The sparseness of this is much more impressive and affecting than I was expecting, giving everything a cold but relentless sense of tension. It is quite remarkable that Schrader never ceases to want to write and direct one remake of Taxi Driver after another: surprisingly, this is one of his most successful attempts. And, at the same time, it is a powerful indictment of the criminal hubris of our contemporary tyrants.
We can try and elaborate a summary of the narrative and theme. Having been put for a long time into an anonymous, placeless purgatory, a man discovers the virtue of prison (as Bernard Stiegler called it) but finds that his time there was still not long enough. Having been sent out of one such liminal space, he consequently sends himself on a path consisting of long loops through the anonymous and placeless spaces of motels and casinos, another kind of purgatory, keeping himself uncontaminated by the sins of the flesh common to the former and subsisting by luck and calculation in the latter. At a certain point, providence provides a chance, and he improbably and incalculably decides to attempt to save the life of his adoptive son, who, having been born under the sign of tyrannical power, has succumbed to the intergenerational curse of resentment. Failing, he methodically directs his arrows against the tyrant, knowing that in so doing he is sentencing himself to a life back in prison (William Tell). Yet what drives him is not the son’s resentment but rage against injustice, through which he finds the courage to accept himself as accepted (in the eyes, smile and touch of a woman) in spite of being unacceptable (Paul Tillich). The virtue of prison can thus be more fully realised, his soul having in this way been entrusted to grace.