Drive

Drive was an amazing film. A lot of it was silence, a silence that was left to us to interpret, but that was a task that readily clicked into place.

What are the thoughts in those silences, what do they mean? If you didn’t think about the answers to those questions you weren’t actually watching this movie.

Not that this should be anything but obvious, but by not narrating everything, by not telling us what the characters are feeling (“That makes me feel angry!”) a multiplicity of meaning is opened up for us. The sort of inner dialogue that I privately infer won’t necessarily be the same that you hear in your mind.

And BAM, man, I love the strong silent type. This film makes me want to go hang out with a crowd of mostly strangers, since in that arena I usually slip into the silent role. Ah it’s so cool.

There was this cool 80’s thing going on with the lettering and music. Pink cursive writing, and I don’t even know what it was about the music that was 80’s to me, I forget, but it was.

Oh, here’s a tip going into it: Drive is a super hero movie. A violent, Punisher-esque super hero, but still. He’s even got a symbol, that giant scorpion on the back of his jacket!

The violence was a little much. When it finally kicked in this kid (or maybe just a fragile woman) started crying and had to leave the theatre. If it was a kid, hey parent, maybe don’t take your kid to a movie like this, and if a grown woman… uh, don’t take yourself to a movie like this.

I’m amazed (sure let’s talk about this some more) how well the silences worked here. It ratcheted up the tension to the umpteenth degree without being awkward (like that one long black screen in Captain America that was supposed to symbolize his hibernation, that got laughs from people due to awkwardness). There was, however, ONE scene where Gosling and Mulligan are looking at each other meaningfully and I was thinking “is- is she about to smile there? Or laugh or something? It doesn’t look like she can hold this silence much longer…” But it was just that bit that was a close call. Everything else was smooth, appropriately tense sailing.

And you know in real life the main character couldn’t just be about driving. He’d have a fishing hobby or something. But most of these characters have been boiled down to their basic archetypal essentials. Have you noticed I haven’t mentioned the Driver’s name yet? Either it wasn’t mentioned much, or it just wasn’t mentioned period. (I’m not sure)

The hero, the mentor, the love, the villain, the rival. Not so much ‘the kid’ though there is a kid there. Anyway, it’s a super economical film. I keep saying to people that the whole of the dialogue is probably only twenty pages of the total script.

I think that’s a good estimate for the sake of comically saying that there isn’t a lot of dialogue here… you know, if a script is usually about 110 pages or some such for a movie then, then 20 pages is a low percentage of pages is what I’m trying to say.

But yeah. Strong silent type. I’d love to hang out with someone and just be able to sit there with them. None of this talkin’ talkin’ talkin’ I usually do because I have to keep you entertained in me (or maybe just entertained period.). Let’s just be.