Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

[matrixschmatrix]

I think one of Refn's major interests in his last three movies (this, Bronson, and Valhalla Rising) is looking at people who are deeply, reflexively violent, and and how different social milieux react to that violence differently- in Valhalla Rising it's sort of every day life, in Bronson it's something the state is totally baffled by, and in Drive it's something that so doesn't fit that even amongst the generally violent world of the gangs, someone with a real love of it- like Driver- totally fails to integrate. The fact that he believes himself heroic isn't necessarily relevant.

[James Mills]

People like James Mills are wasting time deciphering a character who's basically a non-entity. Thief, a film it seems to take so much from, features a protagonist who's unashamedly an insecure bastard who flaunts his expensive clothes, refuses to abandon his lifestyle and essentially destroys everyone and dump his family for some sort of distorted idea of independence. It's a character with flaws, personality, goals: a real person, not a breathing cardboard cutout.

I wouldn't even go so far as to saying that I liked Drive as a film entirely, but I think completely dismissing the ambitious depth of its protagonist is kind of myopic. The theme of the scorpion's nature is obviously not a "non entity", and his ability to recognize this and then sacrifice his relationship to protect her future is pretty genius in a lot of ways.

In fact, I think had Refn done this script justice (particularly in adding texture and vulnerability to the protagonist simply with different stage/acting direction (in which case I agree with you on this matter, I guess)), it could have been an absolute masterpiece.

[matrixschmatrix]

Out of curiosity, have you actually read the script?

[knives]

It should also be noted that Refn forced many rewrites and supposedly the original draft he received was very different.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

And tarpilot, the point is not about visual motifs. I don't want the Driver to spout out expository dialogue underlining each feeling and problem, but someone looking into a mirror doesn't explain anything to me. Is he hurt? Does he feel his life is a lie? Does he think he's ugly? It just builds more mystery for a character that goes rather unexplained throughout the movie.

Huh? My point was about the connections Refn draws between The Driver's actions and his occupation. The images I referenced make up, to me, a rather clear progression of the film's sense of shifting identities/roles (I actually thought it was too on-the-nose): the first shot, of Driver and the Star positioned identically on opposite sides of the makeup mirror, literalizes his 'role' as a shadow/reflection of the film-in-film's violent hero; the shot of the mask obscured in the reflection of the sunglasses as Driver prepares to put it on and the subsequent image of him in the mask at the parlour window as he takes in his prey completes the transition from one side of 'hero' divide to the other.

Perhaps it's because I haven't seen the movie in months. I just don't remember that shot. I do remember him seeing through the window and didn't see it as crossing through some sort of divide. I just thought the shot was him peering into a restaurant in preparation for his mask execution. I didn't take any sort of deeper meaning to the shot. It's certainly a reason to watch it again with this perspective in mind.

Maybe its just where we are going to half to disagree, but even viewing the film and being involved as an active viewer thinking and observing, there is still nothing that tells me he's drenched in movie images and still think the heist work shows off more.

There is nothing that tells you he's drenched in movie images? Really? Not the fact that he drives for movies? Not the fact that he kills people while wearing his movie stunt mask? Not the fact that his chief enemy is an ex-film producer?

I didn't think those worked particularly well. I can work as a teller at a bank, doesn't exactly mean my life and soul is dedicated to money. Even the mask just seemed like something that was easily accessible and that could add anonimity and a bit of cruel sadism to refuse the victim to see their murderer's face. Perhaps I'm just blind, but I didn't pick up on that at all as a persona being obsessed with movies. Again, it may be because it wasn't the focus of the film and seemed insignificant in the grand scheme of events.

I never thought about it though, but perhaps the producer can even be taken for an allegory to how it is to work with movie producers. Double crossing, shadiness and the likes to benefit their gains. Certainly a movie I should see again and re-evaluate.

[James Mills]

It should also be noted that Refn forced many rewrites and supposedly the original draft he received was very different.

I had worked with Bold films often with the producer I used to be employed by, and he mentioned that the the original script was nearly 120 pages or something.

Either way, my point was that, even with the working script as it was for the film (a trimmed 70 pages or so, I believe my producer said), Refn could have gotten so much more depth out of the protagonist's character had he only implemented more vulnerability and insecurity from his performance. I'm talking about actions as subtle as looking down/away when he's speaking to someone, or twiddling his thumbs when doing his "I'm tool cool" spiel. As it is, the character is completely confident and secure with his alienating personality, something I wouldn't really associate with a character as concerned with being normal and finding love as his character proves by the film's resolution.

