Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

[James Mills]

Someone from another forum I used to post at had these interpretations:

"The whole idea is the concept of "being a man," which is represented by both the Driver and Bernie. Bernie is more obvious, as he has a role to play as a gangster that he doesn't really doesn't want to. The Driver is a bit trickier, but he sees himself as a white knight, only he realizes that the real world doesn't work like that when Irene backs away from him after he stomps that guys head in like an old jack-o-lantern. The Driver actually takes it to another level, at least as a character, since he's essentially an alien trying to figure out how to be human. He had a shot to get there in L.A. but things didn't work out so he ends the movie by moving on to the next one."

I find this take very interesting... it not only makes the ending more understandable, but also accounts for my concerns about why he's taken to Carey so much (as this implies that it isn't the first time he's tried to save someone but has failed from being so damn insane; this would support Brian C's earlier statements and indeed prove that I was under wrong presumptions of his past). I would like to watch it again with this in mind, as the concept itself went way over my head with the first viewing. I think I gave up trying to draw any meaning from Drive when I assumed that there was nothing to figure out, but this idea suggests otherwise.

Any thoughts on this reading?

[matrixschmatrix]

Another thread successfully ruined by illogical trolling. Winter's Bone 2.0. Remind me to never fix anyone up with James Mills, by the way - long conversations about why he doesn't like her that much until he's sure that no one more attractive will come along might be a turn-off for her.

Eh, whatever, it's not like interrupted an ongoing discussion, and frankly I think his wildly inaccurate complaints sometimes help me to keep what a movie actually does more firmly in mind. I liked Winter's Bone better after that whole thing, and I certainly don't like Drive less than I did yesterday. And hell, at least he's not belligerent like Nothing was.

James, I think that interpretation you've posted isn't far off from what the consensus reading here was- Driver is clearly a man who has difficulty relating to people in a normal, human way, and he values his time with Mulligan immensely in part because it makes him feel more connected. It's a movie that's deliberately referencing Taxi Driver and Le Samourai, and that is a plot thread in both of those movies- maybe you failed to recognize this movie's characterization because you've missed the earlier films that laid some of the groundwork.

(Though that still doesn't explain why some of the 'plot holes' you raised were things explicitly dealt with in the movie, like why Ron Perlman was after Driver rather than just taking the money.)

(Also, you really really need to stop doing the "Well fine I've had my say you guys can sort it out yourselves" and then posting six more times thing, it's annoying as hell man)

[mfunk9786]

That's my only real problem with the guy. Your goal should be expressing your opinion and letting it become part of the dialogue, not plugging away until you've convinced everyone here to see things your way. Everyone here understands that except for people who were banned for not understanding that.

[tarpilot]

yyyyyy

[James Mills]

Look, I'm not the piracy police - but you yourself is admitting its a movie about style, mood, feeling.... criticizing it on such a detailed level after watching an unfinished cut compressed down from film to a miniscule 700mb file.... of course you'd get hung up attacking something, watching a style piece in such conditions misses the whole point! Again, I wouldn't say anything if it wasn't playing in theaters nationwide as we type.... but cmon, this is like grading "Enter the Void" after watching it on an iPhone.

I don't know why anyone's bothering to respond to James Mills after this ridiculousness has been pointed out.

It was a completely color corrected DVD screener, only the sound mixing was unfinished. Watching DVDs isn't ridiculous.

[knives]

Watching a DVD that is different from an accepted edit is though. The music and sound including mixing does a lot of the storytelling in the movie so if your screener, for example, didn't have the "Real Hero" song you lost out on some not too subtle details.

[James Mills]

Only the score throughout the second act was different, the songs were the same. Both the opening and ending songs were essential to the plot, I agree.

edit: and talk about derailing threads, you guys continue to post drivel about your contemptuous opinions of me rather than discuss the film. And now you will all respond to this with your rolly eye face bullshit and proceed to complain about how I've derailed the thread.

[mfunk9786]

Hey guys, wasn't the soundtrack for the finished cut of this movie that we paid to buy a ticket for great?

[flyonthewall2983]

Absolutely. I'm more enamored of the score, and the piece "Night Drive" by Chromatics. The rest of the songs aren't exactly my cup of tea, but I understand their place in the story. It would be so easy to do a movie like this to songs from the 80's that everyone knows, to move a million copies of the soundtrack. But as I understand it, the album is the number one soundtrack on iTunes now and has moved up quickly.

[mfunk9786]

Real Hero has been stuck in my head for a month.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've been driving around with the soundtrack cranked up as high as it will go for hours at a time since the movie came out. It's better than the movie, and I really liked the movie.

