80. Paranoid &...

Lyrics

Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me, occupy my brain?

Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal

And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late

For a long time I only knew Ozzy Osbourne as the idiotic pater familias on his on reality show. I thought he was something of a C-star who was at one time semi-successful with some long-forgotten. Basically I thought he was nothing more than a typical reality 'star'. I was thus quite surprised to learn he actually was a pretty respected musician who has a relatively important place in rock history. I should have known better, but as I've written in my entries on Metallica metal, and similar music like it, never interested me much. Still, I like this song, even though the title doesn't seem to match the lyrics. The protagonist doesn't seem to be paranoid, he seems to be more of a maladjusted manic-depressive (and the movie I linked the song to is probably the best movie about such a protagonist). But of course the lyrics aren't all that important here. The song's main goal is to rock our socks off. It does so.

The Movie: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Like Rebel Without A Cause, Taxi Driver is one of those cultural touchstones I was familiar with before ever being really interested in movies. It was one of those movies that was regularly referenced around me as an important work of art even by people who are not necessarily great movie lovers. I knew about "Are you talking to me" before I knew anything else about Scorsese. I have now seen it two or three times and I can confirm it is indeed a great work of art that has been rightfully discussed a lot. The first time I saw Taxi Driver I was quite young and did not know really get why Scorsese was considered so great. I had seen Goodfellas once on an Ipod and didn't like it much, I saw half of Raging Bull and was bored to death, and I didn't like The Departed. The only Scorsese movie I liked (quite a lot) was Gangs  of New York. After seeing Taxi Driver I not only loved the movie, but I also realized that Scorsese could indeed be a director capable of really great stuff. It made me interested in his other movies. Though I still haven't seen all of them, I consider him now a truly great director. Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours, and The Wolf of Wall Street are the ones I consider to be his best. And though I now understand why Raging Bull is lauded I still don't care much about that movie, nor about The Departed. I haven't yet re-watched Goodfellas, though I suspect I will love it now. 

What also helps in understanding Scorsese's movies is the fact that Roger Ebert's best writing is on Scorsese's movies, especially those he wrote a Great Movie essay on, such as Taxi Driver. Among the many great insights in that review is "that we have all felt alone as Travis. Most of us are better at dealing with it." And "the film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong". It's indeed Travis' loneliness that's indeed at the core of the movie. And the reason for that loneliness is Travis' mental instability which makes him unable to connect to people. But what's really tragic and great about the movie is that Travis is fully aware of his insanity, he knows that to have a better life he has to connect somehow with people, otherwise he'll be doomed to live his life in utter misery. And I think the movie shows that if Travis could have been able to get a little help from anybody, or if he had just a little bit more luck, he could have fixed his problems, at least to some extent. Because the ways in which Travis tries to deal with his problems aren't all that irrational. 

Why does Travis become a taxi driver for example? He is a traumatized Vietnam veteran who can't sleep and is, I believe, aware that if he just sits around doing nothing at night he will start abusing himself. Taxi driving is a good distraction that at the same time can earn him some money. The problem of course is that Travis sees New York as a hellhole filled with scum, especially at night. As he drives around New York we see the city from his point of view, and in these scenes Scorsese paints a rather dark picture of New York. Here New York is a city in which the depravity and violence isn't even beneath the surface. It's right there for everyone to see. This does not mean that Scorsese really sees New York as a horrible place with horrible people. The movie is completely shot from Travis' point of view. It's his view of New York that we see and whether that's true or not doesn't matter for Travis' psyche. Scorsese only sometimes backs away from Travis' point of view to show us that it's not all as bad as it seems. There is of course the scene in which Harvey Keitel gently dances with Jodie Foster, one of the few that's not seen from Travis' point of view. It's clear in that scene that Foster and Keitet have a much gentler relationship than Travis thinks. Which does not mean that it is a very healthy relationship.

An even more interesting scene is I think the one in which Travis goes to the place where his colleagues hang out. The scene starts with a medium shot in which we see a bunch of people chatting at a table, and then Travis comes in. First he is in the same shot with his colleagues, but gradually we see only him in a medium shot, while we only hear his colleagues on the same table talking. That's first of all a very effective way to convey Travis' loneliness, even when he is in company. It may even be a more effective shot than the famous one in which the camera pans away to an empty hall when he has the unfortunate phone conversation with Betsy. But the reason I am discussing this scene is because of the following shots. At one point Travis starts completely zoning out of his colleague's conversation and looks somewhere toward the back of the restaurant. In the next shot we then see a couple of threateningly looking (black) men. Scorsese makes clear that this is a shot from Travis point of view. In any case we then return to table, Travis has managed to focus on the conversation with his colleagues again. They talk some more, exchange some pleasantries and stuff, and as they leave Travis asks Wizard (Peter Boyle) if he could talk to him. We now see the group in a wider shot from the back of the restaurant, which means we also see the backs of the other guests in that restaurant. We see that none of them look like the men Travis saw from his point of view. They all seem to be pretty civilized people, minding their own business. It's a smart way to show Travis is mentally unstable. When asks to talk to Wizard about his problems though we again realize that Travis is fully aware he has problems and that he also has to some extent the right idea about how to fix them. He should talk to people who might help him. Unfortunately for Travis, Wizard is a good guy, but he is no psychologist. He tries to comfort Travis, but his words are completely meaningless and both men know it.