Drive

This past November, I found myself moving in with a friend without a job lined up. I wanted to take some time off to recenter myself and so spent the better part of the Holiday season living the hipster bum lifestyle, playing videogames and writing and watching movies. While I've always enjoyed films, I had been going through a spell where I mostly watched action movie schlock or so-bad-they're-good movies like the masterpieces by Neil Breen. At some point, though, after so much junk food, you start to crave a decent meal, and I began to add quality like Raging Bull, Mulholland Drive, and Hard Boiled to my diet. The world of cinema began to bloom inside my mind, as if I was reconnecting with a lost lover. I then made a point of beginning to whittle down my Netflix queue, in particular the movies I had been putting off for years because I never seemed to be in the right mood for them. Drive sat at the top of the list, and the viewing experience was so affecting that I almost couldn't get to sleep because I immediately wanted to talk to people about it. I also wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over because it was the rare film in which everything works in concert, like Pulp Fiction or The Big Lebowski.

The opening scene of the nameless driver (hereafter referred to as Driver) talking on the phone and then executing the getaway instantly grips you. Its rising and falling tension is expertly shot and edited, with the literal ticking clock of the watch being mirrored in the ending of the basketball game on the radio. Eventually it's made clear why he has the game on, timing the escape from the police so that they arrive at the arena as the crowd is pouring out. Since the music isn't the usual overly dramatic Hollywood crap, the tension arrives organically as the basic electronic beats rise and fall, often quieting down entirely as if following a sigh of relief. In terms of its style and the Los Angeles setting, Driver reminds me of Michael Mann's Collateral, which also features plenty of driving at night and mysterious characters up to no good. Mann's 80s aesthetic is a clear influence on Drive, from the soundtrack to the pink font for the title cards to the cold/precise color palette. Anyway, Ryan Gosling immediately establishes Driver as a meticulous person who says little and betrays no panic or fear during this whole sequence. When the title cards hit and we switch to 'Nightcall' and lingering shots of Driver going about the streets, you know this is his passion. As he himself puts it in response to Irene asking what he does for a living, “I drive.”

The movie's cinematography and overall aesthetic are both stunning. It has a precision in its angles and arrangement of characters and objects in scenes. There are shots that make use of Kubrickian one-point perspectives, such as when Driver is wandering through the grocery store aisles or when he enters Cook's strip club. Drive also has multiple helicopter shots of Los Angeles at night, which are used as moments of calm and reflection. Praise must also be given to the use of color and lighting in the movie. Several scenes reveal the emotions of the characters through the clothing they wear, favoring blues for cool/collected moments and reds/oranges to underline the energy, violence, or passion taking place. All of the driving scenes, even at night, use naturalistic lightning and colors, so that as Driver wanders through Los Angeles he's bathed in neon blues, red/oranges, and yellows. During the first daytime driving scene with Irene and her son, the golden sunshine mirrors the romantic happiness of the characters. These two elements come together in one of my favorite shots in the movie: after returning to Irene's apartment after the aforementioned sequence, they talk about how her son had a good time, a conversation suffused with meaningful glances and pauses. Driver is wearing a basic white shirt, with a white window frame behind him. Between them is a light blue wallpaper, suggesting the thawing of Driver's cold exterior and emotional distance/incompatibility with other humans. Irene, meanwhile, is lit with orange/red light from behind, suggesting her positive influence on him and/or her growing affection toward him.

The soundtrack is utterly essential to the success of the movie. It helps to establish the emotion of a scene, of course, but it also helps state the movie's themes. Even the opening song, 'Nightcall', has lyrics that relate to the story and characters. Just as music is crucial in Tarantino films, Drive makes similar use of it as an important component of the overall feel and atmosphere. Some of the short scenes of Driver, well, driving are hypnotic and stick in your head long after you see it because the synthwave music is so effective at matching the look of the film. Whenever I think about my favorite movies, certain scenes or sequences play out in their entirety—dialogue, music, cinematography, etc.—in my head without any specific attempt at recollection on my part. Wes Anderson films have their slow motion walks set to classic rock songs, Mulholland Drive has the dreamlike Spanish language performance of 'Crying' in the Club Silencio sequence, Aliens has the climactic queen alien vs. Power Loader fight...I could go on. Suffice it to say, Drive is no exception, with vivid memories of Driver's face in the rearview mirror as he prowls through the streets at night set to synthwave or electronic ambient music.


