A Hollywood stunt driver moonlights as a getaway driver. He gets tangled up with his neighbor and her husband's criminal debt, and that sets off a violent chain of events. He handles it with extraordinary skill and extraordinary silence. Nicolas Winding Refn's neo-noir, a modern take on the old crime film, is built around a hero who communicates entirely through action.
Drive is a 2011 crime, drama and thriller film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (1 editing, 2 narrative, 1 sound and 1 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Fight Club uses several of the same techniques.
Holding on quiet shots of characters watching and taking in the world around them, without cutting away. Glances, gestures and shared silence carry as much as any action.
How this film uses it
Ryan Gosling's Driver speaks maybe 12 sentences in the first 40 minutes. Refn builds the character and his relationships entirely out of behavior, silence and long looks at a face that explains nothing. Behind the silence, there is a full inner life. The film refuses to put it into words for you.
Where to see it
The elevator sequence. Driver and Irene stand close together before the violence. In a few seconds, the silence between them holds the whole romance of the film.
Giving a film 2 very different tones, such as comedy and tragedy, often split into halves. Each makes the other hit harder, and the film never blends them into 1.
How this film uses it
The first half of Drive is a quiet, almost dreamlike romance with a synthwave score, soft light and 2 people drifting close to each other. The second half is sudden, extreme violence that is almost unwatchable. Refn builds no bridge between the 2 moods. He breaks from one straight into the other, and the violence shocks more because it came out of that tenderness.
Where to see it
The elevator scene. The film's break in tone happens in a single sequence, a kiss and then a stomping. The 2 moods crash into each other with no warning and nothing to soften it.
Giving each character, culture or place its own musical theme, and changing those themes as the story develops. The music tells you things the images and dialogue hold back.
How this film uses it
The synthwave soundtrack, with songs by Kavinsky, Chromatics and College and a score by Cliff Martinez, paints the Driver's inner life as a neon romance. He never talks about longing or being alone, so the music expresses both for him. That is, the soundtrack works as character more than mood. The Driver lives inside a 1980s dream, and the film's violence keeps breaking into it.
Where to see it
The driving sequences set to Kavinsky's 'Nightcall'. The score lays the Driver's inner world over Los Angeles at night. The music is the clearest portrait of him the film gives you.
Adjusting the film's overall color, such as how warm, cold or vivid it looks, to match a character's emotional state. It can also separate different realities or states of mind.
How this film uses it
Refn and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel color the film in neon pinks and electric blues against deep blacks. These are the colors of a Los Angeles that exists as a romantic fantasy. The color grade is the Driver's state of mind. He sees the world in the heightened, saturated colors of someone who lives inside a movie genre and has no ordinary life outside it.
Where to see it
The nighttime driving sequences. The neon coloring expresses the Driver's romantic streak. It turns Los Angeles into a place he projects his desires onto.
Building up tension and then releasing it in explicit violence that carries the film's moral or political point. The violence makes you feel what historical distance has turned abstract.
How this film uses it
Violence in Drive breaks in after a long stretch of quiet. When it comes, it is extreme enough to make you rethink everything before it. The elevator stomping, the fork in the eye and the shootout are each judged to destroy the romantic film the first half was building. The release you get is dark, and it brings no relief.
Where to see it
The elevator stomping sequence. The violence arrives inside a tender moment. You have to hold both moods at once, and the scene never settles them.
Questions
Drive: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Drive use?
CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Drive (2011): Silent Observation Pacing, Tonal Bifurcation, Thematic Musical Identity, Color Grading as Psychology and Violence as Cathartic Argument.
Who directed Drive?
Nicolas Winding Refn directed Drive, released in 2011. CineCode also covers The Neon Demon (2016).
What films are similar to Drive?
Films that share techniques with Drive include Fight Club (1999), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Spirited Away (2001), Life is Beautiful (1997).