(Admittedly I generally listen to the previously-existing songs rather than the composed-for-the-film score, which is good but more background-ish than the songs are.)

[domino harvey]

The soundtrack was one of the few things I really enjoyed about the film and it is absolutely integral to appreciating the whole thing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go bitch in the Francis Ford Coppola thread about the five hour workprint of Apocalypse Now being too long, maan!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

For anyone who cares, the soundtrack version of "Under Your Spell" by Desire is not the same as the album version. Maybe I'm still on a kick from a mixtape that had the same sort of music, but I enjoy most of the Martinez cues as much as the rest of the soundtrack. "Real Hero" is stuck in my head, too.

[Foam]

I've probably played "Nightcall" 50 times since seeing this.

[John Cope]

I love the whole thing and, as a long time fan, am very happy to see Cliff Martinez reap his well deserved moment of glory (for this and Contagion, of course).

Someone from another forum I used to post at had these interpretations:

"The whole idea is the concept of "being a man," which is represented by both the Driver and Bernie. Bernie is more obvious, as he has a role to play as a gangster that he doesn't really doesn't want to. The Driver is a bit trickier, but he sees himself as a white knight, only he realizes that the real world doesn't work like that when Irene backs away from him after he stomps that guys head in like an old jack-o-lantern. The Driver actually takes it to another level, at least as a character, since he's essentially an alien trying to figure out how to be human. He had a shot to get there in L.A. but things didn't work out so he ends the movie by moving on to the next one."

I find this take very interesting... it not only makes the ending more understandable, but also accounts for my concerns about why he's taken to Carey so much (as this implies that it isn't the first time he's tried to save someone but has failed from being so damn insane; this would support Brian C's earlier statements and indeed prove that I was under wrong presumptions of his past). I would like to watch it again with this in mind, as the concept itself went way over my head with the first viewing. I think I gave up trying to draw any meaning from Drive when I assumed that there was nothing to figure out, but this idea suggests otherwise.

Any thoughts on this reading?

It's the kind of picture where small things mean a lot and nothing is irrelevant. The use of profanity, for instance--who uses it when and how. That doesn't seem insignificant. In fact, it seems a telling detail.

The elevator scene is interesting for the way in which Irene reacts because it indicates a kind of meta discrepancy. In Michael Mann's films, which also feature a mythic aesthetic, everyone is playing by the same rules in the same world. If someone reacted to what Driver did there it would be more of a rush-of-the-moment commiseration or some kind of other expression of anxiety evoked and addressed; the action would be appropriately heightened to fit with the scheme of the whole in other words (even when Will Graham gets carried away in Manhunter his reaction is of a piece with the rest). Here, though, Irene's reaction does indeed betray a dissonance. There is, in that moment, the added complexity of a non-perfectly calibrated world, an ideal unrealizable because all parties do not agree to it, may not even be aware of it or have simply misjudged its allowable effects.

Driver resuscitates at the end to the gradual build of his "theme" (note how the music playing at Standard's welcome home party, which unites Irene and Driver across space, eventually fully infiltrates his private room). It doesn't matter if he is literally alive or not at the end as his conceived legacy and legendary qualities remain vitally worth living and dying for and that is the point.

Oh, and as far as I'm concerned the real winner here is Oscar Isaac. Between this and Sucker Punch he's been in two of the absolute finest films of the year. And both films interestingly treat their respective ideas on the application of aesthetics and our remove from them similarly seriously.

[JMULL222]

Also allegedly missing in the bootleg:

Spoiler

the shot of Driver leaving into the sunset fades immediately, omitting the pan down to Bernie's dead body and the bag of money, left there alone. Also the final scene is edited differently (it's more linear in the bootleg) and alot of the sounds in the violent scenes (the overwhelming bass of the gun shots, the cliff martinez horns over the hammer, the excrutiating punch effects) are missing.

Pretty big point to miss out on, no?

[James Mills]

It's the kind of picture where small things mean a lot and nothing is irrelevant. The use of profanity, for instance--who uses it when and how. That doesn't seem insignificant. In fact, it seems a telling detail.

The elevator scene is interesting for the way in which Irene reacts because it indicates a kind of meta discrepancy. In Michael Mann's films, which also feature a mythic aesthetic, everyone is playing by the same rules in the same world. If someone reacted to what Driver did there it would be more of a rush-of-the-moment commiseration or some kind of other expression of anxiety evoked and addressed; the action would be appropriately heightened to fit with the scheme of the whole in other words (even when Will Graham gets carried away in Manhunter his reaction is of a piece with the rest). Here, though, Irene's reaction does indeed betray a dissonance. There is, in that moment, the added complexity of a non-perfectly calibrated world, an ideal unrealizable because all parties do not agree to it, may not even be aware of it or have simply misjudged its allowable effects.

