Spoilers Ahead........
The first time I saw Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” (2011),
it made me search for praise-worthy words: Elegiac existential, enigmatic, violent,
meditative, sensual, tacit, subtle, artistic action. But, still “Drive” isn’t
the kind of film whose mood couldn’t be inferred by a few set of adjectives. The
neo-noir plot of the film is very familiar. The ‘Driver’ protagonist (played by Ryan Gosling) has no name, and although the narrative has a grounded realism, the ‘Driver’
pretty much comes off as a mythological character, who operates alone, with
a set of rules. Despite his emotional blank state, the ‘Driver’ finds some
solace in meeting beautiful apartment neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her
little son Benicio. Irene’s husband Standard Gabriel (Oscar Isaac) is in
prison and once he gets out, the little poetic phase of Driver’s life gets eroded
and he transforms to be the person, he was meant to be.
There’s a long list of inspirations in the design of ‘Driver’
character. Alain Delon’s Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai”
(1967) and Ryan O’Neal’s titular character in Walter Hill’s “The Driver” (1978)
are the two significant characters that comes to my mind (Refn had also
compared the protagonist with “Shane” and characters played by John Wayne).
There are also tributes to the visual style of Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann
(especially “Thief”). But, still Nicolas Winding Refn’s highly-stylized images
don’t come across as a sloppy pastiche of homages. It fills us with the
fascination of having experienced a real evocative art. And, every movie would
have a scene where its themes are perfectly etched out; a scene which works as
the heart of a movie; a scene that keeps on playing in our mind, long after we
have witnessed it. Director Refn infuses such excellence in “Drive’s” romantic as
well as most violent ‘elevator’ sequence.
Refn is fascinated by character transformations. His 2008
film “Bronson’s” -- about Britain’s most violent prisoner -- central theme revolved around a psychotic individual, transforming to what he was meant to be. Similarly, in the elevator scene in
‘Drive’, the driver makes the full transition from one mode to another. The
Driver often wears a scorpion jacket, which very much denotes his persona – loner
& protector. Gosling’s driver protects the innocents to exorcise his own
inner demons. He is ready to sacrifice himself for all the goodness of love.
The warm color tones while he drives Irene and her son in the first half is gradually
replaced by him driving lonely in the darker world like a nocturnal being. And,
these accumulated darkness in the second-half of film, culminates inside the
elevator, bringing out the driver’s purely psychotic behavior.
The elevator in ‘Drive’ could be seen as a bridge that
connects his outer world persona with that of his personal space, which in the
narrative time was filled with innocence and love. The sequence begins in
the apartment hallway, where driver tells Irene about the heist-gone-wrong. He
also tells about his thought of running away with Irene and her son, taking up
the money from heist. She slaps him and the driver stands looking down. A faint
squeak of an elevator door opening is heard. It fills us with sense of looking
through a confined world where things tend to change. A third person is inside
the elevator, standing with a reluctant pose. Irene enters and driver follows
her into the elevator. Two low-angle shot sets the scene inside the elevator to
convey the feeling that the two men are looking at each other closely. Then
Refn, slowly cuts to show us a gun stashed inside the third guy’s (who is
obviously is a hit man) suit jacket (this could be taken as POV shot).
As the driver learns of this man’s intention, we once again see a brief
low-angle shot, where for few seconds the driver contemplates on his next move.
And then comes out the beautiful side-on view of the elevator, where driver and
Irene are behind the hit-man. Lighting changes, music changes and sequence
attains a slow motion, indicating of a change in atmosphere. Its like ‘the
driver’ and ‘Irene’ are enshrouded in a separate world from that of hit-man. Driver gracefully
pushes Irene into the corner and slowly leans into kiss her. The lights in
elevator dims as the driver passionately kisses her for quite a while. This
lingering kiss seems to have stopped the time. This private romantic moment
tells us that the driver is about to cross a line from which he won’t be able
to return. As they slowly pull away from each other, music fades out and lights
become bright. Suddenly, the slow motion transforms to normal frame rate and
the driver jumps into action. Irene backs away into one corner of the elevator
as he slams the hit-man’s head into the elevator walls. The shared intimacy
(kiss of goodbye), within a blink of an eye, transforms to violent clash, which
further enters into the gruesome territory as we see the hit-man being pushed
into the ground.
A mid-shot of ‘driver’ shows him stomping on hit-man’s head.
Once, twice, thrice and the stomping continues as terrified Irene cowers in the
background. By the 12th stomp, the bones in hit-man’s face start to
break and by the end of 17th stomping and after 15 seconds (source: “The
Sounds of Violence” from slate.com), we hear squishy sound as blood splatters
across the frame. The elevator door slides open at that point, and horrified
Irene flees into the garage. What follows up is a mid-shot of driver from
behind as he gradually turns to face Irene and a medium long-shot of Irene
standing at the center of frame, hard to believe that the guys’ effort to save
the loved ones would make him to do such a thing. Nevertheless, there is not a
single dialogue uttered in this scene (the sequence lasts for nearly three
minutes), and it finally cuts to scorpion jacket of ‘Driver’. The heavy
breathing of driver makes the ‘scorpion’ look like a convulsing living being,
and yeah, the ‘scorpion lives’ transforming him to reach his fate.
This stupendous elevator was originally planned to take
place in the garage. Irene and driver would go to the parking lot and the hit-man would come to shoot at her. And, the driver would push her into safety.
It was unbelievably conventional and Refn says that it was his editor Matt
Newman, who suggested for a change of location (a week before the shooting).
The editor also pointed out the elevator shoot-out scene in Takeshi Kitano film
(end shootout sequence in “Hana-bi”). Director Refn was then taken up with the
idea of showcasing ultimate love and ultra-violence, both paced like visual
poetry. The switch-over to violence represents the driver’s necessity to embrace
the darker side to protect Irene.So, the change from lover to psychotic or the
kiss to violent stomping never comes across unrealistic. The build-up to the ‘elevator’
scene was impeccable and so the pay-off has an emotionally engaging and
disturbing effect on us.
When Refn was asked why the violence and excess of it in his
film is so pointed, he replied “I guess
art is an act of violence, in a way. It's an emotional outpouring, and I don't
really know ... I think that violence in the cinema is necessarily a fetish.
Emotionally, our artistic expression consists of sex or violence. It all boils
down to those two pure emotions that we have. But where erotica or sexuality is
not fantasy, because most of us do it, violence, on the other hand, is fetish,
is fantasy. There is sexuality to violence that I find very intoxicating. But I
think that that's what turns me on.”
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