Watched: Drive
Observations:
- Wow, this was intense.
- I think I could watch a film with Ryan Gosling subtly emoting and nothing else. The man is mesmerising to watch, and I’m glad his career took this turn rather than an endless string of buddy movies and rom-coms. Darkness works so well for him.
- The score for this was wonderful, too - though I was a little thrown when the credits said Angelo Badalamenti composed the score. Once you take out the electro tracks, Brian Eno and (however improbably) the score from The Social Network, there’s very little left. But unnoticed, mesmerising ambience has always been Badalamenti’s strong point. (See also: another film with the word “Drive” in it.)
- OK, this is an edit, but a quick addendum - I can’t find any record of Badalamenti composing anything for this film (most of it coming from Cliff Martinez), but that’s definitely his name in the credits. A bit perplexing, to say the least.
- One more edit - apparently I ended up watching the workprint, rather than the final version, so the score I was listening to (which was perfectly fine) was unfinished and featured a lot of (really well chosen) placeholder music. So… maybe disregard the last couple of paragraphs. Dear oh dear.
- Not a minute felt wasted here. I’m trying to think of suitable criticisms, and the most I can think of is that a) Ron Perlman’s character was a little too clownish and b) there was really no reason to state the source of the money in such explicit terms - after all, it was a device for the descent of the mood, not really important in and of itself.
- Fantastic noir, and the best use of violence as a leitmotif that I’ve seen in years. Tarantino, take note.