Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011)

[Note: this review is spoiler-free but I would still encourage those who haven't yet seen the film to go into it as cold as possible.]

Having proudly managed to seclude myself from practically anything related to Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive following its rapturous reception at Cannes, I found myself surprised by the extremity of the praise that filtered through my blinders. What particularly caught my eye was one rhetorical headline (I did not read the story in my anti-hype lockdown) that asked whether Refn and his star Ryan Gosling were the new Scorsese-De Niro, a comparison I found particularly odd since this is only their first collaboration. Having now seen Drive, however, I can almost see where that writer was coming from: Gosling represents a synthesis and an embodiment of the director's goals, thematic intent and emotional frequency. Refn's previous film, Valhalla Rising, was an abstract tone poem to masculine horror, the kind codified and even encouraged by chauvinistic, barbaric religious organization. Gosling introduces feminine contours to Refn's stylized but dimmed and rough side, though the sensitive actor with the gentle eyes displays an equal capacity for brutality here that places him on the tipping point between grace and savagery.

But then, maybe the invocation of Scorsese and De Niro was just that writer's way of getting in on the  referential action. Refn, who says he modeled Bronson on Kenneth Anger films (there's a reference here, too) and Valhalla Rising on Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, here unloads a dump-truck of stylistic homages, from early Michael Mann to stripped-down car movies like Two-Lane Blacktop and The Driver to an overt reference to Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin. Hell, the most visible reference point, to my surprise, was that of Wong Kar-wai, particularly his devastating In the Mood for Love. For some, all these references will be a delight, a smorgasbord of retro cool gussied up further by the inexplicable (but fun) use of '80s synth music. For others, this is merely a sign of self-satisfied theft, a lazy repackaging of ideas. Either way, this fixation misses the true joy of Drive: watching Refn wring tension out nearly every moment, even doe-eyed, wistful stares of impossible love.

Drive's opening segment is the best I've seen in a film since the one-act play that launched Inglourious Basterds. With graceful and steady but desaturated and restless images, Refn shows the nameless Driver (Gosling) preparing and executing a job with formal fluidity. Economic editing and deliberate framing keeps our focus inside the Driver's car as he waits for the robbers who hired him to do their job. The sound design layers noises—a basketball game Driver listens to on the radio, the crackle of a police scanner, the blaring roar of an engine when Driver puts the pedal to the metal, etc.—to further ratchet up tension. Refn's judicious presentation extends to his handling of the car "chase," for want of a better word. It resembles more a game of hide-and-seek than some metal-screeching tear through city streets, with Driver losing one cop before stumbling into the searchlight of a chopper or stopping right in front of a patrol car. Refn understands suspense, and by inserting gulfs of space around a handful of thrilling, fast-edited punctuation marks, he generations enough tension and expectation to leave theater seats everywhere etched with the imprints of fingernails.

The rest of the film follows a similar approach to action, tightly handled, formalist bursts of blunt physicality amid an elegant but dark evocation of L.A.'s promises and pitfalls. The Driver is but the first stripped-down archetype. A few doors down from his apartment lives Irene (Carey Mulligan), whose perpetual cuteness is exacerbated by the young child she raises alone and given a faint sadness for the same reason. I say faint because Mulligan is, admittedly, the weak link of the film, never truly conveying much baggage beyond wisps of regret and the confusion caused by budding feelings for the Driver. Nevertheless, her cherubic giggle and empathetic face provide a nice contrast for Gosling's kind but vaguely troubled stares. If Gosling fills the shoes of the existentially bound hero, Mulligan plays her part as the woman who exists to complicate his feelings, but if she lacks any memorable presence, at least she awakens more humanity in the Driver than one can usually expect of such a taciturn protagonist, allowing him to project some form of humanity into a type stripped down to its most inhuman, objective elements, reconstructing a human being from a stereotype.

Other characters fare better with their archetypes. Oscar Isaac adds depth and conflict to Irene's fresh-out-of-prison husband that fills him with residual jealousy, fear, and genuine concern for his family. Bryan Cranston plays the Driver's mechanic and only friend (in a manner of speaking): Cranston handles the Driver's day and night jobs, getting him underpaid work as a stunt driver and gigs as a getaway man. Cranston's genial warmth, compounded by a sympathetic limp, make him so charming that when he confides to Irene that, as much as he idolizes the Driver's skills, he underpays the kid, she chuckles as if she's just been told a light anecdote. But Shannon's exploitation of the kid runs deeper, and soon he gets the kid caught up with the mob, visualized by the menace of Ron Perlman's gigantic head and steak-knife teeth and a revelatory, ingenious performance by Albert Brooks as a movie producer-cum-gangster.

