Drive, or Ryan Gosling's Official Oscar Bid

I knew precisely three things about Drive before I walked into the theater:

1. Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, who
2. Moonlights as a criminal getaway driver, and
3. May or may not curb stomp someone.

Turns out that this was exactly the way to experience this slow-like-honey action film.
I don't actually want to say a whole lot about this movie, because I loved it and I want you to experience it the way that I did.  So, first off, I'm going to say officially: I loved Drive and you should PROBABLY go see it immediately.

Drive is a strange, strange little action movie that does not behave at all like an action movie should.  Oh, in some respects it's all there: car chases, fight scenes, high stakes, a variety of guns and shivs.  But the tension is constant; there are no adrenaline spikes because you're nervous all the time.   Nicolas Winding Refn pulls his shots out like taffy, stretching every moment until you're ready to jump out of your skin.  Everything pulls in Drive, from the repetitive refrains in the soundtrack numbers to the long stretches of artificial light.  Flickering lights in the elevator, streetlight passing over Gosling's face, the yellowed glow of shoddy apartment light; Gosling and Carey Mulligan (playing, quite effectively, Gosling's rundown neighbor with a young son and a husband in prison) are frequently bathed in artificial light.  Instead of looking cliche, it ends up feeling very dreamlike and warm.

It's the Ryan Gosling show from start to finish, commanded not only by the force of Gosling's performance but also in the very composition of the film.  Gosling mirrors Refn's pacing, reveling in the pauses and joyfully taunting you with every bated breath you're forced to take until he finally, FINALLY delivers his lines.  It's in those pauses that Gosling's performance really shines; Gosling does most eloquent acting in the pauses before he speaks, and in the way he clenches the steering wheel, and in the way that he drives.  It reminded me of Heath Ledger's performance in Brokeback Mountain, in that Gosling delivers a full body performance without actually needing to say anything at all.

Drive keeps you simmering without ever quite bringing on the boil; it has moments with more actions than others, sure, but the filming style and lighting and music act together to give even the most violent sequences an ethereal, almost sleepy quality.  It's a demanding movie that requires a lot from its audience, but if you can have some patience and revel in the silences with Gosling and Refn, the payoff is totally worth it. 

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: NSFW

I'm deeply excited about David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

On the one hand, I get that Hollywood is kind of jumping the shark by remaking foreign films less than a decade after the original film comes out.  Especially considering the international film market in America.  But I look at it this way: sometimes a story is just TOO GOOD to be left alone.  Which is probably the case with TGWTDT - the books are so popular, and the story is so good, that the American film industry couldn't leave that golden egg untouched, even if the Swedish films are barely out of the projection rooms.

I get that a lot of people are upset, considering the acclaim that Noomi Rapace has gotten from her portrayal of the problematic anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander.  I get that many people see this film as unnecessary.  Y'all know that personally, I did not enjoy the Swedish film and I did not enjoy Rapace in the role - my entry discussing that little skeleton in my cinema-loving closet can be read here.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm deeply excited about Fincher's version and I'm deeply excited about Rooney Mara as Salander.  Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about today: that controversial movie poster.  (This is also why this particular entry is NSFW - nipples are about to be unleashed.)

(Side note: all of Mara's piercings are authentic.  She got them done as part of the job.  I kinda hope she keeps them, not because I find them particularly attractive but because I'm pretty tickled by the idea of that kind of method acting.  Plus fake piercings typically don't look as good as the real thing.)

Can you hear the movie audiences of America complaining about this image?  However I feel about it, it's not hard to understand - we are not used to bare breasts hanging out in our advertising.  Or in public at all, really.  Fincher is obviously making a statement with this poster about how prepared he is to "bare it all," so to speak, and I support that - not to mention that the image itself is starkly beautiful.  But I get the objections people have to it.

Well, almost all the objections.  Here's a quote from an Entertainment Weekly forum about this image:

"Lisbeth Salander is fighting back from being a victim. To have her posed in such a vulnerable state (and yes, when you’re nude, you’re vulnerable, whether you’re “strong” or not) really negates the power that the Lisbeth character has earned. She is supposed to be the protector, not Blomquist. I doubt that Stieg Larsson would have approved this campaign."

There's a lot of this going around.  That the problem with the image is that it cuts down how strong Salander is, how it misogynistically shows Craig as Blomkvist protecting her, restraining her, and how it negates a powerful female protagonist.

The problem with this view is that it's wrong.  If you haven't read the book and plan to, no worries, I'm not going to let fly any spoilers.  But suffice to say (and you've probably gotten a hint of this just in all the talking about this movie that's going on) Salander ISN'T strong, and that's the point.  The entire third book is about all the people she's managed to get in her corner banding together to save her.  I'm not saying she's a damsel in distress, but Salander is a broken, prickly character whose story arc is about learning how to share her problems with people she learns to trust, and how ultimately her problems are SO big she can't save herself on her own.  Blomkvist is protecting her in the poster in the same way he does through every single book.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Salander.  She's incredibly resilient, resourceful, and intelligent, but she only ever projects the appearance of strength to other people.  Inside, she's crumbling, and it's up to Blomkvist (and eventually others) to catch her pieces and put her back together.  This is what her story is about.