Visual storytelling has become a lost art in today’s films. Visual spectacle is thriving, as blockbusters create stunning set pieces. While that is appreciated, few filmmakers take full advantage of the medium to tell their stories.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a wonderful exception to this norm. His noirish fairy tale brilliantly uses a subtle visuals to tell its story, with Ryan Gosling’s Driver Of Few Words at its center. Equal parts beautiful and shockingly violent, Drive is a must for any cinephile due to its amazing ability to show us an emotional story.
“I Drive”
Drive follows Gosling’s mysterious Driver, a quiet loner with his own code who works as a stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. His life changes as he gets close to Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother in his apartment building. Their blooming romance is interrupted by the return of her troubled husband Standard (Oscar Isaac). After a botched heist, The Driver resorts to some brutal tactics to keep Irene and her family safe.
Some may be turned off by Gosling’s minimalist performance, but it’s the heart of the film. The Driver is a throwback to the mysterious but honorable loners from the western or film noir. His character expresses himself through looks and body language…an almost purely visual character. When the Driver does speak, his straightforward words waste no time. On one hand this makes his kind words emotionally genuine, and on the other it makes his threats visceral.
Gosling is amazing in this role, completely at home in an almost completely cinematic character. There are no wasted movements or words in the performance, forcing us to watch every single moment he is on screen. We want to unlock the puzzle to this mysterious character and Gosling skillfully gives the observant viewer the pieces.
Irene is the pure light in the dark world of Drive, the damsel to Gosling’s not so “good” knight. A woman who lives for her family, specifically Benicio, she has the most noble motive of any character in the film. While she isn’t as quiet as the Driver, she expresses most of her emotion through her actions in the same way. Their connection is almost instant, beautiful in its simplicity.
While Mulligan is great in the role, the character is sometimes treated as too much of a “symbol” rather than a full person. There isn’t a lot of depth to her, at least not as much as the Driver has. In general, the women in the film are not portrayed with the same depth as their male counterparts. In addition to Irene occasionally sinking into shallow symbolism, Christina Hendricks feels wasted in a small role as a small time mobster’s girl.
That aside, Mulligan is a nice foil to Gosling, as the two share amazingly subtle chemistry. The two form the fairy tale that gives the film its emotional center, the humanity that makes the brutal violence all the more shocking. Albert Brooks’ Bernie is the power behind much of that violence and creates another intriguing relationship.
Bernie is a dark reflection of the Driver. While the Driver resorts to his brutal brand of violence in the name of love, Bernie has lost all respect for life. It’s all business, making him all the more threatening. Brooks brings an unsettling aloofness to Bernie, creating a suitably frightening “heavy” for this neo noir.
The rest of the cast is great. Ron Perlman is loud and abrasive as Bernie’s best friend Nino, a wannabe gangster. Bryan Cranston is charmingly the opposite as the good hearted Shannon, a sort of father figure to the Driver. Oscar Isaac begs for more screen time with his thoughtful portrayal of Irene’s husband Standard.
A Dark Fairy Tale for LA
In the opening chase, Nicolas Winding Refn creates a sequence that plays with our expectations of a film called Drive. The getaway is not a break neck chase at unbelievable speeds. It’s a tension filled game of cat and mouse with Refn’s camera concentrating on his characters rather than the road. The chase is a hint to the world Refn is creating, one that gives you the unexpected.
Drive is a fairy tale and a dark neo noir world, a combination that really shouldn’t work. However, Refn uses beautiful shots and slow motion to effectively create a world full of beauty and violence. Two sequences epitomize this seeming contradiction…and also show why they work together so well.
The Driver and Irene’s relationship starts in a beautiful sequence. As College and Electric Youth’s “A Real Hero” plays (“A real human being and a real hero…”), the Driver brings Irene and Benicio on a drive through the canals in Los Angeles. The sun shines down on the three, giving the scene a warm glow. The Driver and Irene exchange longing looks and warm smiles, expressing every emotion they can’t say.
The sequence is almost jarring in its beauty and optimism, but it fits because it forms the noble motivation for The Driver. For a man who keeps criminals at a distance by simply being their driver, this relationship is as pure as it gets. He finally has something to care about.
While Irene is married, there is an innocence to their affair. Both never overstep their boundaries, with Refn and the actors concentrating on their looks and gestures to express their feelings. Refn uses slow motion beautifully in the sequence, creating a feeling of absolute bliss in this sequence. It’s a fairy tale, where their mutual attraction is seemingly all they need.
Contrast this with the infamous elevator sequence. Refn again relies on his character’s unspoken gestures to convey the danger in the sequence. The Driver quietly observes a threat and brings Irene in close. His use of slow motion in the sequence brilliantly contrasts the beauty from the earlier “love” scene. Here it shows just how ugly violence can get.
In general, Refn’s use of slow motion during the violence is subversive. Other films might use slow motion to glorify the action, but here, it’s used to shove the brutality in your face. It never feels gratuitous…if anything it shows just how human the characters really are. Rage is an ugly emotion, one that even the best of us fall into.
This is a world capable of anything, where beauty and violence coexist in equal measure. Yes, there are fairy tale romances. But there are also people capable of terrible brutality. Sometimes, those two come tragically together.
Visual Storytelling
Drive is as close to visual storytelling perfection we can get in a time when the filmmaking world feels like it has to explain every detail. Refn never underestimates his audience, letting the film and his actors masterfully tell a compelling dark fairy tale. It’s not a perfect film, but it gets pretty damn close to it.
SCORE: 9 OUT OF 10