Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a brilliant film. It is self-aware, highly cinematic and strangely involving for a film that downplays emotion in favour of aesthetics. The Driver (Ryan Gosling), we are told, just walked into a Los Angeles auto repair shop one day and started working there. He has no history, and the character is more mythological and iconic than he is recognisably human – except when it comes down to basic drives such as survival and vengeance. The Driver roams the street of Los Angeles like he’s charting a known labyrinth that only he knows in a world defined by concrete, lights and cheap diners.
He is a part-time stuntman, auto repair worker and part-time criminal cohort. People contact him to pick them up at certain places and drop them off at others; he is the central force in the thinking person’s The Transporter. His boss at the repair shop is Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who acts as a liaison of sorts between his favourite (only?) employee and Rose (Albert Brooks), a seriously shady figure whose partner, Nino (Ron Perlman), is more overt about his underground activities.
There’s also Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives with her son Benicio (Kaden Leos) in the same apartment complex as the Driver. The three of them warm up towards one another, but when Irene’s husband is released from prison, events and characters take a dark turn – but not necessarily as one might expect.
As can be seen above, Drive boasts a strong cast, Brooks in particular. There’s brief but striking appearance by Christina Hendricks. Gosling’s hero figure is soft spoken and restrained, at least at first, a modern day Man With No Name who listens in on police radio transmissions when doing his job.
The film is violent, and the brutality and gore catches you off guard. In that sense, it’s violent in the same way as A History of Violence, which also used explicit violence to root its content in some sort of reality or authenticity. The film has a stunning sound track, one that is functional and not simply audio window dressing. The music frames Drive as ominous from the start, and certain songs are cleverly used to comment on and emphasise certain events. Refn’s choice of music is as premeditated as his images. Because most of all, Drive is a richly visual film that reminded me a bit of De Palma’s work. The film has a 1980s feel about it, though it’s clearly set in contemporary times. The look, the appearance of the characters – the Driver almost always wears the same white jacket with a yellow scorpion on its back, even when it gets dirty or bloody – the music, limited dialogue and editing speak to a visual sensibility one does not see often.
Drive is stylish, economic and unconventional filmmaking. It’s a violent thriller that knows itself (young Benicio at one stage talks about how easily one can identify a story’s villain) and plays with audience reactions as much as character reactions (see the elevator scene in particular, as well as when the Driver stumbles upon another character in dire straits in a parking garage).
Drive cements Refn’s reputation as another Danish filmmaker willing to pull a rabbit out of a hat now and again by refusing to strictly adhere to genre conventions. Yes, story wise the film paints in broad strokes, but the images are what sets the film apart, not the story. Refn’s previous film, the Viking neo-epic Valhalla Rising, achieved something similar, and here he’s told another story of a character who goes to hell.
He is a part-time stuntman, auto repair worker and part-time criminal cohort. People contact him to pick them up at certain places and drop them off at others; he is the central force in the thinking person’s The Transporter. His boss at the repair shop is Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who acts as a liaison of sorts between his favourite (only?) employee and Rose (Albert Brooks), a seriously shady figure whose partner, Nino (Ron Perlman), is more overt about his underground activities.
There’s also Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives with her son Benicio (Kaden Leos) in the same apartment complex as the Driver. The three of them warm up towards one another, but when Irene’s husband is released from prison, events and characters take a dark turn – but not necessarily as one might expect.
As can be seen above, Drive boasts a strong cast, Brooks in particular. There’s brief but striking appearance by Christina Hendricks. Gosling’s hero figure is soft spoken and restrained, at least at first, a modern day Man With No Name who listens in on police radio transmissions when doing his job.
The film is violent, and the brutality and gore catches you off guard. In that sense, it’s violent in the same way as A History of Violence, which also used explicit violence to root its content in some sort of reality or authenticity. The film has a stunning sound track, one that is functional and not simply audio window dressing. The music frames Drive as ominous from the start, and certain songs are cleverly used to comment on and emphasise certain events. Refn’s choice of music is as premeditated as his images. Because most of all, Drive is a richly visual film that reminded me a bit of De Palma’s work. The film has a 1980s feel about it, though it’s clearly set in contemporary times. The look, the appearance of the characters – the Driver almost always wears the same white jacket with a yellow scorpion on its back, even when it gets dirty or bloody – the music, limited dialogue and editing speak to a visual sensibility one does not see often.
Drive is stylish, economic and unconventional filmmaking. It’s a violent thriller that knows itself (young Benicio at one stage talks about how easily one can identify a story’s villain) and plays with audience reactions as much as character reactions (see the elevator scene in particular, as well as when the Driver stumbles upon another character in dire straits in a parking garage).
Drive cements Refn’s reputation as another Danish filmmaker willing to pull a rabbit out of a hat now and again by refusing to strictly adhere to genre conventions. Yes, story wise the film paints in broad strokes, but the images are what sets the film apart, not the story. Refn’s previous film, the Viking neo-epic Valhalla Rising, achieved something similar, and here he’s told another story of a character who goes to hell.
1 comment:
Great review and a stunning film! Really blew my mind. And I agree, the sound track is perfect. And I also caught that line of Benicio of how easy it is to spot a villain and thought it was quite significant. I really wanna see Valhalla Rising after this
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