THE DAYS ARE LIKE PEOPLE TOO

To some, it may appear contradictory for a blog entitled "Sola Gratia - Fide" to contain a post such as the one below, picturing Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976).

To help explain, here are Tarkovsky's words about a film I've mentioned a few times, Andrei Rublev:

“This was the theme of Andrei Rublev. It looks at first sight as if the cruel truth of life as he observes it is in crying contradiction with the harmonious ideal of his work. The crux of the question, however, is that the artist cannot express the moral ideal of his time unless he touches all its running sores, unless he suffers and lives these sores himself. That is how art triumphs over grim, ‘base’ truth, clearly recognizing it for what it is.”[i]

So such a declaration of violence as Taxi Driver is, for me, incredibly truthful and powerful, not in itself, but for what it means to me.

---

[i] Sculpting in Time, p. 168.