Driver resuscitates at the end to the gradual build of his "theme" (note how the music playing at Standard's welcome home party, which unites Irene and Driver across space, eventually fully infiltrates his private room). It doesn't matter if he is literally alive or not at the end as his conceived legacy and legendary qualities remain vitally worth living and dying for and that is the point.

Oh, and as far as I'm concerned the real winner here is Oscar Isaac. Between this and Sucker Punch he's been in two of the absolute finest films of the year. And both films interestingly treat their respective ideas on the application of aesthetics and our remove from them similarly seriously.

This analysis has convinced me that I'm going to have to see it again; there's just too much in Driver's arc that I seem to have missed while focusing solely on the film's visual aesthetics.

Also allegedly missing in the bootleg:

Spoiler

the shot of Driver leaving into the sunset fades immediately, omitting the pan down to Bernie's dead body and the bag of money, left there alone. Also the final scene is edited differently (it's more linear in the bootleg) and alot of the sounds in the violent scenes (the overwhelming bass of the gun shots, the cliff martinez horns over the hammer, the excrutiating punch effects) are missing.

Pretty big point to miss out on, no?

Dude, BOLD Films sent me their personal screener, it was not a bootleg. None of this was omitted and the final sequence was absolutely nonlinear.

[domino harvey]

James Mills, I bet BOLD Films loves you, James Mills, saying that over and over on a public and highly visible discussion forum, James Mills

[Mr. Ned]

Here, though, Irene's reaction does indeed betray a dissonance. There is, in that moment, the added complexity of a non-perfectly calibrated world, an ideal unrealizable because all parties do not agree to it, may not even be aware of it or have simply misjudged its allowable effects.

I think this is the film's greatest strength, and allows the viewer to forgive the plot-holes and coincidences (slight though they are) and look at the deliberate ambiguities as morsels to chew on than formative errors. Each character here, save maybe Benicio because he's too young, suffers from the same sort of social malaise: they are unable to assuage the dissonance they harbor between their internal and external worlds, because they are unable to compromise their own sense of personal narrative with the outer world or because the outer one fails to bend to their innate self-conception due to the presence of others and their own autonomy. That's the tragedy of living a socialized existence, I suppose: we are often forced to role-play as opposed to living genuine, harmonious existences because social reality is privy to the influence of a multitude of forces and drives, as are its residents, that make harmony pretty much impossible. I think Driver, as enveloped as he is in his thrill-seeking persona, does recognize at least partially it is a role -- a jacket he can take off and on -- but that sense of identity becomes seriously disturbed and transmuted when he is forced to don it against people like Bernie and Nino, two men who openly contest to their unhappiness with the roles they play and yet continue to do so anyways(Nino's infantile to be a genuine Italian gangster, despite being Jewish; Bernie's immersion into the crime world, despite wanting 'legitimate' outlets like stock car racing). Unlike Driver, who at least harbors some sense of self-discipline with his tutelage in car engineering and stunt-work, Nino and Bernie are resentful children who are fucking things up well into middle-age because things didn't go their way; reading the film that way makes Driver's actions a little easier to swallow -- his 'alter-ego' an outlet for acknowledging, or at least accepting the presence of, illicit behavior that steadily gets mutated into something else -- but it nonetheless offers a modest inquiry at how we operate as social entities in all situations, not just ones that spring from antisocial behavior. What does it mean to be a real human being, to uphold some sense of code of maturity or honor or uprightness, to embody 'manhood' or 'womanhood' or some other culturally-derived characterization of behavior? That's why so many critics have labelled this "existential film," because it asks that pertinent question underneath its violence and aesthetics: what does it mean to live in an authentic life? I think Refn tunes into the inherent discrepancy and distance all of us can and do feel on a daily basis between the dreams we carry and the lives we live, wishing they'd correspond at some point instead of floating as a specter between both realms. That may not fully explain Driver's unrelenting devotion to Irene and Benicio, but it still gives his character a sense of humanity even as he steadily teeters in and out of it. He's trying to make things work instead of settling for depraved existences like Nino and Bernie and succumbing to lower drives of behavior, but even the most stalwart "white knight" cannot live up to an external, transcendent code on a permanent basis, try though he might. The self does not breed stable images; we often don't know why we do the things we do, and I'd like to think I am not the only one who feels that way pretty much all the time. And I guess that's why I commiserate with Driver after all his outbursts, because unlike his criminal doppelgangers he at least has a shred of conscience and is trying to be a 'real hero,' simultaneously being what the world needs him to be as he tries to make a better placed, even if that means crossing into darker territories than he'd like to go.

