Evening people.
Welcome to episode 3 of my 'Best of 2011' entries. This film may well have been my favourite of last year so without further ado, I can reveal it to be:
Drive. Nicolas Winding Refn's much celebrated genre film.
Now the reveal has come, read on lovely folks!
(No spoilers!)
Even though it was several months ago, I still remember watching Drive in the cinema with an unnatural clarity. Watching this film was one of the most entertaining times I've ever had in a cinema screening. I'm struggling to think of a film where I could feel my heart beating so fast. This is due to several factors, the first is the intensity of the film, which is a byproduct of it's unpredictability.
Operating at the heart of Drive was an interesting divide, at times the film is both wonderfully tender and brutally violent. The cars and phones are contemporary but the music is retro. The dialogue is sparse and quiet but the guns, sirens, cars, music is loud. This gave the film an aura of genuine surprise. The intensity comes from a very quick buildup to an explosive event. A scene in a lift springs to mind, a very quiet scene to begin, a line or two of quiet dialogue and music and then *BAM*. It is during the quiet bit leading up to the *BAM* where I could feel my heart race, I could physically see the audience tighten up, hands gripping armrests, heads slowly moving away from the screen. It was something in a film screening I had rarely seen.
The cast also outdo themselves. Ryan Gosling (slight man-crush), who I've not been a huge fan of in past films, is genuinely good. He has slight facial movements that communicate a remarkable amount, doubly so when considering he doesn't speak much in the film. However, unlike a character like Clint's Man with No Name, where his silence hardened him, in the case of Drive, the lack of dialogue softens him. Makes him seem more vulnerable, not socially awkward but you feel he doesn't know what he should say so he chooses to remain quiet. As the events of the film unfold however, he talks more and becomes more assertive to more people and you find out he is a very quick thinking, intelligent and capable person, but not superhuman. He seems to have come from the pages of some super cool graphic novel, a flawed hero in a driving jacket with an embroidered scorpion on his back.
The female lead is played by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan looks the part, she is pretty enough but plain enough that she doesn't stand out as being too beautiful for the film. With the exception of Mulligan and Gosling, this is a film filled with rugged looking men and women, wrinkles and scars betraying a hard life. The chemistry between Gosling and Mulligan shows just why Mulligan was perfect in her role as Irene. The relationship is never really a relationship, it's awkward conversation, a friendship with an attractive woman in need, a good man doing good deeds, the two rarely touch. It's a relationship that fits the characters we've been shown, awkward, depressing, never obvious. Mulligan plays the role to match the tone of the film and that should be commended and is also why Mulligan works as Irene.
The supporting cast are as good as Gosling. Almost every positive review of Drive I've read has highly praised Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston and especially Albert Brooks (taking a usual departure from his comedic voice work). These praises are entirely justified, I hate to simply fall in line with other reviewers if I can avoid it but possibly even more than the two main characters, these three are at the top of their games, each filling their role expertly. Albert Brooks was not a winner for the Best Supporting Actor catagory at the Golden Globes, and has not even been nominated at the 2012 BAFTAs even though Drive has been nominated in four catagories: Best Film, Best Supporting Actress for Mulligan, Director for Nicolas Winding Refn and Editing for Mat Newman.
Director Nicolas Winding Refn won 'Best Director' at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and he's been nominated (as mentioned above) for best Director at the 2012 BAFTAs for this film and it's not hard to see why. Not wishing to belittle the other directors in the category but Drive carries with it an incredible display of composition, colour, pace and confidence. Long, unedited shots on characters faces betray the mark of a director who has complete confidence in his cast, the qualities of which I've touched on already.
(The next edition of Film Flare will detail Nicolas Winding Refn's career and the touches that run throughout his work.)
This film is a strange creature when all is said. The scope of the film is small, the characters have no large reaching actions beyond their own lives. There is nothing immense at stake. The bad guys are bad because badder guys are pushing on them so in turn they push on smaller people. It has through it an undertone of incredible depression and yet, through the style, the characters and the creative choices, the film emerges as a loud, brash genre piece with a suprisingly subtle edge.
Watch this film now! (If you've seen it already, it's out on DVD 30th Jan)
Trailer:
Also, don't make the mistake that this lady made: (From Drive wiki page)
'A Michigan woman named Sarah Deming has sued both FilmDistrict and Emagine Theaters... in October 2011 due to suffering "damages", feeling that the previews were misleading. Filing under the Michigan Consumer Protection Act, she stated its distributor marketed Drive as similar to theThe Fast and The Furious film series, and, in a bait and switch act, gave her a motion picture with little racing.'
......yeah......
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