Much of what compelled me to write this post was driven by feeling that lingered after watching Drive earlier this week.
The Atlantic's Christopher Orr captured this perfectly:
"Drive reminded me what it can be like—what it ought to be, but so infrequently is, like—to go out to the movies. I was buzzing when I left the theater. I'm buzzing still."
The other mitigating factor was the film's jarring use of the hot pink Mistral in its posters and title sequence. While I have heard a few people lament the randomness of the choice, it (and its color) couldn't have been a better fit.
Like the now famous satin scorpion jacket* Gosling's character dons throughout the film, Drive is built as a balance of retro-chic and a modern tale of existentialism. The film mirrors so much of our pop (and design) culture banking on nostalgic remix. Director Nicholas Winding Refn weaves together the art-house qualities of Tarantino or David Lynch coupled with the charisma and style of Bullitt's McQueen and Eastwood's classic quiet machismo. These vintage inspirations are coupled with more recent flashes of Grand-Theft-Auto-esque gore and intensity while costumes and aesthetics seem to be pulled straight from this autumn's hippest lookbooks.
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