80s Film Noire

"You give me a time, and a place; I give you a five minute window."

The Man With No Name concept pioneered by Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa has been emulated, paid homage too, brought to strange new places and ripped off so frequently it has become a rarity to see the concept done right. I watched Drive fueled by heavy recommendation from friends and peers and in all honesty came pretty late to the show. 2011 was set a-rave by reviews of the movie and I can't quite remember what stopped me from checking it out earlier. If you're a fan of Michael Mann and the reserved, intense, drawn out fashion in which he infuses his work then Drive is a movie you shouldn't miss.

There isn't a single lackluster performance throughout and all of them revolve around the sobering gravity in which Ryan Gosling plays the driver. He is reserved and soft-spoken enough to give the impression of emotional handicap - any hint of joy breaks through his face like the sun through an overcast sky, such is the rarity. He exhibits none of the invincible characteristics of most action heroes; actually his success can be accredited to a ruthless professional attitude synchronized with vast emotional detachment. This is a movie that will only allow you to smile when it's the kind of smile that hurts. The plot unrolls with the unstoppable weight of a Greek tragedy - like the original cut of Mel Gibson's Payback - wherein every character could potentially save themselves but their natures and principles and circumstance only ensnare them deeper. Gosling is exceptionally skilled behind the wheel - the film opens with him coolly driving the escape vehicle for a heist, and evading the police not so much through a quick-cut high-intensity action sequence but by a maintenance of calm under pressure, great ingenuity, and the ruthless adherence to a sort of code or principle his profession demands. Very much like the samurai of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. The opening sequence establishes the mood and then the plot elements are introduced. The emotional triangle (I don't want to say "love" triangle because it seems to coarse a term) is established between Gosling, a young single mother and her child, and the estranged father soon-to-be released from prison.

Nicolas Winding Refn (director) is a master of showing and not telling. An intelligent audience will draw their own conclusions as to why a professional such as Gosling's character would allow themselves to be drawn into the complications of other people's lives. This is what makes Drive so god-damn compelling. The relationship with Irene (Carey Mulligan) which nevers gets off the ground, the implied guilt which compels him to unselfishly help her husband... you could say that the film almost languishes on these details but it draws you in so deep the next time violence and action occurs it seems almost an intrusion by comparison.

I'm going to take a minute here to minutely digress from Drive and speak on the presentation of violence in cinema. I mentioned before in my other blog that I often find myself obsessing over the realistic portrayal of violence in media; this is most likely because of my intimate exposure to actual violence across the pond. Stylistic liberties notwithstanding (and even then, there is a line between stylistic violence done right - 300 - and done wrong - Kick Ass) I often despise the way in which violence is thrown in our faces. There is nothing cool about it, and I'm a professional in terms of its application. There are dark, biological compulsions within us that drive us towards the violent resolution of conflict and as a First World Nation it should be our prerogative to seek alternate resolutions or use the controlled application of violence (military intervention) as a last resort. When violence does break out it's often short, nasty, unexpected, brutal, and traumatic. Anyone who's ever witnessed a street fight would do well to analyse the reactions of bystanders - stunned, mortified, shaken - if you're not too entranced by the spectacle itself. Alluring and toxic, like most dangerous things in our world. When Martin Scorsese presents violence, he often does so within two precedents; that violence is an inevitable part of everyday human experience, and that is shocking and traumatic. Take the department store fight scene from The Departed; Di Caprio's character brutally assaults two Italian gangsters with unapologetic brutality. The scene ends with Di Caprio gouging one of the men with a coat-rack while pop music plays in the background. Just another day in Boston, the music suggests. 

In Drive I don't think there was a single violent act that wasn't discomforting or shocking; and this is largely due to Refn's masterful use of pacing. The long pauses in between action sequences and the emotional depth and complexity these sequences have draw us so deep into the moods and interactions and motivations and curiosities and dramas of the characters that we are shaken out of our stupor when someone is say, stabbed viciously in the eye with a fork and then repeatedly stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife. Gosling gets out of fights and kills the way an animal escapes and fights in the wild. He rarely pulls a punch because his life and the lives of others are at stakes. That being said, when he staggers away covered in blood we aren't pumping our fists or laughing; we are thrilled and sobered by the intensity of the scene. 

Drive is a fantastic movie, but don't expect to leave the theater or your couch with particularly uplifted spirits afterwards. The film is 80s homage and film-noire at its best and most unexpected; everything from the lighting, costumes, and To Live and Die in L. A-style credits font screams style. With its sparse dialogue and lack of exposition, the narrative is largely told through the shadows of its characters and their actions rather than directly and is stronger because of it. In the blog I write with Cam I recently explored the various ways in which villainy is outright perceived in fiction. I failed to touch upon another way, in that there is no villain, merely antagonists; in Drive there is not a single unsympathetic character, only characters whose nature may upset our sensibilities. The villains are only villains in that they act against our protagonists and their successes and failures only provoke sadness at the circumstantial nihilism that sets the stage. 

Before I step out I will mention that the movie also has a brilliant soundtrack and if we're going to talk about the mood Drive establishes, what more do I really need to say?

  

Oh, Crooked Warden

"Thieves prosper. The rich remember."

