Drive

Something is rotten in the State of California, and if it is a Danish guy to declare it, you should believe him, especially if his name is Nicolas Winding Refn.

The no-name hero of his movie Drive lives in LA and works as a stuntman during the day and as a getaway driver of crimes at night. And he is very good at what he does. All the rest, it’s a mystery: no family, no friends, and apparently no past life. He is a solitary and silent man. One day, he meets by chance Irene, a young neighbour, and her little children Benicio, and his existence is transformed. When Irene’s husband comes back home from jail, it is easy for the driver to accept of being involved in a dangerous hold-up: it is just by doing so that the criminals, to whom Irene’s husband owes money, will leave the woman and her son alone. Useless to say, things will be a bit more complicated than expected…

This is the movie of the consecration for Winding Refn, a Danish angry young man (he was born in Copenhagen in 1970) who is considered one of the most original and interesting talents of European cinema. He built his reputation through tough and personal movies like the trilogy Pusher, the chilling thriller Fear X and two movies of stylized violence like Bronson and Valhalla Rising, often using as his alter ego the more-than-amazing Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. Awarded of the Best Director Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival, Drive is surely less uncompromising and more mainstream than all his other movies, but it is by far the most enjoyable one. 

For somebody who doesn’t have a driving licence (apparently he failed the test 8 times), Winding Refn has an incredible ability of showing the beauty and the thrilling sensation you can feel seated at a four wheels. American cinema is packed with spectacular and often unbelievable scenes of car racings, but the ones filmed here have a more subtle and simple taste. The filmmaker doesn’t want to show off; he just wants us to enter into the driver’s universe in a smooth but gripping way. I really like the silent characters of Winding Refn cinema: like the One-Eye of Valhalla Rising, the driver lives his life more through images than through words. He is watching carefully what’s going on, often a mystical witness of the absurdity of life, inhabited by a wisdom that puts him on a different level. As many silent, charismatic and solitary heroes of American cinema (Clint Eastwood, are you there?), the driver played so wonderfully by Ryan Gosling has the astonishing quality of being redeemed by love but haunted by violence.

To the surprise of many, I will dare to define Drive as an incredibly romantic movie. In this sense, the elevator scene is the most beautiful and pivotal one: in an elegant, almost old-style slow motion, the man turns to kiss Irene, suddenly illuminated by a perfect light, and his arm protects her from the presence of a third presence in the elevator. The person is a criminal, and after few seconds he will be knocked down by the animal and brutal violence of the same man. The representation of violence in Winding Refn movies, clearly influenced by the cinema of Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Michael Mann, has Kitanesque’s nuances: is rapid, merciless and stylish (with forks, instead of chopsticks, in the eyes). Another essential element of Drive is the music, in various moments invading the screen like a real form of life, expressing things like a dialogue would do.

And then the cast: I already declared my love for Ryan Gosling in my post about Blue Valentine (http://leblogdezazie.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-york-trilogy-blue-valentine.html), so I don’t have much to add on this. His career choices are simply perfect. The other brilliant presence in the movie is the one of Bryan Cranston, the cherished actor of the TV series Breaking Bad, who masterfully built his character in just few scenes. Also the villains are not bad: Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman are scary and magnetic in the right way. On the female side, Christina Hendricks (the Joan of Mad Men) has a too short role to say something interesting about her, while I have to make here a declaration, and not a loving one, about Carey Mulligan: I can’t stand her. Since the very first time I saw her on screen I asked myself why this girl is considered a good actress. She pretends to be deep but she is not, she pretends to have a complete range of expressions but she doesn’t, she wants to look smart but she just looks unbearable. Her way of acting is unbelievably boring, and I mean, she is not even stunningly gorgeous (quite the opposite, as a matter of fact). Why is she on a silver screen? Maybe I am missing the point, but can somebody explained me why is she becoming so famous and why is she working with such good film-makers? All this remains a mystery to me.  
Should I finally make up my mind and get the driving license I never even tried to have?
I asked myself at the end of the movie. Well, if Ryan Gosling is giving private driving lessons, I promise: I will serioulsy think about that... 

It's a MAD MEN world!

