Smash His Face In!

Everyone seems to have a blog these days.  Everyone also seems to use them to talk about their lives, or films they've seen, or music they love, or their comments on the current status of political destruction of the nation.  That being said I suppose it's about time that I joined this community of wanna be journalista's and editorialist's.

I'm going to talk about a film that everyone is still talking about.

It seems that about a month or two ago, when I would look up what films to see I would sigh negatively and resort to my back-catalogue of DVD's I have yet to watch, most of which are foreign, and make remarks about how american cinema is dead.

All the while I start hearing this buzz from certain friends and co-workers in the independent film community about this amazing film with Ryan Gosling.  "You have to see it!" was a common phrase and the most unanimously praised aspect of the film had been the score.  So finally, I went to see it with my girlfriend and few friends, but not before I did a little research on it.

Looking it up on imdb, resulted in my astonishment at discovering the film was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, more recently known for his second English language feature Bronson, but known to me by his first feature, The Pusher.  If you know anything about Refn's previous body of work you know that he tackles concepts that are generally hard to handle and that he has an affinity for leaving his films open ended.  Thematically, his stories delve into the realms of man vs. man and man vs. self.

Back to Drive.  The film uses some of the greatest bloody lighting I've ever seen, creating expressions with shadows in a way almost forgotten from the days of Noir and, even further back, German Expressionism.

Since I don't want to spoil it for any of you who are still hiding under your rocks, there is a rather amazing slow motion scene in an elevator through a beautiful lighting pool that preludes an act of ultra violence which left the audience both mesmerized and astounded.

Fans of Refn's work know that he has a very realistic approach to scenes of violence.  Who can forget that scene in The Pusher where our anti-hero comes within an inch of losing his life, but not after a little torture.

I would be incredibly surprised not to see both Gosling and Brooks nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in the upcoming Oscar Nominations next year.  Gosling threw himself into this role, as he has in all of his previous films, physically and mentally to become an intriguing character driven (pun not intended) by love and the desire to do the right thing (within a few moral gray areas).  Brooks, on the other hand, went way outside of his typical character type to play a cold and calculating man.  I still get chills thinking about a specific scene in the garage involving a straight razor.

There is one other film I saw all year that impressed me as much as Drive, and hopefully there will be a few more coming up as the final bit of Oscar season takes hold, but if you have the time and the cash to go catch this film in the theatre, then climb out from under your rock and do yourself a favor.