I'm not enthusiastic enough to say that the Gentlemen Bastard novels are great works in the genre of fantasy literature, but they are certainly a blast to read. The prose is very neat and descriptive and immediately accessible. I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora on a bit of a whim (a small grain of sand had been planted by either hearsay or a glanced-at review), and found myself reticent to begin the first book. The story takes a little bit of a kick to get moving in the case of both novels, and likewise both novels hit a sort of phase line whereby the gravitas of the plots become inescapable. Though I inched through the first hundred pages or so, I ferociously gorged myself on the meat of it through til the end.

Both books are worth a sit down and a read. Red Seas takes a while to get going, but when it does - when the book takes to the high-seas, reading it occupied my every waking moment. The finales tend to, in a logical tradition, come down like stacks of cards around our protagonists' heads.

I'm worried that the series is going to grow to big for its skin. I like this whimsical tale about thieves and rogues and pirates, not as well put together a bildungsroman as Rothfuss' Kingkiller but endearing nonetheless. There enormous morale and ethical conundrums as to the motivations of the characters, conflicting largely with the period - but hey, it's fantasy, and that can be fun enough. If Lynch is to be commended for anything, it is the elaborate world he is creating - one city at a time, blending together artifice and alchemy so damn near anything is possible. The city of Camorr, specifically, still looms like a monolith in my imagination - with its crystalline cat-walks and glass bridges and canals. Part of me wants to suggest that, aesthetically, some of the Bastard books may borrow from Final Fantasy. Who's to say.

Resurrection

"It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap... The inevitability of time, don't you think?"

Few things feel so good as stepping out of a movie theater with the same sort of satisfaction you might feel after a great steak dinner. The official apology for Quantum of Solace has finally arrived. Skyfall is thrilling where it is required to be thrilling, twists where you don't expect it to twist (or bends in another direction), and draws out a hearty laugh or two in the process. It is the Dark Knight of Bond films - both hard-hitting, and graceful. When the audience laughs it is not at the expense of the script's dignity - it is because the script has shone us wit deserved of a Bond picture, without slapstick or pandering. The action boils and moves forward, kinetic and relentless, without becoming obtuse. The dialogue is sharp and to the point - when the movie threads on 007's back-story, it threads delicately so as not to turn up anything unnecessary. Even the facts surrounding our enigmatic protagonist's past are handled with the utilitarian caution as might an actual Intelligence Agency.

And beneath all that, the newest addition to the Bond legacy manages to be charming. Where Casino Royale de-constructed and broke apart conventions that had been staples of the Bond franchise for so long it was hard to remember an MI6 without them, Skyfall manages to embrace those conventions while simultaneously re-inventing them. Even the opening sequence (though, in this small detail, overshadowed by Casino Royale's) caters back to Bond tradition - that blur of action offering a sample of what's to come, and not so clumsily as Quantum's shakily edited and quickly forgotten car-chase-shootout. The stakes are set immediately, the audience is engaged, and when Bond falls into the water and the film breaks into a new anthem for the agent, the tone has been set.

Part of me wants to nit-pick at something - my nature demands it - but I left that theater smiling 

and all I can do is encourage everyone to pay for a ticket-stub, cram popcorn into your face, and watch the bloody movie. The action is high-octane, dictated by both character and environment while still being grounded in reality; the plot is gripping with a marvelous villain, physically deformed (as a good Bond villain should be) and mentally unstable; and there are just enough light-hearted moments so as to not weigh the audience down. Not to mention a few clever, tongue-in-cheek jibes as the franchise itself, which will warm the heart of any fan.


"James Bond will return!", the credits roll. We can only hope he does with as much eloquence.

You'll find your late husband is not unknown in these woods...

"No longer can be conduct ourselves as rats. We know too much."

I had to take a step forward here and state for the record that this movie, and this probably isn't news, is awesome. Everything from the aesthetic - that gnarled, deformed perspective on everyday surroundings - to the characters, all spectacularly articulate. For instance, there is no "comic-relief" character to Secret of NIMH, only Jeremy the magpie. But he is not "comic-relief" as contemporary children's schlock has come to understand it - he is amusing through virtue of his personality. He doesn't spout off one-liners. Aunty Shrew comes a close second.

I think Mrs. Brisby is the most definite example of bravery in an animated protagonist. The film at no point shirks from showing that she is afraid - dead afraid - of her surroundings (a hostile universe which makes little time for little mice and their mice families), and yet for her children she creeps forward into the Great Owl's hollow - nudges further into the rose-bush amidst a kaleidoscope of strange anomalies - volunteers to drug Dragon the cat, if only to uphold the example set by her late husband.

And visually, the film is astounding. What other example can you give me of something so common-place as an Owl being twisted into something so terrifying? His nest is like something out of Dungeons & Dragons, but not out of the ordinary, it is a matter of perspective and scale. Where a moth can cause such a racket and distress as a bat would to a human being, a spider the equivalent of a wolf. Cobwebs, and the clattering of small rodent bones to mark this great beast for its predatory nature. What a reserved, detached god it seems - taking the time to consult with this little mouse, whom he does not eat only because it isn't dark. 

There is something else to be said for the unsung stories of Johnathan and Aegis, as well. The latter being a cantakerous old one-legged geezer, we would never assume that he was the rodent equivalent of an Arthurian knight before Mrs. Brisby knew them. The way Nicodemus speaks of them reminds me of the way Obi-Wan Kenobi spoke of his relationship with and the fate of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, where the mystery itself is more engaging than the actual story.

I won't bother talking about the animation - because no amount of 3-D or CG I think can stand up against the colours, atmosphere, and magic of Secret of NIMH and come out the winner. The movie is a monument of its time.