[knives]

I don't think he's concerned with being normal though. There's certainly no indication of that, but rather that he's oblivious to the alienating aspects of his personality and probably sees himself as some sort of dark knight anti-hero. The personality we're presented with would be totally mismatched with thumb twiddling or looking away. I mean would you want Travis Bickle to do likewise? Also the film makes it clear that he has some sort of mental issues, likely autism, which would make those traits you suggest really out of place. He's not vulnerable nor insecure. He's just very very stupid and out of place.

[zedz]

There is nothing that tells you he's drenched in movie images? Really? Not the fact that he drives for movies? Not the fact that he kills people while wearing his movie stunt mask? Not the fact that his chief enemy is an ex-film producer?

This seems to me a confusion of plot convenience and authorial imposition with character psychology. In what sense is the Driver's behaviour motivated by Brooks being an ex-film producer? These seem like pretty rudimentary screenwriting 'ironies' (in the most downgraded sense of the much-abused word) rather than evidence of profound characterization. He's a stunt-driver because that's the job that's most suited to his particular talents, so why do we have to read an 'obsession with movies' into that particular plot device? Maybe he's wearing that mask because he's profoundly damaged by his exposure to movie artifice, but why would you over-read the action in this particular way when there's a much more plausible explanation that a) it's a mask, and he wants to conceal his identity; b) it's a mask that fits and which he has easy access to; and c) it's going to freak out the people he's trying to intimidate. You can read additional symbolic meanings into the image of the masked driver (he doesn't have a fully formed identity of his own; he's reflexively performing 'action hero' acts), but those aren't meanings that derive from psychology, they're layered on at the level of plot and image. Personally I find this kind of "read my film this way" symbolic signposting pretty unsatisfying, at least compared to more in-depth characterisation and motivation. Though people get their meaning in different ways.

[tarpilot]

ooooooo

[mfunk9786]

The useless overanalytical conversation of the year award goes to

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, yeah, we should probably avoid having conversations where we talk... about movies...

[Mr Sausage]

And what particular use does your post serve, hmm? Because the only thing I see that it does is help fan the flames of negativity around here, something you seem to find pretty entertaining considering how often you do it.

[tarpilot]

I'm not sure if acknowledging that I lost the plot in the same post in which I lost it makes it more or less like a hotboxed dorm room

[mfunk9786]

Oh I'm just being goofy, guys. I just think that breaking down this film piece by piece is missing the entire point - but if I wrote up several paragraphs to explain that, I'd be a hypocrite

[stroszeck]

Out of curiosity, have you actually read the script?

The script is available online at one of those script sites and is a standard 120 page or so length. And its GODAWFUL. After skimming through it, it really gave me a new impression of the film, and what Refn really did with what little he was given. The original script is chalk full of hammy, hollywoody dialogue and reads much more like a Vin Diesel actioner than anything what it ended up being.

[knives]

Close, but Hugh Jackman not Diesel.

[flyonthewall2983]

Up for sound editing. Surprised Albert Brooks didn't get one. If there was ever a case of making up for a previously lost nomination, this would have been it.

[Zot!]

Pusher Trilogy Blu-Ray... Probably no english subs, but maybe this will show up elsewhere.

[domino harvey]

[stroszeck]

Thats a thing of beauty.

[bdsweeney]

That's well done (though the text badly needs an edit).

Where did you find it, Domino?

[Cold Bishop]

James White made the art, but I don't know who turned it into a VHS.

[rohmerin]

One of the best film of this century for me. It has shocked me on my sofa. I wish I could see it in a cinema, but here it's dubbed (fucking Spanisthan)

The use of silence, sound and the amazing songs are under Paolo Sorrentino's style. Did anyone see it similar?

[colinr0380]

I've finally seen the film and thought it was absolutely magnificent! There were quite a number of moments where I mentally crossed my fingers in the hope that the film would do something or not ruin a moment which it then proceeded to live up to admirably, such as the elevator doors closing between the driver and Irene; the suspicious, yet never developing into antagonistic, relationship between the driver and Standard over Irene; anything involving Albert Brooks; the pulling away from the death of Ron Perlman's character (which strangely reminded of the end of The Limey) and especially that final image of the (fatally?) wounded driver back in his car, something which felt extremely reminiscent of the end of Killing of a Chinese Bookie, in the sense of the character back where they feel they belong to enjoy their last moments doing what they love and which they feel defines them.

