Drive

I finally just finished watching Drive. A bunch of people told me that it was a really gorgeous movie and they were absolutely right - I’ll be succinct about it but it was a gorgeously, gorgeously shot, acted and written movie.

I have an extremely soft spot for minimalism and Drive did something unusual - It actually weaponized it’s minimalism. It used a script so sparse and subtle to juxtapose EXTREME and abrupt (near) ultraviolence, and that was as beautiful as it was incredibly unsettling. Very, very well done and stomach churningly difficult to watch.

It revels in ambiguity and takes a sort of modern Western spin on the protagonist, which is interesting to me as well - A nameless, soft spoken hero blowing into a damsel-in-distress’s life like a tumbleweed, sexual tension simultaneously flourishing and fizzling before he risks his life to do the right thing for her and her family and then finally drifting back out of her life as quietly as he came. It’s a bittersweet and open ended, the lone “gunman” riding his steel stallion off into the sunset, leaving everything he’s fought for behind. Because he has to. Because that’s what heroes are supposed to do.

Except I’m not really sure if The Driver ever really was a hero. I think that’s part of what makes it even more beautiful.

All in all, Drive is one of the most accessible ‘art house’ movies I’ve ever seen. I’m really, really pleased with how many people have come to me saying that they love it. Most of the time, poignantly complex narratives like this don’t really get their due.