Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn) [200 points/18 votes]
"Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn has stated in interviews that he’s drawn to films that run roughly ninety minutes long, not merely because “it’s a great pulp length” but because it approximates the duration of our dream cycle. The appeal of Winding Refn’s latest film, Drive, is how closely it emulates the sensation of walking through a dream. Both sensual and nightmarish, often at the same time, Drive employs the slimmest of genre frameworks to depict a phantasmagoric Los Angeles comprised of gangsters, hustlers, small-time crooks and an impossibly stoic wheelman that exists entirely outside of time and space. We recognize these characters and these situations as the hoariest of crime film staples, yet in its telling Drive defies convention at every turn. It is both instantly identifiable and completely alien.
Winding Refn is following in the tradition of John Boorman and Peter Yates as a European filmmaker traveling to America to craft an unusually bold staring vehicle for a steely-eyed leading man, but he differentiates himself by evoking a history of cinema, referencing films as diverse and seemingly incongruous as Kenneth Anger’s SCORPIO RISING, Jean-Pierre Melville’s LE SAMOURAI, and William Friedkin’s TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA and marrying these images to defiantly sincere pop music. The film is set in Los Angeles, yet it's one we rarely see on screen, shot amidst the mountains and strip malls of the San Fernando Valley, the mesmerizing drainage ditch nicknamed the LA River and the neon garishness of the LA Live Center downtown (in a joke that’s lost some of its potency in the past year, the film features a set piece built around a shockingly well attended LA Clippers game). But mostly, Drive accomplishes this dream-like sensation by recognizing the single greatest special effect in film is a well-composed close-up.
For a film as propulsive titled as Drive, it’s remarkably still. Winding Refn and his editor, Mat Newman, allow shots to hold for a breath or two too long, creating tension out of pregnant pauses and swoon-worthy romance out of a simple reaction shot. Winding Refn isn’t afraid to stage baldly theatrical tableaus, either, setting a violent encounter amongst a room of unaffected strippers posed like mannequins or adjusting the lighting scheme mid-shot to highlight a climactic kiss... a kiss that’s then followed by blood, exploding onto the scream with the force of a fire hose and accompanied by some of the most stomach-churning sound effects ever recorded (effects that even the Drive-averse Academy Awards couldn’t ignore). The violence in Drive arrives suddenly and without warning, shattering the film’s idyllic trance, like being forcefully shaken from a deep sleep.
This dichotomy is best exemplified in the film’s leading man, Ryan Gosling. Gosling, an immensely talented but often overly demonstrative actor, portrays his nameless driver as an enigmatic case study in dramatic minimalism. Possessing an almost child-like innocence and only a handful of lines of dialogue, Gosling’s character is tender and sweet, caring for Carrie Mulligan’s Irene and her young son Benicio, while at all times respecting the boundaries of marriage, settling for a chaste hand-holding and happy to have it. Yet Gosling’s sweetness disguises (or perhaps simply exists alongside of it) a tightly coiled rage that bursts through the calm surface with startling savagery, surprising no one more than himself. Like Frankenstein’s monster in a white satin racing jacket, Gosling appears terrified by his own strength and ashamed of the fear he inspires in others.
There is a preposterousness to Drive which is engrained in its charm; this is a film that is both anachronistically earnest and notably aware of its own silliness. At one point Albert Brooks’ unctuous yet homicidal Bernie Rose explains of the action films in the 80’s that he used to produce, “one critic called them European... I thought they were shit”, as though the film were anticipating both how its champions and detractors would respond to it. In 2011, Drive won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, produced a best selling soundtrack, was a modest financial success and inspired an omnipresent Halloween custom for guys of a certain age. It was also at the center of an unintentionally hilarious lawsuit and, in one especially odd instance, motivated a confused individual to publicly throw a hot dog at Tiger Woods. Appropriately, even the reaction to Drive feels like a dream. I hope I never wake up from it." - Andrew Dignan
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