I've also overplayed the soundtrack, though I haven't gone full-blown listened to it in the car yet. Maybe I'll get around to that eventually.

[matrixschmatrix]

Hmm, that's a really interesting take- I think there's no question that the majority of the characters we see are, at some level, playacting one role or another. With Driver, it's complicated, because it's unclear that there's an authentic self for him to inhabit- it would be nice to think that it's the 'real him' when he's playing with Benicio, but I think one of the reasons that life is so attractive to him is that it enables him to try on a life that seems more fulfilling and meaningful than the monklike existence we normally see him live out- not necessarily because it's any more suited to 'the real him'.

On the other hand, his later-film vigilante action hero character also seems like a mask, quite literally at one point, and his fetishistic attachment to his uniform (and Gosling's comment about the character) imply that it is a self he has acquired, but not fundamentally his own character. Driving seems to have a narcotic effect on him, implying perhaps that he's looking to escape from some aspect of himself- with the implication possibly being that the violent anger is genuinely an inherent part of him, and his driving and White Knight pose are means he adopts in an attempt to direct that violence.

Which, interestingly, isn't true of Brooks' character at all- I see no reason to believe that he finds violence attractive or compelling at all, and seems instead to view it as an irritating necessity of business. I don't want to impose a Dexter-like structure on the movie, where we sympathize with the lead for channeling his desires and hate the other killers for failing to do so, or for killing without them- and Driver's violent impulses seem triggered, not spontaneous. But he's certainly a tightly-wound character, and he certainly seems to be driven (rimshot) by something he thinks will make him more of a person- whether that be a more agreeable mask or an escape from the pose he's adopted, it's not clear.

[James Mills]

Ned, I really like the idea that he's conscious of his own role playing, be it with the jacket on as the tough guy or with it off as the modest civilian at work or with Carey. I think, perhaps, that driving then is the only time he feels real, his only heroic escape from existentialism in general.

James Mills, I bet BOLD Films loves you, James Mills, saying that over and over on a public and highly visible discussion forum, James Mills

I said it once to emphasize that it wasn't a bootleg and then reiterated it another time when people still incorrectly assumed it was a bootleg. But sure, straw grasping ftw

[domino harvey]

Amazing. Not even our posts are safe from a total misreading

[Mr. Ned]

Yeah, I guess it comes down to the question of what defines the authentic self, what is the most authentic way of being. We can read Driver's driving as a sense of release or an evasive pursuit; we can read his solitary demeanor as a monk-like existence or as antisocial tendencies; his relationship to Irene and Benicio as true attraction and protectiveness or a fierce fetishism of another to fit one's desire; his anger could be triggered out of self-defense or suggest the presence of a repressed and unspoken trauma. Yet it still seems there's a sense of resistance in him to the nihilistic acceptance of violence as a way of life, which Bernie certainly emits, and the callow and affectated fatherhood that Standard provides Benicio. He definitely wants to be a "real human being", but I think Driver's crisis of identity stems more from the often detestable circumstances of living within socialized existence than any disjointed internal dynamic he might be carrying around with him. The inherent discrepancy of living amongst others isn't his fault.

[matrixschmatrix]

I couldn't fully get a read on how we were supposed to see Standard's character- at first, obviously, I assumed he would be a rival for Driver and a someone threatened by the connection Driver had to his wife, but his character develops as someone who sincerely seems to want to be a good father and a good person. There is a hovering insincerity about him, but I read that mostly as his unconscious resistance to working with a man he probably assumes has been sleeping with his wife.

[Mr. Ned]

Standard lives up to his name because, unlike Driver, he can't separate the various realms of his life in a way that's suitable to perform his duties as a husband, father, upstanding citizen, while holding the "badness" of the world at an arm's length. He doesn't know how to protect himself or anyone else. He just exudes insecure affectation from the minute he's onscreen: his speech at his party; his machismo aggression with Driver in the hallway; talking about how Irene and him met for the first time at dinner, deliberately bringing up Irene being underage in front of his son and indirectly referencing his suspicions of Driver's intentions to everyone; even his desperation for protection in jail and failure to clear the matter up before he returns to his family shows he's not self-reliant, disciplined or emotionally sincere. Driver, on the other hand, has a steady job, is a father figure automatically with Benicio, and is able to keep the varying levels of his being in stable and well-defined spheres: there's work, theres' play; he even has an appreciation for nature! He's well-rounded and reliable in the ways Standard isn't, which makes Standard seem, well, pretty standard in comparison. That said, I think Standard is just another doppelganger to Driver, like all the male characters in the film are in one way or another.