A Look at Today’s Approach to Mental Health through the Mind of Hollywood’s Most Convoluted Antihero

By Brett Dworski 

About forty-six minutes into Martin Scorsese’s 1976 neo noir thriller, Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle asks his fellow cabbie, Wizard, if he can talk to him about something. Standing outside a diner on break during their usual graveyard shifts, Travis tenses up, hesitant to speak his mind. But then the camera zooms in on Travis, and he vents.

 “I just want to go out and really, really do something.”
”Taxi life, you mean?”
“No… I don’t know. I just want to go out… I really… I’ve got some bad ideas in my head.” 

Even after forty-five years since its release, Taxi Driver remains one of the most ambiguous films of our time. Some believe it’s a gritty, optimistic story of a bum-turned-hero, while others see a volatile loner whose dark urges get the best of him—a ticking time bomb of sorts. Both make sense, with this moment between Travis and Wizard bridging the two. But all opinions aside, there’s an undeniable certainty to Taxi Driver: That Travis—a Vietnam War veteran—is very troubled, and whether his intentions are good or bad, he takes a manic turn, resulting in one of Hollywood’s most convoluted antihero stories. While some of his actions are concrete, most require abstract interpretation, leaving questions that have plagued us for nearly five decades: What does Travis’s journey mean, and what is Scorsese trying to tell us through it?

 Set in a decaying and corrupt post-Vietnam New York City, Travis—played by a stunningly grim Robert De Niro—dreams of ridding the city of the filth and perversion he witnesses during his overnight shifts as a cabbie. The more Travis drives, the more he questions his purpose in life and grows deranged, ultimately leading down a path of violence, hatred, and even redemption. De Niro went all out to prepare for the role of Travis: Besides getting a taxi license and driving the streets of New York City in his spare time, he lost thirty-five pounds and listened repeatedly to a taped reading of the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the man who attempted to assassinate U.S. presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972.

Upon meeting the lonely and depressed Travis, we feel sorry for him. But the more people he encounters, the more he becomes detached from reality, and his actions leave us questioning his morals—as well as what’s real and what’s not.

It all starts with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful campaign volunteer for presidential candidate Charles Palantine. After watching Betsy from afar, Travis musters the courage to ask her out. Betsy thinks he’s weird, but she’s into it. They set a date. Earlier in the film, Travis frequents a pornographic movie theater—whether out of sexual thrill or a longing for something deeper is up to us to decide—and he takes Betsy there. Unsurprisingly, she leaves in disgust. This is Scorsese’s first test for viewers: Did Travis really lack the judgement in taking Betsy to a porno on their first date, or was it all a maddening trick? Is he a perverted freak despite loathing the sexual activity he sees in the streets, or is he simply ignorant?

Creating empathy for antiheros is a constant challenge for filmmakers, but when Travis calls Betsy to apologize, Scorsese masters it.

“Would you like to have dinner with me in the next few days or something? … Well how about just a cup of coffee? … Did you get my flowers in the ...? I sent some flowers … Can I call you again? Tomorrow or the next day?”

At first, we’re drawn to De Niro’s masterful, cringey acting. We see and feel Travis’s angst and pain. But while he’s talking, the camera shifts right and pauses in an empty hallway—a tracking shot that speaks a thousand words: That in this moment, Travis’s life is too agonizing to watch. Later, Travis storms into Betsy’s workplace and berates her in front of her colleagues, saying she’s going to hell and is "just like the others.” But who is he referring to?

Another woman who attracts Travis’s attention is Iris (Jodie Foster), a child prostitute. But unlike with Betsy, Travis views himself as a fatherly figure to the 12-year-old, as he constantly dreams of rescuing her from exploitation. He tells Iris to leave New York and find her family, to be a kid again. It’s here that we even start rooting for Travis, if only briefly. He tells her he may be going away for a bit, hinting that he’s planning something—a “bad idea” of sorts. While Iris entertains the idea, she’s later convinced to stay by her manipulative pimp, Sport, in what is by far the most sickening moment of the film.

Needing to do something powerful, Travis goes full throttle: He buys some guns, shaves his head into a mohawk, and unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate Palantine at a rally. In his eyes, he’s doing a societal service—becoming the force needed to clean New York’s filth and corruption—but has gone insane while doing so. Travis’s journey reaches its apex when he ventures to Iris’s brothel and murders Sport, Iris’s client, and the bouncer.

The ending is especially ambivalent. Despite murdering three people in cold blood, Travis is deemed a hero. Newspaper clippings of his courageousness are hung around his apartment, as is a letter from Iris’s parents thanking him for saving their daughter. When he’s back on the job, Travis picks up a passenger, Betsy, who acknowledges his heroics. In this moment, everything is perfect. Travis has gotten the girl of his dreams, and he’s allowed another to achieve dreams of her own. He’s won. But here’s where Scorsese really screws with us: Upon dropping Betsy off, Travis adjusts his rearview mirror and does a double-take as if he’s seen something alarming, just as a piercing sound hits our ears. We see Travis’s attentive eyes through the windshield before the credits roll to the streetlights. 

This is Scorsese’s final test: Was Travis really the hero, or was it all a figment of his imagination? 

The great Roger Ebert once said that despite their flaws, Scorsese’s characters “want to be forgiven and admired.” This is surely true of Travis Bickle, and his psychotic twist and apparent redemption represents his greater struggle to relate to the world and find inner peace. Whether or not Travis becoming a hero and regaining the admiration of Betsy is reality or fantasy, the final shot indicates he’s running on a hamster wheel, always one moment away from another maniacal tailspin.

In his confinement to Wizard, Travis confesses his emotional struggle for the first and only time of the film, but Wizard provides no support, instead telling him to “go get laid.” Travis opened up and wasn’t taken seriously. In 2021, an era where mental health is more discussed and normalized than ever before, Travis is an extreme and somber expression of what can happen to people who need help but never receive it.