I appreciate how Drive avoids cliches whenever possible. When Standard has his first conversation with Driver, we immediately get another masterfully choreographed spike of tension because we are expecting him to find out about the affair and confront/attack Driver. Instead, he ends up accepting the help of Driver in trying to get himself out of debt and keep his family safe and unaware of his misdeeds. Furthermore, I love how the main protagonist, Driver, and main antagonist, Bernie, are parallel characters, in that the 'hero' is committing crimes and has a violent psychopath hidden inside, while the 'villain' is not an outright murdering thug. Bernie is shown as being legitimately excited about getting into stock car racing and subsequently sorrowful when he knows it'll never happen. When he kills Nino's thug, he does it in a violent, exaggerated way to vent his frustration, whereas when he slashes Shannon's arm/wrist, he comforts the dying man. You can tell he feels pity for Shannon earlier in the movie when he talks to Driver about him, mentioning how he's never had a lot of luck in life. In a strange parallel, Driver brutally kills several no-name thugs yet merely drowns Nino and stabs Bernie.

The violence in Drive is intentionally over the top and shocking. While director Nicholas Winding Refn may have his own reasons for using it, my feeling is that it calls attention to itself to shake up the complacent audience. We're so used to seeing people get merely shot or stabbed, often seen from a distance, and it has a desensitizing effect. Refn seems to intentionally linger on some violent acts and not others—indeed, the ending co-stabbing sequence happens so fast, the first time I saw the film I barely noticed that Driver had stabbed Bernie. When people are shot in the film, such as when Standard is killed, it's initially seen from a distance to give us a surprise moment because we were instead expecting something from the mysterious car that pulled into the parking lot moments before, not from the pawn shop. After the first gunshot, Standard stumbles to the ground in disbelief and the camera moves in to capture his reaction and the subsequent gunshots that kill him. In the motel when Blanche is killed, her gruesome death is emphasized to show how ruthless the people coming after them are. This entire sequence reminds me a lot of similar hotel scenes in No Country For Old Men, with the also meticulous Anton Chigurh dispatching criminals and having a cat-and-mouse shootout with Llewelyn Moss. As Driver checks his surroundings following the bloodbath to make sure he's safe, he recedes into the shadows of the bathroom with blood all over his face. We as the audience have come to see the other side of his personality for the first real time. The 'scorpion' emerges and he retreats into darkness where he belongs. There is a crucial earlier scene where someone he did a job with before approaches him at a diner and we get the first hint at the 'scorpion' he is underneath.

Despite not saying very much throughout the movie, Driver is one of the more magnetically compelling characters of modern cinema. Gosling does so much with his physical performance and mannerisms like tightening his fists or breathing deeply. We never learn Driver's name though between the New Jersey accent that pops up here and there and Shannon mentioning his arrival in Los Angeles a few years back, we get the sense he may have done some bad things back home and fled to Los Angeles. Between the scorpion jacket, toothpick, and the driving gloves there is a theatricality to his persona, and in general you get the sense he has a romanticized notion of the world. Working as a stunt driver in Hollywood, he perhaps sees his life as being like a movie, so that his violent murders are justified by the fact they're committed against “bad guys.” His scorpion jacket is a sort of armor or uniform that he wears mostly at night/while doing crimes or violent acts. We often see him from the back when he's wearing it, suggesting a duality of his nature. The non-'scorpion'/human side of Driver is shown as being awkward around other people. When he first helps Irene get home she offers him a glass of water and he says “okay”, not “yes, thank you” or “no, thank you”, as if he took it as a suggestion and not a question. He often smiles in response to people talking to him or about him, much like a child would, as if he's shy and not fully matured. Indeed, he has several important moments with Standard's son, Benicio, suggesting he relates to and understands him more than the adults. When Standard is assaulted by Cook's thugs, Driver immediately goes over to check on the son and walks right past Standard.

