Nicolas Winding Refn
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Without the extreme violence, Drive would be a lifeless rehash of such self-consciously existential thrillers as Walter Hill’s The Driver and Michael Mann’s Thief instead of, ?Oh, shit, oh, God, this is so friggin’ hard-core!?
At the same time, Drive is also inflected with the neon vibe and synthesizer rhythms of early Michal Mann films like Thief (1981) and Manhunter (1986).
Refn's choice in neon lights and obscure synth-pop wind up putting "Drive" in the company of that era's "Thief" and "Manhunter," while other elements link it with "F/X" and even "American Gigolo."
The pink, cursive font of the opening credits immediately calls to mind '80s classics like Smooth Talk while the obsessive interest in functionality and work (and Cliff Martinez's awesome Tangerine Dream soundtrack) recalls Michael Mann's Thief, but it's that certain quality of masculine stillness that marks Drive as another Nicolas Winding Refn masterpiece.
The slow, methodical build up harkens back to Mann's early work in "Thief" and "Manhunter."
The sleek pic might remind one of Walter Hill's "The Driver," or Michael Mann’s "Thief" or any of those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns or even Jean-Pierre Melville’s "Le Samouraï," yet this one is a different machine--it comes to life in its own adrenaline filled way and stands out as Refn's signature ode to violence, where a bloodbath cleanses the film from any constraints to its storytelling.
That model was even glummer than the Pontiac LeMans—who was kidding whom, with that name?—in which Gene Hackman raced against an Elevated train, two years earlier, in “The French Connection”; and both, of course, were nothing beside the gleaming flanks of the Mustang used in “Bullitt” (1968).
There are a couple of terrific old-school car chases in "Drive," but Refn isn't trying to outdo "Bullitt" or get the next assignment in the "Fast/Furious" franchise.
This stale premise, taken from a novel by James Sallis, kept reminding me of a Steve McQueen vehicle, and in fact Refn has named Bullitt (1968) as one reference point.
Early reviews out of Cannes proclaimed Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Hollywood debut, “Drive,” a full-blooded return to such ’60s thrillers as “Bullitt” and “Point Blank.”
But unlike the adrenaline junkies in “Bullitt” and Peckinpah’s “The Getaway,” he doesn’t make a conspicuous display of speed; he doesn’t “gun it” and leave a mile of rubber.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Bronson (2009), The Neon Demon (2016), Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013), Valhalla Rising (2010)
Themes Visuals
Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn is a filmmaker who likes violence (the last of his films to get a theatrical release here was Bronson , a film owing a lot to Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange about Britain's most violent criminal), but Drive takes a while to get the blood squirting, and in fact is best when it's all about the driving.
The Neon Demon often feels like a hybrid of A Clockwork Orange and Beyond the Black Rainbow, infused—especially during its home stretch—with the biting sense of humor (and symbolic triangle-centric imagery) of the former and the out-there spaciness of the latter.
Pitched somewhere between Kubrick and Lynch, Only God Forgives possesses the same formal precision of A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut and the same what-the-hell-is-happening nightmarishness of Blue Velvet and Inland Empire.
The only way to explain the final scene, in fact, is to recognize that Refn understands his sources (and, again after the A Clockwork Orange-ish Bronson, has seen his Kubrick), and it calls into focus this idea that Refn is more likely to become a cinephile's filmmaker than a popular one.
After the increasingly black comic violence of his Pusher trilogy and Bronson, Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn—who apparently never got over A Clockwork Orange —goes left-field with Valhalla Rising , a movie as maddeningly ponderous and self-important as its black-metal title.
At its best, Bronson is briefly capable of recalling the likes of A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club .
The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Only God Forgives (2013), The Neon Demon (2016), Bronson (2009)
Visuals
Provocatively suggestive and worthy of multiple viewings, "Only God Forgives" nevertheless works best as a motion picture of atmosphere and style over substance, the screen's forbidden corridors and back alleys pulsating with cinematographer Larry Smith's glowing blue- and red-tinged color palette (in addition, portentous shots of a hallway elevator and booming organs on the soundtrack are unmistakably reminiscent of 1980's " The Shining ").
Refn's camera obsesses over the red wallpaper in the brothel where Julian lives, recalling a similar focus on the carpet pattern in "The Shining."
Smith’s long association with Stanley Kubrick is acknowledged in unsettling images of hotel and sex-club corridors that appear to be an explicit nod to The Shining.
But words are superfluous to the images; Kubrick’s DP Larry Smith takes honours here, and the tracking shots of haunted hallways are reminiscent of his work on The Shining .
The filmmaker’s slow movement down ominous hallways and nightmare-like atmosphere recall “The Shining”; in many ways “Only God Forgives” is a horror story about the hideous things people say and do and the cyclical nature of revenge that would be comical if the actions weren’t so difficult to watch.
Kubrickian in its framing, odd sense of humor, and reliance on bright, primary colors, Only God Forgives is reminiscent of The Shining.
Cliff Martinez's score twinkles and purrs and lulls, and coupled with the star-is-born-tale, Jesse's vintage-inspired wardrobe, the aggressively colorful visual design, and the dry, wry campiness, "The Neon Demon" feels like a 1970s cult flick, inspired by the female-driven horrors of Dario Argento's "Suspiria," or Roman Polanski's sexual-psychological doozy "Repulsion," starring Catherine Deneuve.
And, just like giallo, Neon Demon eschews a cohesive story in favor of a "what if?" principle that moves it from scene to scene; Refn's concern is the emotion of a moment, much like Dario Argento’s Suspiria, where the director has a naïve ballerina wander into a roomful of razor wire just because it looks cool and stirs deep audience tension.
