[quote]Bellmar wrote:
[quote]phil armitage wrote:
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
This was the only movie I saw in the last 2 years that got stuck in my mind hours after I walked out of the theater. A little bit of art-house existentialism and a little bit of Hollywood action…the paradoxical mixture makes the film quite surreal.
I wasn’t sure if I liked it right after I saw it, it’s like it couldn’t sink in in time, and that my emotional brain was processing all the information, and that the rest of my cognition couldn’t quite catch up. Kind of like the feeling that I get after I jack off…I want to go pee, but I can’t because my penis hasn’t done the switching over from the ejeculating mode to the urinating mode.
Lots to say about this movie. First of all, I love the mask scenes. Ryan gosling’s character - having no name, no clear motivations, no past, no future, little dialogue, and the way he put on a faceless mask in critical moments while roaming around the city in the dark, the way he was referred to in the beginning of the movie as a zombie, how he got stabbed at the end, yet seemed to be unharmed as he simply drove off into the horizon, how he walked away without the money because he had have no practical purposes or uses for it, and his god-like driving ability to get around and avoid physical obstacles seemed to indicate that he was some sort of non-being who existed in a different metaphysical plane as most mortals.
He avoided human contacts unless absolutely necessary (hesitate to shake hands, drives people around but want nothing more to do with them other than JUST DRIVE), yet had the power to exert forces and influence causes and effects if for greater cause.
I think what the movie is trying to portray is that real ‘heroes’ are nameless and faceless and do not seek after glory and fame, and unlike a lot of of cliche heros in action movies that take up a lot of space and grab a lot of unnecessary attention to get the job done, he quietly ‘flows’ around in the night like a ghost or a disembodied spirit, yet he was extremely effective and lethal.
His job as a stunt driver symbolizes this. When we watch movies, the heroic moments were often times the work of nameless stuntmen who take the hit for the big-time actors?but they get no credit for their work, yet they are the real heroes who work behind the scenes. Their jobs are stunt doubles are deadly, fast, loud, and full of explosions and danger, yet they quietly, while hiding behind masks, makeup, wigs, and etc, get the job done discretely, jumping from scene to scene, job to job without leaving traces of who they really are.
(Also, you can’t help but wonder if his masked apperances, expressionless moments, and lack of speech were deliberately put in to miminc the test-drive dummies that take hit for real people, and to potentially save lives).
Ryan gosling was the stuntman for Irene and her family. He took hits for them, taking the baggage that was going to be on Irene’s shoulder and put it on his back. He never revealed more about himself than what was necessary, and after the family was relieved, he just drove away, leaving nothing physical behind.
This movie reminds me of how sometimes, the people who have the most affects on our lives are people like him?you don’t know who they are, where they are from, and where they are going, their physical presence could be minimum?they may appear in your life for only a moment or two, yet their influences, spiritually and mentally, are immense and life-changing.[/quote]
Epic fucking post.
And a great analysis. You sir, know how to read your movies.[/quote]
Agreed, better than many of movie blogs I have read.
I love the movie. I thought the acting was amazing and the characters all very real.
I especially loved how brutal and thorough the antagonist was.[/quote]
Thanks. I’m attempting to do a similar reading to Shark Night 3D, the jaw of a shark always fasinate me. I think they keep going back to that theme because it somehow mimics or symbolizes the mother(nature’s)womb. A place that thrown you out into this world without your consent, and that leaves you only 2 choices : to die (suicide) or to live. The people that chose the latter are just too scared to do the first, so they suck it up and LIVE. Jaws sort of reverted that metaphor by throwing things BACK at the womb to indicate that jaws, ultimately, is a space where one should ideally return to die. I’ve always dreamt of climbing back to my mother’s womb as an old man (or an old baby) to die in there. And maybe get reborn again. Who knows?
Anyway back to drive…I think it’s gonna be one of those movies that whoever saw it will never forget it. but they might not want to talk about it with others who have seen it and probably also feel the same way about it. It’s just a film that is best described when one is silent. … whatever that means.
