"Don't take this literally" Refn practically tells us.
The mark of a good movie, and I'm using this word pointedly here, is when you leave the movie theater feeling satisfied. The popular trope and genre of the Hollywood movie can best be classified as "melodrama" - and I'm using the classical definition of the word not the popular or idiomatic definition: Good is Good, Evil is Evil, Good triumphs over Evil, Evil is punished and poetic justice reigns supreme. Star Wars, Transformers, Harry Potter, etc...fit this description.
The mark of a film, especially a good one, is that it leaves you asking questions, but even there I have to make a distinction, Good Questions.
Refn's film "Drive" must have been something of a marketing nightmare for the studio that backed this project. It was sold as a heist/action/romance drama set somewhere between the ethnic ghettos and the palm tree lined highways of North America's pacific coast but after my first viewing I can see that Refn has built for us something which in some ways is much larger than your typical action flick and in some ways, at least in terms of expensive set pieces and high-tech explosions much, much smaller. Almost quiet. Heck, there's not even that much driving in "Drive"
"Don't take this literally" the film whispers from the corners of the frames, from carefully considered key lights placed strategically above Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling's heads to pronounce something which points beyond the events in the film, and from the mouths of its characters, they're telling us this film is about more than a guy that drives a car.
Early on in the film Shannon (Bryon Cranston) remarks that the kid isn't even a day player he's just doubling for the lead. The real story is about crime and entertainment. Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) tells our protagonist, without a trace of irony, that he used to make "action flicks in the 80's, some people thought they were European, but personally I thought they were shit" i.e. The cold war's over, we're not even pretending to be the good guys anymore.
Franjo Tuđman's book "The Historical Fate of the Nation's" makes a brilliant case that life on this planet can be aptly characterized as predominately ethnic. We are born into families, but we are immediately part of a larger group that characterizes our socio-cultural attitudes, beliefs and overall weltanschauung. Tuđman makes the case that America is unique in that it pretends not to see the ethnic boundaries, we pretend that we really live in a place called "The United States of America" when everyone else in the world can see that we are a handful of submerged ethnic states, under one monetary system of predatory capitalism, that are ruled by a smaller ethnic minority. "Drive" exposes all of this from the anonymous everyman, to the Latino ex-con, the hapless mick Shannon to the Jewish Mafioso Bernie Rose to the crypto-Jew/Italian Nino. Each one preying upon and exploiting the other. In this sense, ethnicity is a key to understanding "Drive"
To use Mike Davis' term, the film takes place in the City of Quartz and just like Davis was attempting to excavate the future I think Refn is excavating the past. Through his use of tableaux, pastiche, key lighting and gesture Refn is deconstructing an historical epoch that reads like a natural history museum exhibit about gross cultural excesses, ethnic warfare, post-modernism and death.
In Davis's book he makes frequent mention of Gertrude Stein's critique of her home in Lakeside California 'There's no there, there" and anybody who has visited Los Angeles, can attest to this. L.A. didn't grow naturally as a population center for immigration. It wasn't formed because of strategic advantage in warfare or because it offered the best agricultural conditions. It was sold as a utopia by unscrupulous real estate developers, it was a phantasm, an illusion, a mirage in the desert of the real. Refn offers us a narrative about a nameless everyman "who drives for the movies" as a way of dealing with the implications of this.
I'm familiar with Refn's first film "Bronson" and from this prior experience I could maintain a relaxed attitude towards the unconventional pacing and downright bizarre stylistic impulses of the director. I will say that Refn is totally unique in the way the great auteurs are: this is a film by Refn and only Refn could have made this film this way. It carries his signature from start to finish. I had a friend who saw this in theaters when it came out and he expressed the same frustration that a lot of people probably shared when they bought their movie ticket.
They wanted an action flick and they got an art house movie.
From its opening frame the work has a pronounced patina of 1980's hyper real neon-simulacra. This felt anachronistic and weird at first but I see that he's referencing a time in the 20th century that is generally considered the apogee of 20th century conspicuous affluent consumption and the end of the American Dream. 20 Years later we're here to watch the end of America. This is where "Drive" takes place. Geographically, Spiritually and Actually. A world so thoroughly corrupt that even your impulse to help, to "do the right thing" can subvert you.
So who's driving the car? A nameless everyman who can participate in productive labor, but can't make ends meet from it? A guy who has proficiency in a highly specialized skill, who aids criminal activity without directly participating in it?
So who's driving the car? Everyone. No One.
