A still from Drive, directed by Nicolas Refn, 2011 [image source]
How do you write about a film in which the lack of language is one of its most striking characteristics. Drive, by Nicolas Refn lives in a space that makes speaking about it difficult. As I groped for the words that I was trying to use to put thoughts to the general sensibility I walked away with after seeing the film, as an actual 35mm print on a large Hollywood screen, I did the required amount of due diligence and investigated what other folks had been formulating as the meta text of the film. Reoccurring mentions of noir, pop, and ultraviolence filled the link landscape. However correct, I feel that these so not get to the core of the film. Perhaps that is because there might not be a core to get to, no final destination. The main character, a man with no name (in the cinematic tradition of primary male characters with no name) drives. It is more than what it does, it is who he is. He is the driver, a person in constant motion with no finite beginning or end - a life of almost endless surface streets (a statistic which our character notes at the beginning of the film).
He is a anithero in the old fashioned sense of the antihero, McQueenish in reserve and stylishness. He is not a Tony Soprano or Walter White, the contemporary anithero which has become burdened with mortgages, psychiatric disorders, and the knowledge of both their pasts and futures. He is instead, a character that is without any binding story, and almost through some type of magical intervention has divined his place on 21st century streets. His contemporary parallel appears at first to be the blank slate of a questing video character more than of films history's cowboys or samurai. This man out of nowhere concept is even alluded to by the Driver's boss, who mentions that he the Driver seemed to appear out of nowhere and ask for a job one day.
Though there is a narrative heist plot line it feels like it is there because Hollywood filmic conventions (and producers) require it; the film actually is a character study focusing on what makes people more than an empty shells wondering the streets - what makes them human. Time and time again within the film, we see charecters' human desires become their Achilles heel. The mob boss Nino wants to be considered a full mobster, not a lesser west coast Jewish imitation. The driver's boss, Shannon, wants to be more than just a mechanic; he wants to get ahead and have some impact in the world through whatever form it requires to full this potential. Within the story of Irene, the main female love interest within the film, we hear the tale of how she met her ex-con husband including a pickup line so terrible it denotes trouble from the instant she meets him, but she develops a relationship nonetheless.
However, it is the Driver's story (the camera barely leaves him during the entire film) and his foray into humanity is the most tragic. Though he is man of rules, few words and sparse living, early in the film he is placed in a grocery story, a hallmark of being a real person. This where the Driver sees Irene and her child, and seems to have a Pinocchio moment where he desires to be a real person with a wife and child, to have a normal life and live in a normal world. This is what brings forth the massive path of destruction and violence - a desire for greater humanity, a straying from rules into emotions.
Refn creates a world that is a constant state of the present. And while the characters in this study have to deal with the end results of their emotional landscapes, we understand the characters through the summations of their actions, not of their deep inner thoughts. Lives are very cause and effect based. In many ways this film seems to be the opposite of current societies 2.0 living where all is contemplated and discussed and little is actually done. In several interviews that Refn provided in relationship to Drive, he often cites John Hughes and pop music as some of his inspirations, an almost ode to the 80's. However, in the state in which this film actually dwells, I think the video game is the through line from the 80's to today. A place where the uber masculine can exist without having justify it's presence, where action is the path success (or at least a redo) and to much thought or hesitation will often end in death. In this way, Drive is perhaps the most refined and interesting filmic contemplation on gaming culture and character based identities that I have seen and a cross medium concept that feels successful because of its strange occupations of the edges (not quite a video game, not quite a traditional genre narrative, not quite a big budget Hollywood film, etc...), not in spite of them.
Though there is a narrative heist plot line it feels like it is there because Hollywood filmic conventions (and producers) require it; the film actually is a character study focusing on what makes people more than an empty shells wondering the streets - what makes them human. Time and time again within the film, we see charecters' human desires become their Achilles heel. The mob boss Nino wants to be considered a full mobster, not a lesser west coast Jewish imitation. The driver's boss, Shannon, wants to be more than just a mechanic; he wants to get ahead and have some impact in the world through whatever form it requires to full this potential. Within the story of Irene, the main female love interest within the film, we hear the tale of how she met her ex-con husband including a pickup line so terrible it denotes trouble from the instant she meets him, but she develops a relationship nonetheless.
However, it is the Driver's story (the camera barely leaves him during the entire film) and his foray into humanity is the most tragic. Though he is man of rules, few words and sparse living, early in the film he is placed in a grocery story, a hallmark of being a real person. This where the Driver sees Irene and her child, and seems to have a Pinocchio moment where he desires to be a real person with a wife and child, to have a normal life and live in a normal world. This is what brings forth the massive path of destruction and violence - a desire for greater humanity, a straying from rules into emotions.
Refn creates a world that is a constant state of the present. And while the characters in this study have to deal with the end results of their emotional landscapes, we understand the characters through the summations of their actions, not of their deep inner thoughts. Lives are very cause and effect based. In many ways this film seems to be the opposite of current societies 2.0 living where all is contemplated and discussed and little is actually done. In several interviews that Refn provided in relationship to Drive, he often cites John Hughes and pop music as some of his inspirations, an almost ode to the 80's. However, in the state in which this film actually dwells, I think the video game is the through line from the 80's to today. A place where the uber masculine can exist without having justify it's presence, where action is the path success (or at least a redo) and to much thought or hesitation will often end in death. In this way, Drive is perhaps the most refined and interesting filmic contemplation on gaming culture and character based identities that I have seen and a cross medium concept that feels successful because of its strange occupations of the edges (not quite a video game, not quite a traditional genre narrative, not quite a big budget Hollywood film, etc...), not in spite of them.
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