Not even my self-imposed blackout could prevent hype for Brooks' performance from seeping through, and he lives up to the hype. With hair teetering on the boundary between tamed and wild and eyebrows that long ago went into Witness Protection, Brooks the brilliant, ironic comic looks like he doesn't have a funny bone in his body. He radiates such cold, horribly calm energy that when he fusses over the chopsticks with his Chinese order, one begins to fear he'll stab someone with them for not getting his order perfect. Though not as piercingly silent as Valhalla Rising, Drive still prefers to unfold with imagery instead of words, and Brooks seems to own most of the dialogue despite his handful of scenes, as if he lent out the remainder of the script to the rest of the cast. With interest, of course. Brooks doesn't overplay his hand, doesn't openly menace or even speechify despite how much chattier he is than the others. Refn's inspired casting brings out the cruel inverse of Brooks' deadpan style; as a comedian and filmmaker, Brooks follows premises to their ludicrous conclusions. He does the same here, only the endpoint is usually a corpse, which he views with exasperation. Both he and Perlman toy with the idea of Jews playing at being Italian mafiosos, but where Perlman growls about the discrimination, Brooks infuses the two ethnic types into something unwieldy and terrifying. Here is a man who will kill your whole family and make you feel guilty for taking up that 10 minutes of his time.

At some point, these separate lines begin to converge, elements of one plot bleeding into the other until everything is connected and you're not entirely sure how that came to be. As such, the film's distinct emotions of longing, fear and mounting anger crash together so each justifies and complicates the others. Refn and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel handle these conflicting yet unified emotions ably, moving dextrously between abstracted shots inside the Driver's car where the lights outside always blur and expand, grim, fluorescent underworlds, and the calming but tense arrangement of floral pastels on the walls of the apartment complex that communicate longing and tragedy so well Gosling likely could have acted off the wallpaper as well as he did Mulligan.

This collision of styles and moods also allows for Refn to explore the space between his stylistic influences; in particular, Drive feels like the missing link between Michael Mann's nihilistic debut, Thief, and his more optimistic view of the same twisting L.A. streets seen here with Collateral. As I watched Refn flex his stylistic muscles whilst standing on the shoulders of giants for greater visibility, I thought of how much he had in common with the other great imitator of modern cinema, Quentin Tarantino. Both indulge in their ultraviolence—Drive features gore so intense it punches through the barrier to absurdity, not unlike Taraninto—but both also have the ability to find fluidity and tension among their quotations and action. Tarantino's films feel more action-packed than they usually are thanks to his command of dialogue and and direction. Refn, on the other hand, likes to let silence do the talking, using his similar grasp of film technique to make the build-up to visions of unorthodox gore more grueling and unbearable than bashed brains or slashed flesh. Watching Refn pile all this together made for the most thrilling experience I've had at the movies this year, and to dismiss its inventive hodgepodge of styles as nothing more than pastiche strikes me as akin to saying green is but a mash-up of yellow and blue.

P.S. Special mention must go to Cliff Martinez's retro electronic score, perhaps the strongest argument one could have for something in this film surpassing its influences. Martinez, who already put out one engaging soundtrack this year with his work on Contagion, here mixes old-school New Wave synths with the greater nuance afforded by modern electronica. Clearly using the film work of Tangerine Dream as a jumping-off point, Martinez finds emotional contours and chilly suggestion that Tangerine Dream never came close to mining, even as he also beats them at their own game of skittish, digitized paranoia. Having never been a big fan of electronic scores (with a few exceptions, of course), I'm surprised to find that my favorite soundtracks of the last two years have both been synthesized works, and while Martinez's '80s throwback isn't as obviously compatible with its host film as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' Social Network score was, he nevertheless carries a great deal of the film's mood and never flags. The handful of synthpop songs peppered among the score are demonically catchy as well.

Valhalla Rising (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2009)

If one were to play the old "X meets Y" game of critical shorthand, one would have to plot Nicholas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising along several other axes. Unequal parts Apocalypse Now, Aguirre and, of all things, Stalker (this reference actually supplied by the director), Valhalla Rising creates oneiric abstraction out of bluntly realistic primitivism. A far cry from the epic, glorious tone of swords-and-sandals films, Refn's meditation on the meeting point of barbarism and religious fervor depicts not the raw energy and codified nobility of man's first hints of civilization but of the unformed rage and atrocity that truly defined the early man. But then, the Greeks and the Romans came long before these Celts and Norsemen, and Refn leaves the social effects of early Christianity hanging in the air as we see a world far more primitive and savage than the supposed heathens who practiced their idolatry.

Divided into six parts, the film initially presents no story at all, and for a long stretch, no dialogue. Instead, we are treated the the sight of tattooed Viking slaves pounding each other into mulch for the amusement of their captors. Amusement may be the wrong word: unlike the cheering throngs of bloodthirsty Romans, these tribesmen watch their slaves beat, bash and strangle each other with impassivity, as if this were some kind of perfunctory act, just some way to pass the time. It almost looks like the barbaric equivalent of discussing the weather. Even the worrying proficiency of the slave One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) at destroying his opponents prompts little more than water-cooler chat, as it were. When One-Eye gets a hold of an arrowhead that allows him to break free of his bondage and slaughter his captors, their brief flashes of overwhelming fear mark the first emotional beat of the film.

