Drive

Seeing Drive brought me back to the overwhelming, breathless awe I felt while first witnessing films like Goodfella's, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Heat and The Crow on the big screen. Not because it necessarily shares any narrative, thematic or aesthetic attributes with those classics, but because it reawakened my sense memory to a time when cinema could seem dangerous and beautiful to behold all at once. In the early to mid 9o's, I was coming of age and had the good fortune of sharing my new found freedom through gaining my drivers license with the release of an onslaught of seminal, game changing movies. As fun as 80's films were and as much as they were instrumental in cementing my adoration of the cinematic art form, it was discovering the complex nuance of something like The Usual Suspects or the Gothic nihilism of Se7en that made me realize my childhood interest could blossom into a life spanning and full blown adult obsession.

Drive is in every single aspect a perfect film. People will say it's a hollow, pretentious exercise in style and a narrative black hole with oversimplified connections between thinly drawn characters. They won't be wrong, but they're missing the bigger picture. The greatest movies don't need to mean or be about anything. They don't need to tell important stories or preach universal truths. They need to be powerful examples of an art form, which people tend to forget film inherently is. Sure, it can raise consciousness or unite an audience behind a hero in the interests of spawning a franchise, but I feel no more transcendence than when a film sucks me out of my life and into the world it has created, leaving me desperately wanting to return to it the instant the end credits begin to roll. Drive is such a film.

From the opening sequence, it's clear that you're in the hands of a master visual stylist. A true auteur working with supreme confidence to achieve a singular vision. No notions of audience concession or studio interference are allowed to touch this film. Refn seems to be wielding some sort of Kubrickian control over this project and his results under these circumstances speak volumes about the need for a return to 70's era directorial reverence and the preferential treatment afforded such gifted craftsmen. Drive is a liquid dream, gliding and floating with effortless control through the lives of bad men and the unfortunate women drawn to them. It presents Los Angeles as a hazy world without rules or structure where waitresses, gangsters, auto mechanics and film industry professionals all occupy the same space, bumping into each other to tragic, detrimental effect. It's a world of allure, danger and ghostly silence. Otherworldly and dreamlike in a classic 1980's Michael Mann capacity.

The story and characters aren't important here, its the raw elements that are. The colorful criminal menace, the bruised but beautiful moll, the sad sack father figure, the doe eyed dame with the cute kid and most importantly, the hypnotic, magnetic force of the enigmatic Driver unifying them all. Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman are pure gold in only the way 2 such brilliant character actors can be, but it's in the inspired pairing of them that we are given something altogether hilarious, dangerous and strangely realistic. Cranston wholly inhabits his chain smoking, limping nefarious manager role with a warm, preternatural paternity, grounding the film with his recognizable humanity. Hendricks is pitch perfect despite the brevity of her appearance, displaying the terror and exhaustion of her character without requiring unnecessary back story or dialog. Oscar Isaac continues his ascension in my estimation through potently and memorably rendering a stock character, elevating the whole film in the process.

But truthfully, the film is a make or break proposition resting on Goslings shoulders to bring across the nearly silent and certainly off putting lead role of the Driver. To say he pulls off this fearless high wire act of acting with aplomb is a gross understatement. With a character so hard to read who has no history spelled out for the viewer and rarely speaks, Gosling takes this golden opportunity to turn in a performance so fascinating, I dare you to take your eyes off him. He makes every affectation of his posture its own universe of endlessly fascinating intricacy. The pointing of his finger, clenching of his gloved hands or his sly, dispassionate grin all serve to draw you in, yet keep you at a frustrated distance. The controlled nervousness of his fingers fluttering across the steering wheel during a heist speak volumes more about the inner workings of this sociopath than ten pages of dialog could have, and good lord is this character ever a sociopath.

The Driver isn't just familiar with or adept at committing violence. He embodies violence. It follows him and flows from him as naturally as water distributing itself into a tributary. There is a scene where after exploding in jaw dropping rage, he turns and faces his ostensible love interest and tries to compose himself , the effect comes across like someone attempting to suppress a werewolf transformation. It's but one of a thousand such haunting and unforgettable images in the film. I won't spoil the particulars, but there's a scene with Perlman and Gosling on a beach toward the end that is so powerful and laden with iconic magnificence, even if the rest of the film surrounding it was total garbage, it would still be the best film of the year, just off the strength of that one scene.

I've enjoyed a lot of the films I've seen this year and would even go so far as to say found a few to be quite impressive, but none have had the instantaneous and revelatory effect of Drive. I've been hearing the hype and expecting something good, maybe even great. In no way was I prepared for the masterpiece it truly is. It is without doubt a film that will be talked about, analyzed and worshipped for generations to come.