Driver's theme song in the movie, 'A Real Hero', is one of the movie's obvious themes: is he, or perhaps can he be, a real human being/a real hero? When, before stalking and killing Nino, he dons the mask he wore earlier in the film to be a stuntman stand-in for the hero of the movie, it isn't to hide his identity. Rather he seems to be trying to transform himself into a hero. Just as donning the scorpion jacket indicates something about his nature and what he's doing, this scene has him wearing something different to indicate a different context and intent. It's true that he drowns Nino but this is one of the least violent kills in the movie. Contrast this with the famous elevator scene, where he has a moment of fantasy, kissing Irene goodbye before we snap back to reality and the dark side of his character, the 'scorpion', is finally revealed to her. He viciously stomps and stomps the man sent to kill them, and we again see him from the back, the shot lingering on the scorpion jacket. She stands outside the elevator and looks horrified, seeing the other side of Driver for the first time. It's in this moment that we perhaps get the sense he tried to change his character by wearing the 'hero' mask and exacting revenge on Nino but inevitably the 'scorpion' reemerges and ruins his chance to be with Irene and Benecio. While setting up the final meeting with Bernie, Driver mentions the parable of the scorpion and the frog, perhaps acknowledging he knows he can't change his nature. When meeting with Bernie at the end, you get the sense again that they're parallel characters: Bernie is shown being meticulous in cleaning his razor blade, and also in murdering people in equally brutal ways to Driver. Earlier in the film they both mention having dirty hands, and like two scorpions they can't help but stab each other instead of just walking away from the situation like they could have if they chose to. It's left ambiguous in the end whether Driver survives or if we're just seeing another fantasy (like the kiss with Irene in the elevator). I like to think it's up to the audience to fill in their answer. If he was able to change, he survives and drives off to somewhere else in order to continue his heroic path. If he can never change, he dies as the 'scorpion' he always was deep down.


The title of the film can be taken in a few ways. For one, yes, it's a movie about a driver who drives. But it can also be taken in another meaning of the word, that of the psychological definition of an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need. As a 'scorpion', is Driver “driven” to be violent and to help others commit crimes by his very nature? The final meaning of the title also relates to this idea, that the true “drive” of Driver is to see if he can be good, to be a real human being/a real hero. When he notices Irene's car broken down in the grocery store parking lot, he could just as easily ignore it and leave, yet his drive to be good compels him to walk over and help her. He even tries to give her the stolen money before he leaves town for good, and it's made clear throughout the film that money is not a motivating factor for him, simply a necessity. I also like to think the title has a dual identity, just as Driver does. More than any other motivation, Driver is driven to drive. Everything he does in life—getaway driver, stuntman driver, possible stock car racing driver—is centered around driving. His romantic scenes with Irene primarily take place in a car, and when she tells him the news about Standard being released from jail, they're suddenly at a stoplight, a metaphor for their budding affair/relationship coming to a halt. Most importantly the film has many scenes of Driver aimlessly driving around the city at night, as if he can't sleep and can't stop moving. So much of the movie is spent seeing him in motion, whether it's in a car or in a grocery store or in an elevator, that you wonder if he actually is capable of “stopping” in a metaphorical sense and settling down with Irene somewhere.

One of Drive's other central themes is the notion of fate. We see Driver's keychain a few times and it has a lucky rabbit's foot on it, suggesting he believes more in luck and that not everything is predetermined. Luck means there is a chance to change your fate. Bernie mentions that Shannon never had much luck in life, though in some sense Driver disputes this later when he tells Shannon that he “fucks everything up”, thus that Shannon's problems are the result of his actions and choices. Nowhere is this theme of inevitable fate vs. changing your luck more embodied than in Driver himself. You get the sense he starts out the movie accepting his status living a dual life as a 'human' during the day and a 'scorpion' at night. He seems resigned to his fate, yet in helping Irene and Standard you see him start to believe that he can change, that his luck can change, too. He isn't fated to always be a 'scorpion', and he might even be able to have a happy life by changing his path, going into a career as a stock car driver and possibly settling down with Irene and her son. The ending of the film might suggest he believes he has changed because his theme song plays again. Yet I believe that true change has to come from within, not because we want to change for other people, to placate their desires or to be what they believe we are on the surface. So as a whole I interpret Drive as saying that we can't change our fate, we only delude ourselves into thinking we can/have. Driver ends the movie after revealing the other side of himself to Irene and (assuming he survives Bernie's stab and the ending shots aren't a death dream) he subsequently leaves Los Angeles because he's lost everything (well, and because the police will be after him). He hasn't really purged the 'scorpion' from himself and become a real human being/a real hero, though he seems to think he has. You could even argue he's back to square one, in the same boat as he was when he arrived in Los Angeles, possibly fleeing something back home in the Jersey area. Who knows? Drive leaves the ending purposefully open and ambiguous, so your interpretation will differ from mine.

The brilliance of Drive is that it's both very stylistic and very substantive, too. Some early reviews and reactions to the film focused solely on the surface level, praising it for its seductive aesthetics but lamenting it was so busy with its style it had nothing to say. Obviously I disagree with these assessments. To me Drive is a film, like Pulp Fiction, that marries the artistic craft of filmmaking—action, direction, production design, narrative style, themes—with pure popcorn entertainment. Both films can be mistaken for style over substance, but this is due to people not engaging with the ideas and philosophy of the world and the characters. To me, Drive is that perfect ideal of a movie that can be as shallow or as deep as you want or need it to be.