Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

The driver with no name.

Humanity and brutality. Director Nicolas Winding Refn, who deservedly won the Best Director Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, has beautifully tackled both in a stark existential light, that which echoes the likes of "Taxi Driver", and ultimately weighed both in a blurring contrast which highlights the compromises of poor choices. "Drive", with its violent nature and perverse tone, could have easily been a disposable Grindhouse-like feature. Its exaggerated depiction of nerve-wracking gore, an aspect that is a most common reason for audience polarization, complements the whole film but still suggests a heightened feel of sensationalism for the sake of shock.

Yes, these violent scenes are truly unnerving, but looking at the main character, a skilled driver who works in the movies and also for night heists, played with great control but also with unflinching rage by Ryan Gosling, his mysterious transformation from a passive loner to an involved, blood-drenched avenger is the one that's much more disturbing. Forget the violence first, it is this protagonist's motives and questionable decisions that is the film's center. With him lacking enough character background, it makes his actions all the more intriguing, but his surprising notion towards love and connection without much words to back it up, on the other hand, makes him all the more affecting.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini (basing his screenplay on the novel of the same name by James Sallis), exposes two primal human impulses, to kill and to love, and brilliantly incorporated it into the film's stylized, almost poetic take on noir. What resulted is a perfect amalgamation of both substance and form, with a fair amount of adrenaline rush to sweeten it all up.

In its very immediate surface that echoes some action film formulas, It is expected for "Drive" to contain one-dimensional characters, particularly the villains, played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. But these displays of intended shallowness is overwhelmed by the film's pitch-perfect rendition of tender love. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan sure has never worked before. Ryan Gosling sure is already initiated with love stories. But Carey Mulligan has been memorable via her turn as a naive young woman in "An Education", so jumping from innocence to maturity, performance-wise, is really quite challenging on her part.

It's almost a thing of miracle, but their chemistry here in "Drive" flowed smoothly despite of some initial constraints. Carey Mulligan, although very young, has portrayed Irene, the main reason for the driver's daring decisions, with this sense of desensitization towards life. It's as if she has gone through so much that she simply wants someone to hold. And him, the driver, on the other hand, being lonely and a complete nobody all his life (albeit him being a stunt driver for the movies), only wants someone's life to touch. With the use of great lighting, cinematography and music (with the elevator scene being the best example), "Drive" has successfully established these two characters' link with an almost melodious feel but also is effective in breaking it.

Narrative-wise, the film is tight in its execution, holds on firmly with what it is all about, and never went on for something else. This particular focus for what's immediate rather than to experimentally delve more on something that is marked with pretense only highlights the film's material strength in its consistent ability to tell a story and also to seamlessly state why it has been told in the first place. It roots out, of course, as what I've said earlier, from the characters' flawed choices.

Nicolas Winding Refn has stated that "Drive" is a tribute to surrealistic director Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose cinematic deviance is a thing both of beauty and disgust. That is particularly limiting because "Drive" is, above all, a general tribute to what great, uninhibited filmmaking is all about.

FINAL RATING

Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)

Waiting.

Love. Oh how sweet and promising it really is when it first flourishes between two people's hearts. It shows how everything seems to be all too easy, how nothing seems to hinder no one, and how everyone around you is but a blurring haze. That is the description of 'love' in the earliest of its budding, but when all those reside somewhere into a corner and reality once again sets in, well, what then? "Blue Valentine", a heartbreaking, charmingly funny yet emotionally draining independent film that depicts with utter realism and emotions stripped off of all the gloss of cinematic consciousness, the disillusioning eventuality of the aforementioned romantic euphoria.

The film, directed by Derek Cianfrance and shown in a 'back and forth' non-linear structure, perfectly captured both a relationship's magical first weeks to the shattering trials and slowly settling indifference of the latter ones. The couple, Dean and Cindy, (performances by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams that certainly warrant spots in a shortlist of best performances of 2010) although with a hint of an escalating spatial gap, clearly still have love for each other. And unlike other films who show a couple's connection through quick smiles, hugs and kisses, Dean and Cindy's relational strength are underlined by hardships.

Of course there's a time where the film seems to slightly go into romantically 'cute' sequences to develop both the characters' mutual affection, but between those lines, we see the passiveness of their deteriorating love. In the opening scene, we see Dean, along with their daughter, go into their bedroom to wake Cindy up. Dean dives into the bed and playfully kisses Cindy, but she shrugs off. From that scene onwards, I think it's fair to say that at least we can weigh it off that Dean is much more enthusiastic to redeem their downward spiral of a marriage than his wife. He even sets up a romantic revitalization of sorts in a 'future' room (filled with all those sci-fi buttons and stuff) in a themed motel with Cindy.

But the thing with Dean is, he's too defensively fragile. "You're never going to guess who I saw at the liquor mart." Cindy said to Dean while they're on their way to the motel. "Bobby Ontario", she then followed. It turns out, this Bobby Ontario is Cindy's old flame. And after hearing the name, Dean turns into a short silence and engaged into an uneasy argument with Cindy that furthered the fact that he is insecure with himself. And as what was subsequently followed by a conversation inside the said 'future' room between the two about what Dean really wants to do with his life aside from being a life-long blue collar worker, he is insecure with what he really want to be. A hint of an unconscious quarter-life crisis rising in the midst of a couple in trepidation. I think 'falling out of love' is an understatement.

Michelle Williams, in these scenes I've mentioned and a whole lot more, flawlessly inhabited the character Cindy's evolution from being an innocent young lover at a crossroads to an innocent young lover whose last-second epiphany taught her the ropes of 'responsibility' and finally, a wife whose own emotional exhaustion, because of an unhappy marriage, suggests desensitization.

Ryan Gosling, on the other hand, with his carefree demeanor all throughout the film, substantially portrayed Dean, a character of considerably stern masculinity (in terms of knowing what to do in the right times but sadly, barely knowing what to say in truly important ones) that despite of his educational limitations and lack of adequate parental guidance and upbringing, hesitates being meek in life.

Both characters are flawed, has gone through so much yet still knew too little. As their utterances of 'for better or for worse' fade into an ethereal image of their longingly long kiss, they have experienced with delight the 'better' but they have not prepared for the 'worse'. But aren't all couples?

"Blue Valentine", with its grounded approach to the nuances of love and the transformation of romantic warmth to consuming coldness, depicts love stripped bare from all the picture-perfect qualities of its immediate visualization upon the sweet acceptance of vows and wearing of the rings. And also explicitly shows the transitory pleasures and disappointments of the supposedly passionate sexual connection that comes with it.

Any imagination for a transcendental love will all be for naught once the storm settles in, and no motel room can rightfully compensate for the shortcomings of sex. But when it finally subsides and all seems to be back to the usual normality of marriage stability, then what? "Blue Valentine" supports the fact that though a marriage ceremony ends with short answers like 'I do' , every step from then on always begins with some questions, half-finished sentences, tearful apologies and even lessons along the way.

Beyond that point, 'Do I?' resonates more. It's not a question to fully reevaluate one's feelings toward his/her love, but an emotional disambiguation of a romantic perspective in a state of confusion and doubt. Love is too complex, tangled and often times painful a phenomenon that we just have to accept it as a fact. I'm sure "Blue Valentine" wholeheartedly does.

FINAL RATING