Drive is a 2011 film starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. As soon as the picture was on the screen, controversy and divergence of opinion grew around it among everyone who saw the film. Someone is delighted, someone considers “Drive” boring and incomprehensible. Let’s look at the plot and the meaning of the film.
Drive movie plot
The protagonist of the film is the Driver, or if translated into Russian, the Driver. In the film, he does not have a name, we only know the type of his activity – he is a stuntman on a movie set, performs dangerous stunts for actors, and at the same time works as a mechanic in a car dealership. A clear passion for cars is expressed literally in every frame. However, the Driver has the main income in a slightly different way, in the evenings and at night he delivers robbers from crime scenes. The main character feels great behind the wheel, and therefore his services are especially expensive.
However, there are a few rules that a skilled driver never deviates from. The first – for a robbery – only 5 minutes, after that he leaves and does not wait for clients, the second – he never works twice with the same people and the third – he does not take up arms, Driver himself is only a driver, not a criminal.
In parallel with this storyline, we observe how the personal life of the protagonist develops. In the supermarket, he meets a cute girl, Irene, who has a son, Benicio. It turns out that Driver and Irene live in the same house, which of course encourages their private encounters.
Between Irene and Driver is only her husband, who will soon return from prison. The driver likes the girl, he likes her, he starts a good relationship with Benicio. It is worth paying attention to the conversation scene between the main character and Benicio, while watching a movie on TV. Driver asks the boy about the main character: “Do you think he’s bad?” “Of course he’s a shark.” “A shark can’t be good?” – “Not”. It is possible that by shark Driver means himself, he hopes to be good, he wants to become one, but now nothing is working out. The shark is the diver himself.
Standard, Irene’s husband is released from prison, very quickly finds out what his neighbor Driver is doing, they go to work together, but it ends unsuccessfully. Now big mafiosi threaten the lives of Irene and her son. And it is in such conditions that the Driver shows his true face, from which he tried to escape and hide for almost his entire life. He was only close to the “dark” affairs, but did not take a direct part in them. Now he is ready to take off his usual mask – literally and figuratively, and finally show whether he is a good or a bad guy.
The meaning of the movie Drive
To understand the meaning of the film “Drive” you need to review the picture several times and pay attention to some details. Recall the scene in the elevator, during which Driver says goodbye to his mask in front of Irene, the only important person in his life, and kills an assassin. He does this to protect the girl, but realizes that there is no point in hoping for a further relationship with her, and therefore steals her last kiss before parting. Perhaps she herself does not yet know that this is their last meeting, but the Driver made a decision – to protect dear people at all costs.
By the way, about money. The driver wants to return the stolen money so that Irene and Benicio are left behind and do not endanger their lives, the main character himself does not need money. Standard probably needed them, but during the shootout he died, and can no longer dispose of them, just as he cannot protect his family. But big people do not need money, they just want to get rid of the evidence, clean everything up and leave no mention of their involvement in the case. The only obstacle to this goal is the Driver, who knows everyone by sight, who personally participated in the crime. Money has no price for anyone, it’s just a cliché deliberately inserted by the director into the plot. A thriller with a chase or an action movie is often tied to big money, and in this film they are. The director misleads the viewer that everything is tied to money, later we understand that the true value is completely different.
Another interesting detail is the protagonist’s jacket. Driver has a scorpion on his back. It’s hard not to notice this – a scorpion is taken close-up when we see the hero in the first minutes, again it can be seen during the scene in the elevator and after that, until the end of the film, making a bloody journey, Driver does not take off this jacket. He puts it on like a superhero costume and goes on feats.
The meaning of the finale of the movie Drive
As for the meaning of the finale, there is a version that the main character is simply lost in the Hollywood wilds and turns into a fusion of all the characters he admires. As if at the end he puts on a mask that he used when filming on a movie set, only because he cannot see his own face. The hero is not himself, but his image.
But perhaps it is worth paying attention to the fairy tale about the scorpion and the frog, which sounds very successful almost before the very end of the film.
Tale of a frog carrying a scorpion. The frog is afraid that the scorpion will sting her. He replies that he will not sting her, because otherwise they will both drown. But in the middle of the river, the scorpion still stings the frog. The moral is that this is the nature of a scorpion and he simply could not do otherwise.
This is the point of the whole movie and specifically the ending of the picture – no matter how they are treated and what the consequences will be, some people do what is inherent in their instincts, they are unable to escape from fate. Driver wants to get better, to be a nice guy, but he only stings Irene like a scorpion on his back, like a scorpion from that fairy tale parable. And as a result of the fact that the main character stings the girl, he stings himself. Until the moment he met her, it was as if there were no other people in the life of an unsociable driver, but he made a mistake when he once met Irene in a store. She became his weakness, but she also became his desire to strive for the best.
He saves people dear to him, does not take dirty money – he became a hero and thus the best person, the good guy he wanted to become.
Write in the comments your meaning of the movie Drive. We look forward to waiting!
