DRIVE is hardly a burnout

It is a glorious thing when a film can leave its viewer completely spellbound. There’s nothing better than when the lights come up in a darkened theater and a wave of what tends to be a blend of relief, disappointment and satisfaction engulfs the audience. It usually begins with an alarming silence. Eventually a dull chatter will roar to life as the patrons grasp to decipher what is was they just witnessed.

The audience feels relieved because, most likely, the film has deviated from the intended goal – to take them out of reality and transport them to a place of fantasy and unfamiliarity. It is a place often anticipated better than the one they are in currently. But often, the film may have reminded them too much of their current situation, and worse, might not have ended in a manner that makes them feel comfortable.

The disappointment will come quite simply from the fact that, like anything good, it must come to end. I felt that way when I saw THE DARK KNIGHT for the first time. The audience sits in quiet desperation, internally screaming for more. There’s an overwhelming sense of desire to continue with the story, even though it has most likely ended at exactly the appropriate time.

And finally, the satisfaction will begin to bleed into the brain as the realization is confronted that what an audience member has just seen, was in fact, as great as it could have ever been. In my opinion, a fantastic movie can be likened to a fantastic sexual encounter. All of the same facets are there, and they follow the same path. A profound film can leave you in a similar state of ecstasy and afterglow in many of the same ways physical intimacy can – warm and fuzzy, or sometimes shattered and disillusioned.

With that said, the simple breakdown above applies to movies whose purpose has been to entirely captivate the audience with familiar situations and predicaments. It’s not difficult to move someone through a faulty relationship or the death of a loved one, etc. Everyone in the history of the world has been there. What happens, however, when a film moves someone so much, without any of the obvious plot staples?

The answer yields a masterstroke of a film like DRIVE.

DRIVE is a work that is not wholly relatable on a surface level, and barely even on an intermediate level. Not many people are professional stunt car drivers. Even less manage to direct that talent into a darker career as a getaway driver for LA’s criminal underbelly. The most unlikely percentage will own all of the above qualities and also manage to meet the love of his life two doors down from his own apartment and inevitably spend his remaining years protecting that love and her son from all the evils the world can spawn.

The few people who experience this film and understand it beyond the superficial layers are going to have an almost spiritual experience upon credit roll. From the acting, to the music, to the story, and the overall filmmaking, DRIVE is a film that maintains exactly that. Where this film could have been a disastrous and masturbatory experiment in car chases and hold-ups, cheapening every emotional value and relationship, it instead breaks down each scene into a meticulous, hand-touched, artful character study. Every minute is an exploration of the human psyche. It is a test of good versus evil and the shades of gray that muddy those two ideals. Despite the urgency in its title, DRIVE takes time to develop its numerous personalities, some of which occur even within the same character.

Ryan Gosling is without question a continuously less unsung, but still unprecedented man of the hour. With qualities that could be likened to a young Steve McQueen (the BULLITT comparison need not be explained once viewing this film), or more currently his next co-star George Clooney, he continues to push the boundaries of his silent strength and remarkable control over his craft. Gosling plays the main character of Driver, a man whose soul runs deep with clear pain and vacancy, desperately trying to cultivate his worth. Over the past few months numerous magazines have been turning up articles of the actor, implying some sort of schizophrenic dialogue. After seeing this film, it’s finally understood where that thought train is coming from. Gosling displayed a similar sort of dual neuro-occupancy in BLUE VALENTINE last year. He has had a knack for choosing roles that continuously vault him outside the typical Hollywood range, and keep him miles ahead of his colleagues.

In DRIVE, director Nicolas Winding Refn has created a masterful emotional narrative interwoven with what is most basically a heist gone terribly wrong. The mood of this film kept harkening back to certain movies of Michael Mann, particularly in the style of COLLATERAL. Between the quiet intensity of Cliff Martinez’s score, the muted but prismatic colors, and an incredibly sleek and cool attitude – all of it was slightly reminiscent. However, the framing and style of the shots, combined with some of the most critical and creative editing ever put to film separates DRIVE from any clear derivative. It manages to avoid becoming pretentious by staying true to the heart of the story and playing a perfect balance between form and function.

Most surprising to note, DRIVE is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. There are a few truly gut-wrenching scenes that come out of the clear blue and grow increasingly more intense as the film plays on. One of the most notable involves Christina Hendricks’ character and spares no expense on production value. These scenes are like live mines in an uncombed field and come with a switch-up in filming style that will be left to the audience to experience and determine.

From the opening scene of DRIVE the viewer understands that this film is completely atypical. It goes from a high-octane, adrenaline-pushing chaos, to a stunningly simplistic and innocent reality in a matter of minutes. The audience can surmise all they want about how this unconventional narrative will end, but nothing can truly prepare them for what will come next, or next, or next. Somehow, despite respectable run time, Refn manages to explore each character to its fullest, using extremely minimal dialogue, dependent on long takes and raw physical emotion. When the film draws to a close, the audience realizes they have been reeled in so tightly that the hands of vulnerability and humanity are choking them, and that they’ve been gasping for breath the entire time.