Driving with a Multitude of Elements

After reading Assembling the Shots and Film, Space, and Image by Dick, I thought of the movie Drive starring Ryan Gosling. Drive is about a mysterious man (Gosling), who goes unnamed the entire movie, who is trying to escape his shady past as he falls in love with his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan) whose husband is in prison and she is looking after their child alone. Drive portrays a lot of the different elements mentioned in the movie, and does so with ease and fluidity.

In the opening credits, Drive portrays many elements mentioned in the reading. (For the sake of using character names, I will call Gosling "Driver" because he goes unnamed throughout the entire movie.) Driver is first depicted in a car, while the camera is showing the two different points of view- subjective camera and objective shot. Sometimes the camera shows Driver himself in the car, driving, from a profile view- the objective shot. And sometimes the camera shows the subjective camera shot, which would be the street Driver is driving on and looking at, as if we were in the car with him. A director would do this to show the POV of Driver as well as showing what we would see as viewers if we were in the car as well. Doing this adds to eye flow with the mobile camera shots.

As well as portraying different shots, the opening credits also eloquently portray elliptical linear sequence, as mentioned in Film, Space and Image, which is when a certain detail is omitted and is left for the viewer to make the connection. We see Driver going toward an elevator and a woman walking out. If you were to re-watch the movie, you would make the connection that this woman is Irene, the neighbor Driver falls in love with. This detail of who she is exactly is left out because it is not only foreshadowing, but adds to an "ah-ha moment" later when a viewer either re-watches the movie or recalls that certain scene.

As well as using a multitude of different shots, Drive also utilizes a lot of different, but strategically planned, geometric frames. Drive uses grid-like lines to plan certain frames and show contrast and sequence. This YouTube video explains the use of the lines in detail and how it adds to the overall shots in the movie.

This use of geometric positioning acts as a barely-visible barrier between two different stories, like the narrator in the YouTube video mentions. Like Assembling the Shots mentions, the geometric positioning denotes tension but also emphasizes differences in shots. Sometimes Drive uses the horizontal positioning and sometimes vertical, which all add to the variety of the film but also subliminally tell a story about the very different lives of Irene and Driver that soon come together and intertwine throughout the movie.

Finally, the closing scene of Drive does something that is not done in too many movies that I have seen. There is a long take, as mentioned in Assembling the Shots, that is very still and candid. There is almost a whole minute of just Driver's face in the car, unmoving and tension-inducing. The use of this long shot allows the movie watcher to reflect on the movie itself and all of it's implications, just as Driver is doing in this scene. This ending also uses different tilt shots (mentioned in Film, Space, and Image), viewing Driver from different angles to make him look larger than he really is.

Overall, Drive uses a lot of different elements to bring together a thrilling and mysterious movie. Drive uses many elements mentioned in the reading (that I did not necessarily mention in this post) and combines elements that are not normally put together to create different effects. Along with the shots, geometric framing, and elliptical linear shots, Drive also has a lot of symbolism and rhythm throughout the entire movie.