I was surprised to read all of the anti-hero comments on the last couple of pages as I felt that, while the downward spiral was caused by the driver's unfulfilled love of Irene, it also feels extremely heroic. Complicated perhaps by the chaos that this infatuation causes (an unrequited love which ends up destroying everyone around the problematically 'inarticulate'-slash-'pure' centre of the two lovers), and heroic to the fault that the Driver prefers to go off into myth, abandoning Irene and Benicio, when perhaps there was the possibility of returning to them now that the gang was destroyed (is this a call back to the opening robbery - the Driver has given them a metaphorical 'five minutes' and now walks away?) This I think is what makes those lyrics in that final 'mythical' song so important - can you be both a "hero" and a "real human being"? Do you have to sacrifice one to be the other?

It certainly seems like a cautionary tale about trying to do a good deed, which then unfortunately backfires spectacularly. I think that this perfectly justifies the extreme violence once everything is starting to go wrong - this is a cautious man who refuses to participate in any of the robberies except from the perspective of sitting in the car and driving them away, and then suddenly is confronted by actually witnessing bloody murder perhaps for the first time in his life, and then of actually getting his hands dirty by revenging the same. Compared to the thugs who beat up Standard, for whom perhaps violence is a way of life (and I love the slightly drugged-out topless dancers in the club seemingly unfazed to violence occurring around them in the hammer scene), there is a sense that the Driver does not have that, but when pushed to that point, the violence is much more extreme, personally focused and brutal, not knowing where the line between 'viciously beat' and 'kill' should be drawn (compared to, say, the way that Albert Brooks's character uses extreme violence in the "now you have to clean up after my mess" scene but is able to modulate it in the later murders, where it is not motivated by anger, just business).

And of course I was absolutely thrilled by the use of Riz Ortolani's "Oh My Love" from the Goodbye Uncle Tom soundtrack during that scene of approaching the door in the stunt mask and watching Perlman's character in full flow - that I think is a scene where the whole sense of 'mythical self sacrifice' comes together. The world of the gangsters comes up against a melding of the Driver's home life (a call back to the "Scary!" Halloween mask that Benicio wore) and the movie world in the mask (I especially like the way that someone covered in blood can be confident in not receiving a second glance as he walks through the back lot of a movie set to get the mask!)

The Driver is no Jason Statham in The Transporter films, although the impression I had is that he might possibly have been doubling the actor during the stunts! (In that sense the movie set car crashes are where he gets the thrills of 'safe destruction') Even in the opening robbery escape sequence it is less a high speed chase than a series of 'escapes and hiding' sequences, running down the clock until he can legitimately abandon his passengers and his car to whatever shoot out or capture that will occur, something which the events becoming personal prevent him from being able to do. The various car scenes therefore are compartmentalised into his various moods, and when everything goes wrong, the 'movie set destruction' spills out into the real world post-robbery chase, which then itself threatens his car mechanic 'normal world' job, and his 'home life', as events from one area impact on another, and I think that this caution even in the robberies that he participates in disintegrating is what causes the character to lash out even more violently in the second half of the film, as events are wrenched out of his control.

For example the lift scene, where the reconciliation with Irene is destroyed by having to kill the thug - it pushes the relationship between the Driver and Irene to a head quicker in the long kiss they share. But that relationship has to be pushed to the peak too quickly due to circumstance because as soon as the violence occurs that relationship will be over. Maybe Irene will get over that shock (as suggested by her going to the Driver's apartment door at the end of the film, searching for him), but for the Driver forcing her to witness that violence has sullied their 'innocent' relationship - turned him into another criminal replacement for Standard, and while Irene might be prepared to accommodate that after initial anger and shock, that compromise of (a maybe impossible) purity might be too much for the Driver to bear, so he chooses to save her and leave them instead, driving off half dead into Shane-style myth.

I found it kind of similar to my love of films - in the end it is about someone whose main relationship, and love, is with driving and the way that they apply that love into all aspects of their lives. That is what they do for (various) jobs; what they turn to when they want to impress a girl, or help someone out; what they think about at home (the only time we see the Driver's apartment is when he is tinkering with some engine parts); what they do when they are bored, or upset, or angry in order to take their mind off things. And when they are mortally wounded the car is what he turns to, even over the girl.

[domino harvey]