Visual Storytelling in Drive

Drive is a film which gets a lot of unnecessary flack, often dismissed as pretentious, style over substance or an arthouse Fast and the Furious. I however look at it as a great case study in Visual Storytelling, using the audio-visual medium to it's fullest to tell a relatively straightforward story in an interesting and engaging way. Drive has an atmosphere more akin to a music video video game, with emphasis placed on sound and visuals over dialogue and character. The unnamed main character speaks very little, but is characterised by his actions, body language, facial expression and even the lyrics on the soundtrack. Director Nicolas Winding Refn went through the script during shooting and stripped out what he deemed all the unnecessary dialogue, opting instead for more visual ways of telling the story.

For example, the famous elevator scene in which The Driver moves Irene out of the way of an assassin, kisses here goodbye before caving the man's head in while Irene looks on in horror is an almost ethereal moment which says a lot by doing little, but really emphasising character moments giving the movie a lot of depth. The positioning of the characters in the scene puts Irene in a position of vunerability which the driver moves her away from, acting as a sort of wedge between her and the assassin. The slow motion in this single long shot adds weight to this moment as the soundtrack swells as the two of them kiss in the elevator. As The Driver moves away he proceeds to brutally murder the assassin at normal speed with a series of quick close up shots which add to the confusion before finally we settle on a slow motion shot reverse shot of The Driver turning as Irene looks on in horror and the elevator door closes, separating the two forever. Without a single word of dialogue spoken we establish The Driver's willingness to sacrifice his relationship with Irene if it means protecting her and showing her his violent side. Drive may not be particularly deep thematically, but it tells a simple story in a thoughtful and interesting visual way which makes it a modern classic in my books.