If you’re pregnant and your doctor tells you, “Due to obvious medical signs, your baby is going to be retarded,” your baby is probably going to be retarded.
I know that I am easily entertained by this stuff. Same way that I will take Gears of War over Braid I will take this over Drive. Some people just go for base enjoyment.
But Drive isn’t a movie that is well writen. It’s all style and no substance. It is exactly the type of movie this will be except not presented anywhere near as well.
Use Moneyball or the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo instead.
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hmm while i do understand why people would rightfully want to shoot/rape/murder this girl, i think a better solution would be to send her to a third world country to do volunteer work.
Of course Drive has substance. While it is unmistakably heavy on style, the movie has a sense of humanity and morality at its core.
The word you may be looking for instead of substance is dialogue. Drive has very little of it. That might be why so many people find it so spare, accustomed as they are to movies where dialogue is haphazardly slathered all over the place.
Nah it’s substance that it’s lacking.
“I’m the driver, I love this girl?, she is threatened now so I will kill all the people” Amazingly, that description of the movie almost matches how many words the driver said during the entire movie. It’s a meal with tons of calories but no nutritional content.
A lot of it makes no sense. How does he have 3 jobs and yet lives in this crappy apartment and is super mysterious? Oh look, I’m going to be this ladies new man, now her husband is back, guess it’s back to the track with me.
It’s a good movie, but being quiet, brooding, and distance doesn’t make you amazing unless you are dumb girl swooning over Ryan Gosling’s dreamy “depth” in that movie.
It was a simple present of a plot presented in an extra shiny wrapped box.
The hero is obviously an alienated individual who interacts very poorly or not at all with others. He’s given a chance to make good and it all goes awry in terrible, inevitable ways. They don’t talk about it constantly like in Christopher Nolan movies, because there are other ways to indicate subtext besides spelling it right out.
Travis Bickle works long hours every single night and lives in a hovel with a tiny TV and an army cot. Characters don’t always do stuff that makes logical sense.
Patently untrue, given the number of counterexamples.
Simple is not the same thing as bad, empty, insubstantial, etc., just as complex is not the same thing as good or substantial.
Nah, your first suggestion is better.
I’d change the order slightly though; Shoot, murder and then rape.
But they didn’t show the driver working long hours on purpose like Travis Bickle. He just had 3 jobs. He wasn’t angry or alienated. He wasn’t anything. Don’t give him depth because he wasn’t deep. He wasn’t even sullen, he just wasn’t anything. Travis was crazy. How was driver guy THAT conflicted, alienated, and whatever other word you want to assign to him if he could hold down three jobs without a problem?
Everyone who interacted with him generally seemed like they liked him. He even effortlessly charmed the girl and her kid.
The comparison you are trying to make with your movie history book is apt, Drive is Taxi Driver without the character depth/story.
And you keep trying to say I said the movie was bad. I didn’t say the movie was bad, I said it was hollow.
It is not as good as people who love say it is, and it is not as bad as people who hate it say it is.
1: If your argument is that the audience shouldn’t ascribe things to the movie, then your argument is wrong. That’s precisely how the relationship between an audience and a movie works. Perhaps you did not find in Drive what others did, but I caution you against thinking that this somehow means that they were wrong for finding what they found in it.
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It is entirely plausible that an alienated loner would find solace in work, and thus work as much as possible.
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Travis was not crazy. At least, not at the beginning. If I were to be facile about it, I would say that Taxi Driver is a story in two acts, and the second half is about the disintegration of his sanity.
“Alienated” does not mean “unlikable”. Once again, see Travis Bickle. Hell, see any number of real life tragedies that begin with “He seemed like such a nice guy.”
Drive is not half the movie that Taxi Driver is, but Taxi Driver is many times the movie that most other movies are–including the great ones.
I am throwing in “bad” as par for the course. You say it’s hollow, which I don’t believe it is, and by “hollow”, you are almost certainly implying a negative value statement. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Fair enough. But if people love it, it’s obviously that good for them. Perhaps you simply don’t bring the right mixture of common experiences to the movie in order to develop that degree of investment in it… which is the same thing I’d say about people who aren’t taken with Taxi Driver.
If people don’t like Taxi Driver, they are stupid. JUST LIKE YOU ARE FOR SAYING DRIVE ISN’T HOLLOW. I HATE YOU.
