"My hands are a little dirty." "It's okay; mine are, too."
Drive is a minimalistic noir art-house set high octane action movie--or something sort of like that, maybe. Those some of the words critics are throwing around in attempt to describe this movie. It stars Ryan Gosling and is directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, most recently celebrated for Bronson, and, to a lesser degree, Valhalla Rising.
It's also my new favorite film of all time, basically, and here's a spoiler-free review that beings to explain why, after a slight warning.
For the first half of this film, Nicholas Winding Refn does with words what he usually does, in his earlier films, with violence. For the second half of the film, he does with violence what he usually does with violence, but better.
If violent movies are not your thing, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this film to you. I can promise that the violence is always tremendously deliberate as opposed to wasteful and meaningless, but, in truth, this only serves to give it more impact. The cool, slow love story this film begins as is essential to making the blood that comes later count. The silences are deep-silent, calm as the surface of a pond that's never rippled, neon serene water blending into soft noir city slick shadows on city walls, so that the shock of the blood splatter becomes so sudden and jarring that it ricochets off ugly and blasts right into beautiful.
Refn is incredibly good at portraying isolation, alienation, and at making audiences feel intensely uncomfortable. Drive's opening is quietly tacky in a way that makes you squirm in your seat, just by using intensely 80's synth pop and ridiculous pink lipstick font over gorgeous night time LA streets. Under Refn's hand, merely watching the movie's protagonist walk through a grocery store is tremendously fucking lonely. This isn't to say that the protagonist is uncomfortable: you, the viewer, are the uncomfortable one. The hero of the film is incredibly competent, devoid of flash, quietly intelligent and exceedingly principled. You don't feel sorry for him in the grocery store, but suddenly, he does seem very alien, very strange, very unflinchingly other.
Gosling's character has been called "the new Steve McQueen," and compared to Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name, and De niro's role in Taxi Driver. None of those descriptions really nail it, but they all sort of hint at some similar things, and, much like a certain type of tall, dark, and handsome, the hero here doesn't talk much.
But he does talk.
Refn noted in an interview somewhere that when the hero does speak, it's not to tough talk, ala, perhaps, the Man with No Name. When he speaks, it is not to harden him, but to soften him. And for this, perhaps, it is no mistake that Gosling (most famous as a rom-com darling, as far as I can tell) shines. His smiles are small, but quietly, boyishly tender. His screen time with Carey Mulligan's character, Irene, is somehow incredibly romantic despite being portrayed mostly in silences. It is not the silence of an empty silence, but the silence of a careful breath taken during a moment so perfect that it slips into awe. It's the quiet of a very controlled excitement; it's the quiet breath you take when your hear is soaring, speeding up and beating fit to burst out of your skin.
And the first half of the movie is a lot of that, actually: restraint and aching, magnificent potential in your chest. It's a lot of holding back for our hero, not in torment, but just...because. There's beauty in the pacing.
This isn't a movie with a "hero" that's a barely contained brooding basket case full of issues and random violence. This is a movie with a hero who is quietly himself, so disciplined that when he lets himself go--only in the right direction, at the right place, at the right time, but nonetheless completely brutally--it's breathtaking. It's shocking.
The hero is very disciplined, without a the manpain angst we've come to expect for this trope.
And I do mean "hero" in a very real sense. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't lightly confuse "protagonist" with "hero," because these are not the same things at all, but this movie is not about a morally bankrupt protag who happens to fall in mislabeled form of lust as a romantic tacked on subplot. Protag boy does some extreme things, but not out of some complicated ideological agenda the film has to scramble to justify and sell (hi, Magneto, hi; I see you waving). He is not an anti-hero; he is neither conflicted nor brooding.
He's a straight up fairy tale hero in a gritty, sometimes nasty setting.
Refn and crew, by the way, deliberately thought of this film in fairy tale terms. The LA they show us is a mythic, dreamy place--somewhere that should be familiar (from other movies) that's shot at different angles, at different parts, assembled in a new order. There's a heroic knight; there's a damsel. There's an evil wizard and a dragon that needs to be slain.
It's just that slaying dragons is a fucking messy, personal business.
Here's a quote from Refn in a recent GQ interview:
[Fairy tales] start very innocent and end very dark. Yet, innocence would always be protected.
There's also an explicit reference to a certain fairy tale made by Gosling's character. I was hoping for it the whole time, and, yeah, they went there, they did it.
Violence in movies is often meaningless--slick and pretty and happening in a vacuum where the good guys never really bleed. In Refn's films, violence is always intensely meaningful, though perhaps not always serious, and certainly not always quiet. There is a moment in Drive, according to many reviews, that is often causing the audience to gasp and laugh, uncomfortable and loud. There's a few of these moments, actually. For Refn, violence always has consequences, but violence is nonetheless sometimes barbarically comedic and an emotional catharsis.
