'Drive'

Make way for the Vikings, because here comes the latest installment from the mythic North, with Nicholas Winding Refn's ultra-sleek Drive, easily the most anticipated release this autumn.

This time Refn finds himself in unfamiliar territory, namely in Southern California where the heavily clouded LA skies convey a sense of despondent foreboding. Drive deals with an protagonist who seems to be only marginally more skilled in verbal expression than Refn's last protagonist 'One-Eye' and again, remains a character with no name.

The Driver, then, is an extremely skilled mechanic who not only drives for movies, but also the getaway car in heists. He has only one rule: He will only wait for five minutes before leaving the criminals to their fate, why, is not quite clear. His personal failure of a boss Shannon plans on building a stock-car business with a little financial help from two crooked mafiosi. When the beautiful Irene moves in next door, the driver falls quietly in love with her and finds a sort of surrogate family in her and her son Benicio. Unfortunately, her husband is released from prison and owes the wrong people some money. They want him to do one last job and the driver agrees to help on the condition that they leave Irene and her son alone. Of course, things go horribly wrong and chaos and violence ensue.

So much in terms of plot, and there really is nothing more to it. It is a skeleton plot, simplistically classic in its treatment: Decent guy falls in love with innocent girl who glances longingly at the hero and needs saving. The one last job that goes wrong and a protagonist who gets entangled in a very noir serious of events which can only end in betrayal and death. Throw in some mafiosi and a lot of violence which makes Joe Pesci seem like a choir boy and you have a Hollywood classic. At least, this is what Brian de Palma would think. Refn, however, goes about things differently...

The driver clearly taps into the long ancestry of brooding, silent types, from Clint Eastwood (most notable reference being The Man with No Name and the toothpick) to McQueen in Bullit and last but not least Gary Cooper. He is the Western hero, the lonesome wolf, unbeatable at what he does and with a set of moral principles which are old-fashioned in their allusion to the Southern gentleman. Gosling seems to be attracted to exactly this type of role and, to be fair, it suits him. He communicates with the outside in half smirks and quiet glances. Only that sometimes, his muteness appears to be not so much enigmatic as socially reclusive and slightly dumb. The man does know, however, how to carry a pair of wranglers.

Gosling delivers a solid performance, foremost emphasized by the cinematography which clearly focuses on his physicality, in, for example, introducing a shot of his back when he carries Benicio down the hall and clearly accentuates his broad physical frame. In fact, throughout the film, Refn seems to be reversing the cinematic tradition of sexualising the woman, in this case played beautifully understated by Carey Mulligan, instead the camera lingers on Gosling almost lovingly, finding new angles to show the masculine lines of his jaw or the triangular shape of his body. The scorpion on the back of the silver jacket is not only a reference to the Welles' movie Confidential Report, it also introduces a phallic symbolism to the character which cannot be coincidental.

What makes Drive a different film from what it should be, is its beautiful cinematography and contemplative pace. Newton Thomas Sigel, mostly known for his work The Usual Suspects, knows how to transform each image into a still life. The camera grants space to the compositions, never rushing which allows for the opening of introspective space. Images, like the driver in a mask gazing through the deli-window which is composed of white and red squares, are treated with a notion of aesthetic respect, giving Refn's text a cinematic quality which goes beyond mere story-telling.

Drive's cinematography is not so much original as referential. Refn displays the typical enthusiasm of the European director who is given the toys of American cinematic tradition. As such, it plays on the chiaroscuro visuals of the noir era, with its stretched shadows, its rainy street and, evidently, its blinking neon signs of an LA which is anything but the city of angels, as the glitzy surface only partly veils the underlying tone of corruption and betrayal. At the same time, Refn and Sigel tap into the New Hollywood movement of the seventies, as they take evident pleasure in framing the driver from a low angle in his car, while the raindrops on the windows turn the street lights into a glooming halo. These aesthetics are a clear tribute to Scorcese's Taxi Driver, while the mean streets of LA appear to be influenced as much by Scorcese as by Chandler's fiction.

The musical score, often criticized for its electronic sleaziness and over-bearing presence, becomes reminiscent of a Michael Mann film, as the brazen superficiality of the eighties come to tie in perfectly with the frivolity of a city which by definition proves artificial. The credits in pink come to represent another homage to eighties/nineties texts such as Heat or Miami Vice.

Drive as such comes to stand for the art of superficiality, as it clearly favors aesthetics over plot and paints a portrait of LA as being a series of appearances which prove ever-shifting, as it negates any foundation in truth or reality for that matter. As such the driver with no name remains the perfect protagonist as he proves a presence rather than a character, he is obsessed, but without purpose. He is the drive behind the action, even though never deliberately. Here, again, the noir protagonist comes to mind as the driver he is double-crossed and lured into a series of traps. This is a universe of existential loneliness, where trust is a luxury only granted to the female protagonist.

Even though Refn's Drive might come across as too self-consciously retrospective in its aesthetics,at the same time, it proves truly post-modern in its treatment of the concept of artificiality. Its main asset lies in its visual pleasure rather than in its merit as a textured drama, as the glossy cinematography conveys an intensity which draws no distinction between its treatment of beauty and violence. This is no gritty, realist drama, it is a highly-aesthesized piece which proves enthralling in its appreciation of American cinematic culture, its intense cinematography and its sordid depiction of a city which, here, proves as beautiful as dangerous and unnatural.