The prescribing stuff, I don’t think while writing it they did that on purpose. That happens in movies all the time where people will think up all these complicated reasons for why something happened when the writers of the movie were just being lazy or didn’t care. (note, I am not saying the writers of this movie didn’t care, but they could have cared more because I doubt the script was some tight masterpiece) My argument isn’t that people should prescribe their thoughts to the movie, it’s that they shouldn’t have to. You should be able to show the character consumed with work and being socially inept. You shouldn’t have to just bring that up on your own to flesh him out yourself.
They did a bad job of showing him dedicating himself completely to work if that is your theory. He seemed like he had tons of spare time to go out and be a driver driver and not effect his stunt driving in anyway. He also just showed up to work at the garage basically whenever. It was never like “Oh man Driver, if you are late ONE MORE TIME!”
I not saying hollow in a way that the movie is hindered in quality. Just in a manner to describe that the story isn’t chock full of little intricacies that shape the world within the movie.
At least we both agree that Taxi Driver was a great great movie. Drive is a nice little tribute to it, but for people to say it’s THE best movie of the year, that is just silly. Stylistically the movie is one of the best, but the story being so simple (having a simple story shouldn’t ever be a bad thing, a quick example would be Avatar the Last Airbender) but the lack of true character development brings down the movies quality. At least it does for me on a “This is one of the best movies of the year” scale.
Sorry doc, I missed your “diagnosis” then. AND your PhD degree on movie analysis…
Maybe it’s the whiskey talking (still getting knackered on my birthday booze), but I love you.
I’m not necessarily talking about epileptic trees theories (look it up on TV Tropes), but I’m talking about simple markers of common experience–the jobs, the taciturn personality, the solitary little apartment–that touch off little bits of common experience within people.
It’s not necessarily my theory, but you have to admit, they do go pretty far out of their way to show that he defines himself by what he does for a living.
It is my favorite movie. It is telling of why I liked Drive that I find myself comparing the two favorably, though I’ll readily admit that Drive, like anything, is far inferior.
I know I’m repeating myself, but I didn’t see many new movies this year. I like to think that I caught some of the best and brightest, and I would count Drive among them. I wouldn’t say it was the best of the year, though.
If you want my authority on movies, you’re looking at it.
Off the top of my head, Drive would be in the top 10. But if I made it a true effort to go and nitpick I’m sure I could bugger up a bitchy top 10 list that doesn’t contain just to be a dick.
And yeah, they did make it a point so show him just working and only just working. One job to another to another, but it didn’t really seem like he was alienated/sad to me. More like he was a cool quiet guy who was just bored/really enjoyed doing car stuff. He was only really “stressed” out when the relationship/pawn shop stuff started. Before that it was as if he was always “Whatevs bro, I drive”
Now I am prescribing stuff, OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I also will not fall for your Trope Trap.
PS - This is now the Drive/Argue about movies thread. HURRAY. We did it!
Enjoyable Drive sub-topic: the use of synth pop on the soundtrack.
This is (mostly) Cliff Martinez at work, who also contributed an excellent electronic score to the Solaris remake. His choice of textures in Drive, plus the use of inserted songs, is a fine complement to the hyper-saturation and dreamy fluidity of the visuals. It looks like it sounds, and vice-versa.
The Drive soundtrack was just another part of it’s very high level of presentation.
I enjoyed it very much. They went all out on the production stylistically and technically.
Movie is out for those interested.
about that movie…
the first time i saw it i thought the guy was just nuts and turned vigilante.
second time i saw it knowing that he was trying to get himself killed so his daughter could collect the life insurance…made me see things i never noticed before. like if you noticed, when those mex kids try to do a drive by on his ass. and they start shooting, micheal douglas doesn’t duck, run, or anything. he just…stands there…on the payphone…essentially waiting to get shot…but he’s unharmed, while every single person around him gets shot…but like mr. magoo…he seems immune to anything life threatening regardless of whats happening around him.
second time i saw falling down made me realize,…he was never angry, postal, or vigilante in the least.
it was all an act in the hopes of getting killed without it being labeled suicidal.
but he was frustrated as fuck when he realized he was like bruce willis in unbreakable. lol.
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