Admiring Rolling Thunder does not amount to attributing every aspect of the film to its first screenwriter. That distinction shapes the discussion of Schrader.
The screenplay and the film are not the same thing
Quentin Tarantino’s critical relationship with Paul Schrader runs through films directed by other people and through differences between versions of a story.Taxi Driver, from 1976, was written by Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese.Rolling Thunder, from 1977, was directed by John Flynn and credits the screenplay to Schrader and Heywood Gould. Starting from those credits avoids turning admiration for a cinematic result into an exclusive attribution to one of its collaborators.
InCinema Speculation, published in 2022, Tarantino examines both films and discusses narrative and moral decisions. Momentary Cinema’s review of 22 October 2023 captures his interest in the differences between the protagonist of the screenplay ofRolling Thunder and the character played by William Devane. It also summarises his reading ofTaxi Driver as a film about a racist man, a distinction that does not amount to declaring the work racist simply because it identifies with its protagonist.
It is a matter of authorship and reception. A screenplay proposes actions, dialogue and an organisation of the story; the film adds bodies, voices, duration and images. Those decisions can intensify one aspect, displace another, or produce a sympathy that the writing did not resolve in the same way. Judging the result requires observing that transformation, not imagining that the text moved unchanged on to the screen.
Taxi Driver: intimacy without absolution
Travis Bickle maintains a hostile relationship with the city and organises his experience through a voice that seeks to explain it. The viewer is granted access to his thoughts, but that access does not guarantee that he is a reliable observer. The film allows contradictions between what he says, what he understands and what he does to be perceived. Being close to a consciousness does not oblige us to accept its diagnosis of the world.
The character’s loneliness also does not provide an automatic justification for his actions. It may arouse compassion and, at the same time, become a way of shutting himself off in ever more rigid interpretations. The dramatic interest lies in how that isolation relates to the desire to act. Travis seeks a role for himself and may confuse the intensity of his need with the legitimacy of a mission.
Robert De Niro’s performance complicates that relationship. There is awkwardness, fragility, uneasy humour and menace. None of those registers cancels out the others. One scene may bring us closer to the character and the next force us to reconsider that closeness. That movement prevents the experience from being reduced to a simple choice between admiring him or rejecting him from the outset.
Violence then raises a question about the way we look. A sequence can produce excitement through its editing and shifts in intensity while showing a horrifying act. Discussing that mixture does not require pretending that the audience’s response will be uniform. The film organises possibilities for reaction, but each viewer may experience the relationship between tension, relief and repulsion differently.
Rolling Thunder and the difficulty of returning
InRolling Thunder, the return of a prisoner of war to home does not restore a former life. Public ceremony and private experience do not coincide. The character may be received as a hero and yet still be unable to live again within the ties he left behind. That distance between recognition and belonging gives depth to a story that later takes the form of revenge.
William Devane brings a restraint that forces us to read very small details. A lack of open expression does not mean a lack of suffering. It may suggest an experience that the character does not know how, or cannot, communicate in the terms expected by those around him. The film makes domestic normality seem strange and makes certain relationships more comprehensible to him in a context of violence than in everyday life.
The presence of the companion played by Tommy Lee Jones introduces another form of recognition. Among those who share an experience there may be an understanding that does not need to be explained at length. That economy is dramatically powerful, but also unsettling: the ease of acting together again does not imply that action leads to recovery. A decision may seem clear precisely because it avoids far more difficult emotional problems to resolve.
A confession and a violent act can offer contradictory versions of the same man. The screenplay gains complexity when it allows that contradiction to remain, rather than resolving it through a definitive psychological explanation.
The discussion of Schrader must preserve that complexity. It is not enough to celebrate a brutal screenplay or to use the word revenge as though that explained its meaning. What matters are the differences between versions, the viewer’s position and the way a film turns violence into an emotional experience. Thereading of Cinema Speculation allows Tarantino’s judgements to be placed within a broader conversation, in which admiring a work can also mean discussing central decisions in its writing.
See the selection ofdirectors and actors admired by Tarantino.