Or, more simply: the violence is really fucking good. It makes you squirm. It makes you gasp. Sometimes it makes you cheer, and sometimes it makes you laugh and look away because it's so fucking, fucking uncomfortable. And sometimes, briefly, for sick little flashes, it's even cool, in a way that even I, desensitized as hell to this sort of thing, could not feel entirely good about.
Additionally, Drive is an exceedingly pretty film. The cinematography is gorgeous at absolutely every turn, and quietly jogging along the plot and action for the whole film is a story told entirely in colors. If this were any other film, most of the critics, most of the audience, would spend 3/4ths of their reviews raving over the camera work alone. It's fucking gorgeous fucking gorgeousosity, and no one can be bothered to talk about it for too long because there is just so much other shit going on.
The attention to detail is insane. I fucking love Refn. Remember how I said it's dreamy, fairy tale LA--it should look familiar, but it doesn't? Here's why, explained in an excerpt from the film's wiki:
While Drive is set in the present day, it carries a heavy 1980s atmosphere that is cautiously set from beginning to end and is underlined not only by the vehicles or music and clothes, but also by its architecture. The parts of the city seen in the Valley and by downtown Los Angeles are actually cheap stucco and mirrored glass, which has been carefully edited to leave out mostly any obviously new building.
So, seriously: style. The film has it in buckets. In a way, it's almost a shame: the movie is so pretty that people can easily dismiss it as style over substance. There's so much style that clearly nothing else can fit in there, right?
Wrong.
From a purely literary point of view, Drive is a masterpiece. With few words, and a beautifully minimalist script, it nonetheless constantly foreshadows, makes allegorical references, and employs a whole fucking host of literary devices. I posted on tumblr about this specifically, because the speech Gosling's character makes twice in the film--it's repeated so you know it's important--is the most fucking flawless example of synecdoche I have ever seen. The tiny monologue is the movie in miniature; the movie is the speech in gorgeously realized visuals. This movie has the main character tell you EXACTLY what's going to happen, and fulfills the promise to the fucking letter.
Seriously, the fuck. I'm flailing, here.
You can go into this movie and not pay attention, and enjoy a moody little action flick with a pretty boy in nice jeans. It delivers that, with some sweetness, with some menace. You can pay no attention at all to this movie's craft and it's fun.
But if you pay attention, this movie is fucking breathtaking. The nuance, the meaning, the bleak sense of nobility, is all there--and it's a little existentialist, if you like. Or if you don't like. The thematic implications are fun to discuss; this is a very violent movie that you can nonetheless sit around and ask questions about the nature of love of during discussion, if you wanted to.
There is also a searingly hot elevator scene.
What else? Jesus, it's wonderful. Just go see it. It's fucking beautiful.
A word on the ending: some people are complaining that it's ambiguous. This makes me laugh hysterically. It's like the people that know who the director is but still manage to be surprised that this isn't a slightly prettier Too Fast Too Furious, or something.
Have you guys ever seen a Nicholas Winding Refn movie?
But no, really, trust me. The ending is not ambiguous.
See this film. See it. it's glorious.
It also gives you a hard on for driving gloves.
Some other things:
Carey Muligan's character was originally Latina. There is a Hispanic character (Standard), played by Oscar Isaac, who spends some time in jail. Because of this, some people (and by "some people" I mean "mostly my fellow latinas, apparently") are upset.
But here's the thing: this is an interracial couple, an obviously interracial couple, that is in love. Standard isn't a wifebeater or a banger. Standard isn't a fucking THUG. Some viewers are calling him that, but way to miss the fucking point and not listen to a goddamn word he says. He's a family man who got into some shit and is achingly striving to straighten his life out. There's a scene with him reassuring his kid that breaks my fucking HEART. Standard is tender and loving and OH MY GOD I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS, GUYS. I avoided capslock in this entry until just now, and, like. I fucking cannot. SDFALDFSL KEYSMASH.
Breathe.
Okay, self.
If you read the original script for Drive--well, it kind of sucks, a little. It seems really bloated. Nicolas trimmed the shit out of that thing. The most striking difference, to me, however, is Standard--he's a lot dumber and less sympathetic in the script, for the most part. Apparently the actor, Oscar Isaac, and Nicolas Refn spent a lot of time talking about Standard, refining him, making him different, sweeter, better.
Standard is a thug who is not a thug. He looks like a thug, but he isn't a thug.
