for this script. The protagonist provides a model. In shaping this character, Schrader referred to Camus's "The Outsider." In addition, he was also influenced by the diary of Arthur Bremer, who had planned to assassinate George Wallace, the US presidential candidate, and made headlines in May 1972.
Just stop here. Yanshu drinks the river, but it is full of stomach, contemptible and simple, it is inevitable. Hope you all forgive me.
[1] The old horse appeared twice in the movie! Once it was the lyrical slow motion picture of Betsy's first appearance, with the old horse sitting on the steps; once it was the cuckold passenger in the Travis car.
[2] Regarding the origin of Travis Bickle's name, there is a passage in "Schrader on Schrader": "That comes from Travis-the meaning of travel-romantic, soft pronunciation and Bickle's hard, unpleasant In pronunciation, the latter is based on a radio drama I have listened to. It is about a bunch of couples who always quarrel. The show is called'Bicksons'".
[3] Refer to the US presidential election schedule and the dialogue between Travis and Betsy, as well as the words May 26, June 8, and July that appear in Travis's diary.
[4] Interestingly, Palatine means "church minister, palace lord".
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