God's lonely men

'Taxi Driver' still resonates, 'High-Rise' challenges

No other Martin Scorsese movie comes close to the perfection of “Taxi Driver.”

In the mid-70s, New York, like America, seemed destined for bankruptcy. The rank humanity of Manhattan during a pre-corporate era—when 42^nd St. (as the old joke goes) meant that’s about how many seconds you wanted to spend walking around there—gave the city its sleazy reputation.

Post-Vietnam anxiety vibrated through the collective consciousness, feeding the American New Wave’s cynicism, which gave us the richest, most eclectic period in domestic filmmaking before Spielberg and Lucas returned the studios to commercial supremacy. “Taxi Driver” was the last riot act critique of our post-war condition before Reaganist consumerism and a Disneyfied Times Square rendered our collective guilt into a squeaky clean Bobby McFerrin afterthought.

But, as Roger Ebert pointed out in the first sentence of his review, “Taxi Driver” isn’t about New York. However beautifully the city plays a supporting role, the film is about the malaise of a secular country as experienced by “God’s lonely man,” Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). An ex-Marine whose insomnia compels him to drive a cab all night, Bickle contemptuously staggers through the “venal” world he so despises, patronizing porno theaters by himself between repeated failed attempts at human connection.

The sameness of his days and nights is broken when, one afternoon, he spies Betsy (Cybil Shepard), a gorgeous campaign worker stumping for presidential nominee Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). Travis is smitten, but his attempts at courting Betsy inevitably go south quickly.

He also meets Iris (Jody Foster), a 12 year-old prostitute whom Travis becomes obsessed with saving.

When the hope for connection with Betsy inevitably fails and Iris rebuffs his attempts to help her, Travis starts to break, and ultimately takes matters into his own hands.

“Taxi Driver” is a masterpiece, a brutal deconstruction of one man’s depression and inability to connect with even the dregs of the society around him. More than anything, Travis Bickle is screenwriter Paul Schrader’s volcanic view of himself. He was in a deep depression as he wrote the script; his career had stalled, he was going through a divorce, and he’d adopted certain antisocial behaviors that he’d ultimately exorcise through the creation of Bickle. 

The script, combined with Scorsese’s direction and the performances by De Niro, Foster and Shepherd, are a flawless alignment of inexorable forces, rendering the hellish landscapes of both its characters and the city into a gorgeous nightmare.

Tonight (June 9), Circle Cinema and the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle will screen “Taxi Driver” in celebration of the film’s 40^th anniversary, followed by a panel discussion with OFCC members Jeff Huston (icantunseethatmovie.com), Adam Chitwood (Collider.com), Michael Smith (Tulsa World) and myself.

Tom Hiddleston stars in 'High-Rise'

High-Rise

Film is a director’s medium, despite the collaboration of many others. The best directors give us a singular and satisfying vision, having unified every element at their disposal. They’re at the peak of their powers when expertly blending story, theme, momentum, and film craft—sometimes defining an era. You know the names. Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Coppola, the list goes on. 

Ben Wheatley might be one of these filmmakers. I’m not saying he’s in the club, but “High-Rise” could certainly be submitted as evidence that he should be.

Based on the 1975 book by J.G. Ballard (author of “Crash,” infamously adapted by David Cronenberg in 1996), “High-Rise” tells the Möbius  strip tale of Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston). We meet Laing as he barbecues a dog’s leg over a campfire in the middle of what looks like a battle-scarred luxury apartment in the apparent aftermath of some anachronistic conflagration.

Flash back a few months and we are reintroduced to Laing as he’s moving into the state-of-the-art tower block, a desolate development outside of London that looks like a half-finished Shanghai ghost city. He’s a doctor: handsome (I did say he was Tom Hiddleston), distant yet charming, and certainly a fish in an unfamiliar bowl.

Laing meets the other denizens of the building—a neighborly bunch who always seem on the verge of a party—including his seductive neighbor, Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller). He befriends Wilder (Luke Evans), a hunky frat bro-turned-dad and his still pregnant wife, Helen (Elizabeth Moss). Laing begins to learn about the caste system that keeps the low-income breeders on the ground floors while the most affluent tenants live at the top (the dwindling middle class—essentially himself—occupy the middle floors).

The Eden-like penthouse is the home of the monarchitect (hey, new word), Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons), who built this Eastern Bloc edifice of distressed concrete and minimalist personality as “a crucible for change.” With its own gym, pool, a grocery store, and even a school for the children, it’s almost as if you’d never have to leave.

But when the electrical system begins to take on a mind of its own, the “crucible for change” becomes an abject nightmare experiment in debauched libertarianism as the castes, who inexplicably refuse to leave their rotting utopia, battle for control over their dwindling resources.

The classism of these characters is reflected by their vastly different soirees, which become near-constant events as they all begin to eschew the outside world. The rich dress as orgiastic 18^th Century courtesans while the rabble fight, drink, and screw in the lower depths. The Yojimbo of the bunch, Laing is accepted by both tribes (as the resident doctor, everyone needs him), though ultimately circumstances force him to his own agenda.

Given its source material, an anti-communist allegory born of mid-1970s Cold War zeitgeist (the film ends with Margaret Thatcher fear-mongering about state-run capitalism) by a provocateur known for deconstructing human nature, the 70s setting of the story is only alluded to in its retro, near-future sterility. Recalling the chilly compositions of Andrew Niccol and psycho-dystopian kink of David Cronenberg, “High-Rise” has the feel of an old, cautionary Russian sci-fi flick with a modern polish.

Wheatley’s disjointed montages and temporal editing, combined with a pulsing score by Clint Mansell, paint the escalating depravity of the tenants and their steady descent into feudalistic violence with poetic brush strokes the color of chaos. Ballard’s story isn’t particularly interested with rooting itself in reality, though. If it were, they’d all leave the building instead of going all in on their increasingly unstable microcosm. The way these people react to their situation stops making sense. You can go with it, or not.

It’s heady stuff, a bizarre and often creepy film that wads up conventions of narrative logic and film syntax like a crushed pack of cigarettes to be tossed in the recycle bin. Performances across the board are strong, as you would expect from such a great cast. The environment is its own character; the sentinel building that cuts the desolate sky like a warning changes these people—though clearly not for the better. As the building’s systems begin to short circuit, so do its occupants.

There are other satirical, sociopolitical, dystopian morality plays out there (from “Robocop” to “A Clockwork Orange” to Ballard’s own “Crash”), but Wheatley—from a script by his wife and co-editor Amy Jump—distills Ballard’s story and his own cinematic influences into a tonally intoxicating, thematically compelling work that’s impossible to put down.

"High-Rise" is available for rental through various digital streaming services, including Amazon, iTunes and Google Play. 

For more from Joe, read his review of the Ryan Gosling/Russell Crowe action comedy "The Nice Guys."