I fucking loved Standard.
And here's the thing, here's the thing. A bunch of (white, male) movie critics are thrilled by Mulligan's performance. As well they should be--she does a fantastic job in a role that's partly more situation than character.
A lot of these critics are saying, in delighted surprise, "Irene, for some reason, actually seems like too nice of a person to be involved in the events of the movie!"
And that's great, and I agree, but here's the fucking thing: if they'd given the role to a Latina, at least a portion of the people watching the film would look at her, look at Standard, and go, "oh! these are gangbanger people with gangbanger problems," and completely dismiss that portion of the plot.
I feel that in many ways, casting an interracial couple--at least when portrayed in this film--was far more brave. Progressive? I think you can make a good case for it.
And if they had cast a Latina, opposite Ryan Gosling's corn fed Ken doll blond boy good looks? The movie would probably feel a little like "here comes the white man to save the ethnic woman from her terrible and ethnic situation."
This is a tiny blond Anglo-girl married to a very bearded, kinda swarthy, very male Hispanic dude. I honestly don't think this would fly in a lot of movies, because colored men "stealing" the white girls ("WHERE THE WHITE WOMEN AT?") is such a cliche, still, in American culture, and audiences largely don't like it.
So rock the fuck on, Standard.
Yeah, bro, yeeaahhh.
Standard, I'm more than a little in love with you, just FYI.
And, well, yeah, the guy in the white jacket, too, obviously, but yeah.
I have a tremendous boner for Nicholas Winding Refn, if that isn't obvious. He has definitely outstripped all my other favorite directors by far.
It's weird. Drive is a very violent film, as I've said. Nicolas is a director of very violent films. Yet here is what Nicolas says of himself:
All my films are very feminine. Art is a feminine medium, and it’s a way to counter masculinity…I do look at myself as a feminine filmmaker, which makes me very masculine.
Which sounds a little ridic, right? But it's absolutely fucking true, if we accept that "feminine" often means softer, kinder. For someone who always has very physically competent, considered very "masculine," manly, macho protagonists, Nicolas is extremely focused on always giving them some tenderness. Clearly we're talking typical and contemporary rather mainstream definitions of feminine/masculine; whether the connotations of these terms is correct makes for an interesting discussion--I love that kind of shit--but not for right now.
That said:
There are a few moments with Tom Hardy in Bronson with a couple of girls, and it's just seriously...tender. It's fucked up and you cannot watch this film and conclude that Charlie is a sane person (before getting locked up, I mean); he is obviously socially stunted... but some of his interactions with women are heartbreakingly gentle, even when they are clumsy or out right wrong.
In Valhalla Rising, the obscenely badass warrior protagonist has a lot of screen time with a child, and without ever nearing the saccharine, the relationship between them is very protective and even somehow...nurturing.
Keep in mind that Valhalla Rising is a film where the protagonist, One Eye, looks like this for at least half of the time:
Here's a still from the set. That's Refn, in the shades. This is just the star, the kid, and the director standing and dicking around, yet I look at this and it's kind of like, "yep. that's the film."
In Drive, there is also a child, and the way that Ryan Gosling's character interacts with him is quietly stunning. The tenderness with Irene is also somehow very subtle yet totally fucking swoon-worthy if you're into that kind of thing.
I'm into that kind of thing when it comes with face smashing, so this is a great movie for me, obvs.
Refn's protagonists are nearly always very emotionally invested in their women, but not very demonstrative of it--except when, say, feelings for the girl propel every single action in the story. It's that kind of demonstrative rather than saying it with roses.
I kind of feel like I haven't properly addressed, er, heretonormative something something, but, goddamnit, I don't want to deconstruct that much right now.
HERE IS WHAT REFN PROTAGONISTS LOOK LIKE:
One Eye:
Bronson:
So when I say "masculine," I mean, like, Western media ideas of tough guy hyper masculinity with lots of muscles that's prone to getting into fistfights, as opposed to the answering feminine/mother stereotypes.
Look, let's have a picture of Tom Hardy's gorgeous fucking traps for no good reason:
Okay, whew.
Man, by comparison, Gosling is sort of a departure, almost. I mean, except he isn't really because Mads and Tom are both also fucking pretty boy heartthrobs. They just pump up a bit more for the Refn movies. Or they wear fewer clothes? SOMETHING.
Speculation behind the cut is spoiler free for people to enjoy gender norm teel deer. Includes some pictures from other Refn films.
Okay, done for the moment. My god, I put more effort into this review that a lot of fic. That is how in love I am.
TL;DR: Watch Drive.
ETA: ahaha, that effort apparently did not include spell check? fixed now.