I (re)watched a movie yesterday which is technically beyond reproach. Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is formally perfect - sound design, cinematography , editing are faultless. The actors emote with a bare bones screenplay and play out Godard's dictum that all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun (or a skull crushing boot). Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising is an influence . The actors play archetypes and the action is fetishised. The unnamed driver wears an iconic jacket with a scorpion on the back.
The quote from Godard is that cinema is dead. Ever the absolutist he claimed that in a capitalism without alternatives you end up with heartless cruelty like Drive.There are many fine humanist filmmakers working that deal with real lives and human drama. The soon to retire Ken Loach, Terence Davies and Clio Bernard all produce films reflecting lives lived. But they seldom trouble the multiplex and are deemed art house . Ken Loach's last opus Angel's Share is an uplifting tale of ex convicts and whiskey. It is not difficult but hasn't the cool veneer of Drive or Mr Tarantino's latest.
The visceral thrill of depersonalised violence sells tickets . If is what we want. Cheap thrills and a metallic taste in the mouth. Or it is what we are told we want.
Drive baby. Drive.
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