His characters are life-artists. Bickle jigsaws an ideal version of himself together through the people he meets, accumulating philosophies like tacky souvenirs. A recurring motif of these “man in the room” dramas is the donning of a uniform: Mishima’s kitschy militia suits, Toller’s warrior priest cassock, and Bickle’s knight-plume mohawk. However, though he is able to greet parts of himself through creativity that would otherwise be stifled, Mishima claims that “words are insufficient” in the arena of action. Ever the masochist. If you can’t feel it sting the flesh, is it even true? Seppuku is the artist’s immaculate ending, allowing him to write his own final chapter on the world stage. No more rehearsals. Torn from his guts, language’s impotency is expunged. Meanwhile, any psychotherapist would be able to see that the miasma Bickle swears is stalking him does so because he believes himself to be unclean. There’s the rub: Schrader’s characters’ desire to permanently alter their worlds lead them inevitably back to themselves, and so their crusade must lead explosively from the inside out.