Taxi Driver - Reactions

The following is my reaction to seeing taxi driver for the first time. Parallels - I am 3/4 of the way through Lolita which has as a main character a girl of about the same age as Iris.

The score, the main song, the jazz line, it meant sex/prostitution/corruption/filth. It played throughout the whole movie but the only place where someone actually played the song was when the pimp was romancing iris.

I thought that he was going to turn out to be a killer. He turned out to be viewed as a hero. But he had a failed attempt at killing the mayor. What would have happened if he had killed him. Why did he think needed too.

It seemed like the movie was like a vigilante film where the vigilante is a real person, and the score is trying to make it seem like he's a vigilante, but he's just a slow man. He isn't the smartest person. The whole movie makes me feel slow. He wasn't afraid of doing any job. He didn't have direction. But he was true to himself. He didn't cover up his loss of direction with a pretense of knowledge. This reminds of the fireman character in I hearthuckabees. I love this character. This was like a parallel character, un-educated version, brought up and burnt by Vietnam, dunno if the setting is too late for that though.

The movie was very dark, in it's lighting that is. I think it was supposed to convey the mood of the night in the slums of new york. I've never been but it certainly had the feeling what it might be like.

A lot of movies that I really like, a lot of movies from the 70s and 60s, they have interesting dialoge. In other words, the words we use every day, at least the one I use, the stock answers that I quip out because I don't give myself the time to actually think about the question or am just to slow/lazy to really respond, these movies don't use them. The characters stand there and seem to have real connection, they are really relating to each other. Or should I say that the dialogue is supposed to convey the idea that they are. I think Annie Hall does this well.

good night