ANOTHER BADASS FILM CALLED DRIVE!

I’ve seen 2 movies in the past 2 days. One was the instantly forgettable Tin Tin - if I even begin to start typing about this movie I get borerfncdccsdnjsvdcvvcnjvc - and the other was Drive. A few rants back I mentioned David Mamet’s brilliant On Directing Film, a book which criticises Hollywood’s obsession with back-story and “building character”, whatever that might mean, as the story, and our interest, slips away. Mamet suggested stripping everything down to the story. Not the character. Not the theme. The story. “This dude does this,” and not, “This _____ dude does this because he feels ______.” Drive captures everything that is fuckin’ magic about this approach and is the most purely cinematic film I’ve seen since Amer.

Drive expects the viewer to create their own impression of what is going on. And I don’t mean like David Lynch, where he just throws all sorts of weird shit at you with no regard for plot hoping that the tone and the lesbians will see you through. Drive leaves out the shit that doesn’t matter. It tells the story through Mamet’s beloved juxtaposition of uninflected images. Drive’s storytelling is so efficient that it comes across as a style, even though it’s just simplicity. After Tin Tin, where a hero can ride a motorcycle on a highwire with nary a “Holy shit!” from a bystander, Drive’s beautifully constructed narrative was damn near a religious experience. I know it sounds like I’m being a pretentious nob, but it’s actually the opposite. Drive is simple cinema. Most of everything else, especially Tin Tin, is cinema + bollocks.