A Real Human Being and a Real Hero: Stylistic excess, dead time and intensified continuity in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. (1st June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rogers, Anna Backman; Kiss, Miklós
• Is Part Of: New cinemas. Volume 12:Number 1/2(2014)
• Page Start: 43
• Page End: 57
• Publication Date: 2014-06-01
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- Reviews -- Periodicals; 791.4305
• DOI: 10.1386/ncin.12.1-2.43_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1474-2756

Abstract

This article sets forth that Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) exhibits a 'complex transformation' of an American film genre by foregrounding features associated with art cinema and, more specifically, European and auteur film-making. We argue that the film's appeal derives precisely from an intelligent and cine-literate deployment of the tensions in this dichotomy of European/American film-making. As such, Drive is a film that foregrounds or reveals its own construction in a number of ways, but its appeal lies in the fact that it does not prevent intense emotional engagement on the part of the viewer. It is neither a cold exercise in mere style nor a simple copy of an earlier formula, but rather a film that manages to marry a number of narrative and stylistic features in such a way that the film itself, arguably, is not easy to categorize.