Screening Log: Post-Hiatus Catch Up

              Well that was longer than expected. I’ve come to the point where not writing about movies is worse than me than doing nothing, as films easily populate space in my mind instead of things I’d rather never have to think about. And during my long hiatus, I took in quite a few films (I hope to have reviews of Elena, Men in Black 3, and The Color Wheel up soon). I’m breaking up my usual style this time around, as I’ve annotated most of the films I’ve watched, though in much briefer notes. I also have a call for comments and discussion about thoughts on a few of these, so please respond below!

-The Tiger of Eschhnapur, 1959. Directed by Fritz Lang. 35mm projection at Anthology Film Archives.

-The Indian Tomb, 1959. Directed by Fritz Lang. 35mm projection at Anthology Film Archives.

-The Grand Illusion, 1937. Directed by Jean Renoir. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-On Top of the Whale, 1982. Directed by Raúl Ruiz. 35mm projection at Anthology Film Archives.

-Mulholland Dr., 2001. Directed by David Lynch. DVD.

            Perhaps the closest that a “mainstream” American film has come to the avant-garde moment. What makes Lynch so accessible compared to other artists working in the same sort of vein is that Lynch’s starting points—glamor of Hollywood, film noir—are so familiar and accessible to cinephiles. Lynch relishes in these classic tropes and drowns us in their illusion. The other big thing I noted is that while the narrative is much more disjointed, I felt a much more tonal and thematic balance in this film when compared to Blue Velvet, that felt a bit unfocused when I last watched it (mainly in the latter Frank sequences). There’s more control and the feel of an assured director in Mulholland, so when it heads into the bizarre, I never flinch, but instead let it suck me into the world. “Silencio” becomes the ultimate metaphor for the film—the most beautiful performance you’ve ever seen with disturbing emotion, though it is of course, all an illusion.

"Cant Fight This Feeling Anymore:" Nicolas Winding Refn Talks Drive

“Every great movie has five things: violence, romance, a great cast, American mythology, and a 90 minute running time.” So says Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director known for his violent and meticulous films Bronson and Valhalla Rising. His latest film, Drive, is his American debut, and stars Ryan Gosling as a LA Driver who does movie stunts by day and robberies by night (read the review here). Filled with a 1980s grunge sensibility smashed with a high-art European style, Mr. Winding Refn won the award for Best Director at Cannes for his film. He spoke after a screening last night at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Bamcinematek. Here is a sampling of the insights he brought to his creative process, as well as the greatest bromance ever told:

Mr. Winding Refn almost killed Harrison Ford:

            I was in LA working on a movie with Harrison Ford called The Dying of the Light. It was a wonderful script about a CIA agent who goes on an existentialist journey and then dies at the end. If I could do a movie where Harrison Ford dies, I could contribute to society. I had gone to Los Angeles to work with him. We would hang out, but then he was like he doesn’t want to die. But then there’s no movie, Harrison! I was so angry for buying into the illusion of Hollywood, I didn’t want to do it.

On how him and Mr. Gosling had the worst first date ever, which led to the project:

            Out of the blue, I got a call from Ryan Gosling asking if I wanted have dinner with him. I had never met him, so I was like why not?—if Harrison doesn’t want to die, maybe you want to die. The only problem was I had a very high fever because I had gotten sick on the plane. Harrison got me these anti-flu drugs that they have in this country that helped put the fever down, but the only problem is they made you as high as a kite. So I’m stoned out my mind and I got to meet Ryan.  That morning a script had arrived from Universal, written by Hossein Amini called Drive, but I didn’t read it because I was so stoned. So I went to dinner and I was the chair. I couldn’t turn, so I was sitting in profile because I couldn’t move…This man had an aura of an unbelievable proportion. He was very interested in how I make my films and had seen all of them, and was very enthusiastic. I was feeling very euphoric so halfway through I say will you please take me home. It was like a blind date gone wrong! He said sure, I’ll drop you off. So this dinner which hadn’t amounted to anything but “you’re great, I’m great, yea!” We’re sitting in the car, driving along the freeway in Santa Monica, which is a very long ride, in silence—blind date gone wrong, and no action. So we turn on the radio and its soft rock, REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore.” So here I am with Ryan Gosling and “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” and you know when you’re high you need to turn the music really, really loud. And I’m getting into the song. I’m from the 80s, and I remember this pop ballad, so I start singing along. And I can’t sing to save my life, and Ryan Gosling is driving this car, not saying a single word. And guys we’re pretty weak when we’re ill. So I’m missing my family and my kids and Harrison Ford won’t die, so I start to cry. Tears are rolling down my cheek and it’s flowing out of me and Ryan is just sitting in the car driving. I’m a Finnish filmmaker so I make films based on what I like to see and ideas come to me in the strangest of places, but right there I had an idea to do a movie. I turn to Ryan for the first time and he’s a very good looking man, and I scream at him, since the music is so loud, “I got it man! We’re gonna make a movie about a man who drives around at night, in a car, listening to pop music, cause that’s his emotional relief!” Ryan turns to me and looks at me and says, “Cool…I’m in.”

Drive: Le Getaway

Drive

Directed By: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written By: Hossein Amini, based on the novel by James Sallis

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Oscar Issacs, Christina Hendricks, and Ron Perlman.

Director of Photography: Newton Thomas Sigel, Editor: Matthew Newman, Production Designer: Beth Mickle, Original Music: Cliff Martinez

Rated: R for the type of violence you only see in the movies.

Read an interview with director Nicolas Winding Refn

            In what is probably the most self-conscious moment in Drive, Albert Brooks, playing a Jewish gangster, tells Ryan Gosling, “I was a movie producer in the 80s. Action films, sexy stuff—one critic called them European.” And while Drive is soaked in the visual style of American neo-noir, the world of Miami Vice and To Live and Die in L.A., its sensibilities and emotions feel ripped out of a 1960s Antonioni picture. Here’s a film about a man who must do what he does because it is all that he knows. It’s the type of self-conscious minimalist work that has lofty ambitions on recreating our knowledge of what it means to be an “action film.” But in reaching those lofty goals, Drive has the look of a sleek muscle car that is a beauty to look at, but hollow inside.

            The film is the first American film from director Nicolas Winding Refn, a Danish “auteur” with a knack for making self-conscious deconstructions. Best known for a Kubrikian exploration of violence called Bronson (which launched the career of Tom Hardy), a better vantage point for Drive would be his previous film Valhalla Rising, an ode to Tarkovsky that was a dumb-as-a-doorknob allegory that visually dazzled but offered little insight to its story of a one-eyed Viking. Mr. Winding Refn is a pure genre expert—he understands the little details that make us giggle with delight, like hearing the sounds of the leather gloves gripping the steering wheels. But he’s also too obsessed with his own allegories that Drive seems to offer little but a simple reconstruction. It’s the best action movie you’ll see this year, but it’s ultimate meaning is inauthentic.