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| Ryan Gosling |
Welcome to Alternative to What: a weekly column that tries to find a great alternative to driving to the multiplexes. Based on releases of that week, the selections will either be thematically related or feature recurring cast and crew. The goal is to help you better understand the diversity of cinema and hopefully find you some favorites while saving a few bucks. At worse, this column will save you money. Expect each installment to come out on Fridays, unless specified.
THIS WEEK:
Drive (2011)
- Alternative To -
Nightcrawler (2014)
This is a recommendation that only makes sense instinctively. Otherwise, they don't seem to be tonally similar at all. However, consider Nightcrawler for a moment. With Jake Gyllenhaal playing a freelance crime reporter, it looks to be an insane journey through the night life of Los Angeles, CA. The advertisements make it out to be a crazy story that features Gyllenhaal at his zaniest. That doesn't sound like Drive at all, which felt more like a meditative retro throwback to art house films with vague hints of action and violence thrown in for decent measures.
This is where everything starts to fall together. For starters, the great depictions of Los Angeles are few and far between. While film noir seems to be a genre that has lent itself to the city very well, there hasn't been too much iconic about the place since Chinatown. As it stands, Drive remains a divisive film. It doesn't quite have the immediacy and flashy set pieces that one would look for when they see a film about a getaway driver who also works as a stuntman. It is an unlikely job and one that leads to a whole lot of violence. It is crazy, but only in a stylized, colorful way that plays into director Nicolas Winding Refn's color blindness quite effectively. Of course, it also has pinnacle scenes of car chases, including its brilliant opening, which sees Ryan Gosling as Driver escape the police in a very ingenious fashion.
The film also involves other robberies and an impressive turn by Albert Brooks as the villain. It may essentially be the same role, but without the punchlines, but he still manages to make it work. The whole film drips with retro cool and with a great Cliff Martinez score, it does manage to just exist at time in a dark, violent romanticism that doesn't have to make sense. It is all about atmosphere, an boy does it deliver. With a top notch cast, there's plenty of fun character moments spread throughout, including one of Bryan Cranston's best film roles to date.
Drive for the most part is a cool film that makes badness seem like a fun time. Also, using a lot of scenes of Driver going through Los Angeles helps to create a pallet of artistry that is unsurpassed. Sure, some people sued because it wasn't like The Fast and the Furious, but it doesn't need to be. Even if it took an excerpt of James Sallis' book and expanded upon it, the results are impressive. It only has bursts of violence that would later be exploited in Refn's Only God Forgives to an even more negative reaction. However, this love letter to seedy California is a notch above the rest.
The question now is how Nightcrawler can update the strange wildlife nature of Los Angeles. In a way, it seems impossible considering that film noir already established its dangerous tones. All that can really be done is a change of cinematography and a few songs mixed in. However, where Gosling was nuanced and quiet, there's an imagination that Gyllenhaal can be crazy and off the wall. I am not entirely what to expect, but I feel like these two films will share more in common than one would assume. There's clearly an allure to Los Angeles lifestyle that brings these people to the projects, but what exactly keeps them interesting?
Drive is a film that will likely survive on the cool factor alone. While it will be forgotten by the masses, it may enrich in acceptance as the decade drags on. There has already been buzz building around Nightcrawler to be something special. The only question is if that will actually come to fruition, given its unfortunate release date. Very few films have done successful when opening on Halloween or that weekend. I want it to succeed, but must like Drive, I feel like it will be stuck finding its acceptance as a cult smash and finding its audience as time moves onward.
The question now is how Nightcrawler can update the strange wildlife nature of Los Angeles. In a way, it seems impossible considering that film noir already established its dangerous tones. All that can really be done is a change of cinematography and a few songs mixed in. However, where Gosling was nuanced and quiet, there's an imagination that Gyllenhaal can be crazy and off the wall. I am not entirely what to expect, but I feel like these two films will share more in common than one would assume. There's clearly an allure to Los Angeles lifestyle that brings these people to the projects, but what exactly keeps them interesting?
Drive is a film that will likely survive on the cool factor alone. While it will be forgotten by the masses, it may enrich in acceptance as the decade drags on. There has already been buzz building around Nightcrawler to be something special. The only question is if that will actually come to fruition, given its unfortunate release date. Very few films have done successful when opening on Halloween or that weekend. I want it to succeed, but must like Drive, I feel like it will be stuck finding its acceptance as a cult smash and finding its audience as time moves onward.
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