Track 3. Drive the Driver

This week we are looking at the concept of the viewer and spectatorship.  Our reading by Laura Mulvey "The Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" brought up the idea of what makes narratives in cinema so fulfilling to watch.  She brings up the idea of projection, and how when it is just you in a dark theater that you as a viewer project yourself onto the character on the screen.  This idea of projection is one that I very much agree with, because everyone wants to be the hero, everyone wants to save the day.  Just recently I went and saw the movie "Drive."  The movie centers around a driver (he never says or is called by his name) who is a stunt driver in hollywood that moonlights as a getaway driver for crooks and criminals.  He starts out as a quiet, calm, and cool driver that never shows much personality or emotion. But after he volunteers to help with a robbery that goes completely wrong, the badass him comes out, how badass you ask, just listen for the crunching in the elevator scene.  After watching this movie I walked out of the theater and because I had become so interested and invested in this character for the entire drive home I felt like the driver...as I swerved through traffic at 70 mph.  Two things I think attributed to this, one was that he was never given a name, you never thought oh that Johnny or Maverick, this character was just driver, or "The Kid" as his boss called him.  Because he had no name you're more able to project yourself onto this nameless character.  The second thing that makes it easy to project yourself onto this character was that he was so emotionless that you never really knew who he was and for the first half of the movie you're trying to figure him out and you try to project your own back story onto him, doing this only makes you become more involved with this character.  I highly recommend seeing the movie, however it can be very polarizing with its minimal dialogue and slow moving at first plot. It also has a great soundtrack, check the song that plays during the climax of the movie while he looks in the diner.

"Drive" Trailer