We excitedly countdown to the 72nd Festival de Cannes with a different prize winning film each day.
Drive, 2011
Prix de la mise en scène – Nicolas Winding Refn
Sometimes you can have style *and* substance.
I’ve seen Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive (which won him the Best Director Award at that year’s Cannes Film Festival) many times, yet it never feels wholly familiar. Though I know each scene well by know, there’s still a feeling that this film is vibrantly alive – that anything could happen. I think that is due, in large part, to the stylish mood set by Refn from the film’s very first frame.
This film follows The Driver (Ryan Gosling). We never learn his name. All we need to know is that he drives – as a stuntman in the movies, and as an accomplice to the L.A. crime world at night. He also has rules – which we learn in the very first scene. As long as you follow his rules, he’ll get you where you need to go, even if it involves illegal activities.
His rules are upended when he moves to a new apartment complex and meets Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos). Benicio’s father, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is in prison. The Driver begins to spend time with them and they quickly become key parts of each other’s lives. But even within this burgeoning romance, Refn finds ways to subtly include moments that slowly build the substance of the story at the heart of Drive.
One such moment comes when The Driver and Benicio are sitting in Irene’s apartment watching a cartoon. Benicio mentions that the shark on screen is clearly the bad guy. “There aren’t any good sharks?” asks The Driver.
Other characters who play key roles are The Driver’s friend and employer at a local body shop, Shannon (Bryan Cranston); Shannon’s acquaintance and L.A. “businessman” Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks); and Rose’s “business” partner Nino (Ron Perlman). Christina Hendricks also plays a minor role as Blanche, an accomplice in one of the crimes that The Driver helps carry out.
The entire cast is fantastic. Gosling has become so good in this quiet, simmering roles that I think we’ve begun to take him for granted. He is clearly one of the greatest actors of his generation. Any film with Oscar Isaac in it instantly has my attention, and Perlman plays the L.A. mob boss well. And Cranston is good in everything he does. But I go back and forth between Mulligan and Brooks when deciding on the film’s best performance.
Mulligan is given a difficult task here. Her character is mostly quiet and reserved. In fact, the entire film is fairly tame for much of its first half. This caused some negative reaction due to the perception that this would be a fast-paced, car chase type of film. There are those scenes, but there are also long stretches where the film moves slowly and has almost a brooding quality to it. Mulligan navigates her character’s role in that story so well. She builds a relationship right in front of our eyes using mostly facial expressions and quiet reactions.
Brooks is playing against type here. If you know him from films like Broadcast News, his comedic prowess that came out so well in those films is nowhere to be found here. Even in Taxi Driver (a film to which Drive owes a great debt) Brooks is given mostly light-hearted material. Here, he has a simmering terror to him. Bernie Rose does not seem like the type of man you want to cross.
While you can certainly see parallels to Taxi Driver and other classics here, I think the most urgent influence on this film is Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film Le Samourai. That film, too, focused on a quiet character simply going about his business – even though that business includes illicit activity. The stylish, brooding tone in Drive seems eerily similar to that classic French film. Even so, as this film reaches its powerful climax, Refn shows why he is a completely original artist.
Once The Driver has found himself pulled deeper and deeper into a crime gone wrong, the film sheds its brooding tone for a shockingly violent one. The end to this film has some of the most graphic scenes of violence you’ll see. I can see how some have found the tonal shift to be off-putting, but I’ve always felt that Refn earned that shift.
The quiet early scenes are not without hints at what is swirling inside of The Driver. Much like Travis Bickle, he only needs a reason for that violent streak to be unleashed. That reason is Irene and Benicio. Once they are in danger, nothing holds back The Driver. All of this is set up masterfully in the film’s early scenes.
Before I go any further, I must mention the film’s music. From the opening scene, to the masterful opening credits sequence to the film’s moving closing, it’s European, electric music stylings add to the stylish nature of the visual story being crafted. This will forever be one of my favorite soundtracks, because it sets the perfect mood for the story Refn crafts.
This film has a massive respect for its audience, something that I find to be one of the most rewarding qualities in a film. It doesn’t spell everything out – even key details. For instance, The Driver asks a character if he has ever heard of the story of the scorpion and the frog before. Maybe this is a well-known story, but I was not aware of it prior to seeing the film. It is a key plot element, given the fact that The Driver wears a scorpion jacket for most of the film.
But the story is never told or explained. It is left for the audience to seek out and piece together its significance to the story. I love the bravery that Refn shows there by basically trusting the audience to do the work necessary to understand this character.
Not only that, but there are countless moments in this film that take on greater significance once you watch the film again. When Nino walks in on Bernie and Shannon talking, for instance, you can deduce that Shannon and Nino have a prior relationship. But the full significance of that relationship is not known until much later in the film. When you watch it a second time, some of the dialogue in that early scene takes on new layers of intimidation and antagonism.
I love this film for what it has to say about human nature. Can people change, or are we all resigned to certain fates? Can we break loose of the systems in which we find ourselves, or are those attempts futile? That is why the tonal shifts, which may seem at odds with each other at first, are so necessary. We, as the viewer, are left to decide who The Driver really is. Is he the scorpion or the frog? Can he change?
On top of all that depth of substance, there are few films as stylish as this one. The music and the visuals make it such a fun watch, and the substance carries us through the moments of gruesome violence to an ending that is so compelling. The way the film ends leaves itself open to multiple interpretations.
That’s another quality I love in a film. The more I grow to love this film, the more I realize that I’ll never quite have it cornered. It moves and shifts like a pair of taillights speeding through the L.A. night. With this film, I’m okay to simply be along for the ride, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.
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