This opening segment is the highlight of the film, a grim, muddy closed loop of clacking chains, howling wind and the wet thump of fist on flesh. No story arises from this first part, but then One-Eye has no use for a narrative. His only dramatic motivation is to stay alive, and if he has to snap a stranger, maybe even a fellow tribesman's, neck or beat in a head with a rock, he'll do it. Crystal clear imagery captures the craggy, desolate hells of untamed Britain with desaturated imagery, emphasizing the cold, black mud in which the slaves fight and the half-frozen, nutrient-less vegetation that clings to its own meaningless life in this foggy, frigid terrain. Only the modicum of kindness a boy shows to One-Eye alleviates this sense of overarching inhumanity, but not even that can do anything to soften the edges of this uncomfortably crisp view of brutality, a brutality that reaches its peak when One-Eye manages to free himself and take his revenge.

After One-Eye's escape, he and The Boy stumble across a band of Christian Crusaders looking to sail for the Holy Land. The clan's leader (Ewan Stewart) invites the two to come along, clearly desirous of One-Eye's strength. The chieftain even promises that the warrior's sins will be forgiven, ironically through yet more killing. This change of pace introduces something approaching a narrative into the film, but Valhalla Rising still moves on with its atmospheric drift. The cold sharpness of Britain's windswept hills gives way to a fog-drenched voyage at sea, mist obliterating visibility past a few feet. Refn alternates between a hallucinatory, brown-red tint that gives the fog a hellish hue and a silver-gray, ghostly luminescence, the obscured sun making everything bright but still obscured. Directionless and without food, the men begin to fear for their lives, and Refn shows the breakdown with cold precision. There are no screams of panic, merely whispers of curses and superstition, growled orders to dispatch those who might be dooming them all and swift, dispassionate defenses of the targeted blights.

When One-Eye's visions tell him they've reached fresh water, the fog dissipates and reveals not the arid sands of the Middle East but the coniferous expanse of the New World. But in a movie where fear and single-minded dedication to brutish life are the only concretes, the rich possibilities of this new land induce only panic and more superstitious infighting. Refn enhances this bewilderment and unease by stripping the lush terrain of game and fruit, leaving only leafy trees to blot out visibility, and to conceal territorial natives from the confused, vulnerable Vikings as the steady fall of arrows begins to confirm their belief that this mockingly fertile land is Hell itself.

Morten Søborg's cinematography, aided by the Red One camera's range of possibilities, finds a balance between Alexander Knyazhinsky's contrasting styles in Stalker: desaturated, tinted shots emphasize black mud and pallid flesh, but color bleeds in in dream-like fashion even before the stylistic shift when this ragtag group of Vikings reaches the New World. America naturally comes to resemble The Zone, a realm of beautiful color (though still slightly chilled, à la Stalker) that is as inviting as it is unsettling. But where Tarkovsky made his alien realm into a place where leaps of faith were the only way to survive, Refn's New World displays the inverse. Scared and desperate for a sign from God, the men ingest psychotropic drugs, which only further awakens their paranoia. Previously hallucinatory imagery brought out One-Eye's supernatural visions, but Refn does not resort to much trickery to show the breakdown, keeping a firm eye on the now-uninhibited flow of fanaticism and violence. Tarkovsky's Zone was the dangerous, testing path to Heaven, or at least spiritual self-realization. Refn's America is merely a place of death, an area so vast the controlling elements of religion escape into the expansive air and leave those who cling to it lost at sea. It's no wonder they prove more dangerous to each other than the hailstorm of shafts.

Refn clearly molds this film for maximum stylistic impact, and he makes as good a use of Peter Kyed's music as the cinematography. A score of noise rock and pre-Gregorian tonal chants, the music crafts moods of unformed, primal aggression, fear and surreal breaks from the diegetic world. Organ chords are held until they threaten to pulsate every civilized thought out of your head. Jagged, atonal feedback escalates the tension when the Crusaders begin to fall apart in their verdant Hell, walls of electric squall puncturing the mix just as the rain of arrows continues to pepper the Vikings. It is a defiantly anachronistic touch in a film that, unlike nearly all such medieval films, truly feels as if you've been dropped back in time with no way to return to modern comfort, yet it somehow seems appropriate. It captures the sound inside these men, formless textures of white noise, capturing not only their base, instinctual moods and motivations but the absence of any guiding voice save the one they insert into this wash themselves.

An opening title card reads, "In the beginning there was only man and nature. Men came bearing crosses and drove the heathen to the fringes of the Earth." Valhalla Rising posits that the heathen was driven to the fringes of the mind, not any geographical location. The only thing separating the converted Vikings and the native tribes is the natives' purity of violence. Without the awkward, often counterintuitive application of Christian soldier values to complicate fighting with guilt and self-righteousness, the indigenous warriors act on animal instinct alone. It's not a preferable way of being, of course, but Refn isn't out to show humanity's civilized side. For that, he'd need a woman.