I never had in my whole life so many chances to hear interesting actors and film-makers talking in public about their work as in this 2011 (and we are just at the beginning of it!). Being not only a cinema buff but also a TV series freak, I was absolutely thrilled when I read that Matthew Weiner (Mad Men’s creator) was hosting a Master Class at the Forum des Images. I wrote down the date of the tickets sale with a BIG warning sign and I woke up very early one morning to buy it on line. I was right. When I recently stopped by at the Forum to pick up the ticket, they told me they were sold out in just 4 hours! 
Once at the theatre, I had a big surprise. Besides Mr. Weiner, two actors of the series were present: Christina Hendricks (the voluptuous office manager Joan Harris) and John Slattery (the irresistible Roger Sterling, one of the agency's partners), who both spoke briefly at the end of the event.  

Through the answers to the questions made by Olivier Joyard, journalist of the Inrockuptibles, Weiner retraced his career and the amazing history of the TV series that changed his (and many others) life. Weiner explained that after some cinema studies, he became one of the numerous unemployed screen writers in Los Angeles and he remained so for 5 long years (helped to survive by his wife, an architect). In 2000 he wrote the pilot of Mad Men and tried to sell it to some networks. David Chase from HBO, the creator and executive producer of The Sopranos, happened to read it and he was so impressed by the script that he immediately offered a job to Weiner. This is how he became a writer and producer for the last three seasons of the series. Quite well known after this job, Weiner tried again to have Mad Men produced by HBO or Showtime, but they both refused. Apparently, they were very scared by the fact that the series was a period drama. They didn’t believe audience could be interested to follow week after week the life of a bunch of guys from a Madison Avenue advertisement agency in the ‘60s. Plus, no film stars were involved in it. In the end, it was the small and inexperienced AMC who accepted to produce the show and ask Weiner a complete series of 13 episodes. He then called a group of people he has loved to work with on the Sopranos and… well, the rest is history. Listening to Weiner talking about all this, I suddenly realized that the most important thing you should have to succeed in the show business is stubbornness, and a good dose of self-confidence. Weiner doesn’t look like an easy kind of guy: he looks like a man who can be very upset if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, the way he wants it. He probably must be very tough to work with. He is taking care of every single detail of Mad Men and he believes so much in his plot, his characters and his talent, that in the end he managed to have things exactly as he conceived them (including music and costumes). 

You can see, you can feel how proud he is of himself and of what he has achieved, you can even perceive a bit of revenge spirit in him, and who can possibly blame him? Mad Men, the series nobody wanted to produce, is now a world phenomenon, the TV show that has received more awards in TV history, the TV show that gave to all the actors involved (completely unknown at the time of the first season) the status of film stars, and to Weiner the status of genial writer. Weiner is so passionate and accurate about the story he wants to share with his audience, that the audience rewarded him. I think this is the secret of Mad Men’s universal success.  
Weiner also talked about his references for the series, especially a bunch of European movies. Two were the titles he quoted: Les Bonnes Femmes by Claude Chabrol ("The interesting thing about this movie is that all these women's dreams… crashed, in the end, and I loved it!") and La notte by Michelangelo Antonioni (note of the blogger: this is also Zazie’s favourite Italian movie!): "I wanted to make an entire episode somehow based upon the movie, and showing images from it, but it was impossible to understand who had the rights and so I had to give up. But Draper go to see the movie at a certain point of the show!". I don't even want to imagine the episode he could have written about it... who's got the rights of La Notte, for heaven's sake? 

Les Bonnes Femmes by Claude Chabrol

La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni

Weiner could have talked for hours about his job, I think nobody in the theatre would have complained about it. People went nuts when Ms. Hendricks and Mr. Slattery were asked to join the conversation, and we had the right to a nice chat about Weiner's relationship with actors and the importance of their contributions to the show. Funny note: Slattery's wife was in the audience too, and she is actually the actress who plays his first wife, Mona, in the show. Well, it's really a Mad Men world!
At the moment of the questions from the audience, a girl told Weiner: "You know, everybody is nostalgic about the ‘60s, but looking at the series and at the women’s conditions, I am actually happy of living in this time". 
Yes, sure. But they were dressed so much better, honey!