There are markers of comparison along the way?Natasha Braier's (2014's " The Rover ") intoxicating cinematography and saturated color scheme remind of Terrence Malick by way of Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece " Suspiria ," while the portrayal of Hollywood's soul-devouring politics is not unlike 2014's " Starry Eyes "?but these are superficial at best once the trailblazing Refn has his way with the material.
Nicolas Winding Refn's new film is as if "2000 Maniacs" moved to "Mulholland Drive," took some acid, and decided to completely reboot "Suspiria."
Unlike the former film, which manages to surprise (and often confound) throughout in its pacing and dreamlike approach to plot beats, The Neon Demon moves from an amusing first third into tedium as the script signposts its twists and turns, only to draw out its runtime with indulgent visual experimentation that does little more than tell us Refn has seen Under the Skin and Suspiria.
Con la influencia del estilo visual expresionista de Dario Argento en Suspiria (1977); los guiños a las atmósferas surrealistas y enigmáticas de David Lynch en Mulholland Drive (2001) e Inland Empire (2006); y las referencias al body-horror temprano de David Cronenberg en Rabid (1977) y The Brood (1979), Nicolas Winding Refn (NWR, como una marca de alta costura) configura un thriller de horror a partir de una premisa bastante clara: el mundo de la moda funciona como un mecanismo perfecto que se devora a sí mismo para renovarse y continuar; es un proceso de regeneración cíclica.
A surprisingly high fraction of “Drive” is indebted to “The Driver,” Walter Hill’s whittled-down thriller of 1978.
The most obvious reference is Walter Hill's schematic action flick The Driver: This 1978 paean to professional cool in the person of Ryan O'Neal more or less provides Drive's title, premise, uninflected antihero, and minimalist existentialism, as well as its two-dimensional attitude.
Walter Hill, a fine writer-director who knows a thing or 12 about helming testosterone-tinged flicks with an existential bent about them (Hard Times, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Undisputed, many more), once orchestrated a solid little film in this milieu called The Driver.
Ryan Gosling stars as the film’s never-named protagonist (shades of the similarly nameless heroes of “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “The Driver”), who works by day as a mechanic and occasional Hollywood stunt driver, and sometimes by night as a fast and furious getway-car driver for thieves.
In fact, I can readily imagine a rabid cult following coalescing around Drive, which looked at a distance like a contemporary remake of Walter Hill’s The Driver (it’s actually based on a recent novel by James Sallis) but turns out to play more like a hypothetical remake of The Driver from ca. 1984-87.
If “Drive,” his 2011 crime-thriller with Ryan Gosling, paid homage to the wet-asphalt action-films of Michael Mann, then “The Neon Demon” is his tribute to Ridley Scott’s Euro-trash vampire flick, “The Hunger” (1983).
If you want to see Tony Scott’s porny vampire drama “The Hunger” again — to cite another obvious influence — hey, I just checked and it costs $2 on Amazon.
At turns seductive and repulsive about its world of dangerous sex and violence, The Neon Demon combines horror movie tropes with arresting images and clever references to a body of genre entries, including Hammer Films' Dracula pictures, Cat People, and The Hunger.
Neon Demon reads like a vampire movie, with the sexy chill of The Hunger and the stark, hypnotic imagery of Under The Skin.
Death Wish (1974)
Directed by Michael Winner
influenced Bronson (2009), Only God Forgives (2013)
Themes
The film may look like a grungy In the Mood for Love (2000) or Eyes Wide Shut (1999), even if it owes more to Kill Bill (2003) and Death Wish (1974).
Bronson is all the more troubling for being based on the true story of a violent lifer named Michael Gordon Peterson, who took the name "Charlie Bronson" in honour of actor Charles Bronson and his vengeful Death Wish character.
Peterson, who adopted for himself the name "Charles Bronson" in honor of that actor and his iconic turn in Death Wish , is called "Britain's most famous prisoner" in a title card at the end of the movie, and one gets the clear sense from the evidence onscreen that this is as agreeable a fate as he could have possibly chosen for himself; it seems indeed that the only motivation he has in life is to be infamous, whether it is among inmates, prison guards, or the population at large.
When he was let out for 68 days in 1988, boxing promoter Paul Daniels (Matt King, "RocknRolla") tried to trade in on his notoriety and renamed him for the tough guy Hollywood star of the "Death Wish" movies.
At an early age, after seeing " Death Wish ," young Michael took the name of Charles Bronson .
Tom Hardy gives an amazing performance as Peterson, who took on the nickname Charlie Bronson, after the "Death Wish" actor.
At the same time, Drive is also inflected with the neon vibe and synthesizer rhythms of early Michal Mann films like Thief (1981) and Manhunter (1986).
Refn's choice in neon lights and obscure synth-pop wind up putting "Drive" in the company of that era's "Thief" and "Manhunter," while other elements link it with "F/X" and even "American Gigolo."
The slow, methodical build up harkens back to Mann's early work in "Thief" and "Manhunter."
A murder in the surf reminds so much of Mann's climactic sequences from Manhunter that it could be a lost scene from that film.
Back in 2011, when Nicolas Winding Refn’s mash note to the aesthetic of 1980s Los Angeles crime films, Drive , became a sensation, I was sure it was Manhunter ’s time to shine.
It’s a Viking epic unlike anything we’ve seen since Nicolas Winding Refn’s awesome Valhalla Rising, and I’d put this one right up there with it as the best this particular subgenre has to offer.
Though as exhilaratingly violent as one of its most obvious filmic cousins with Nordic ties, Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Valhalla Rising,” “The Northman” stays true to Eggers’ more offbeat sensibilities, contrasting gruesome imagery of brutally slaughtered bodies with the ethereal mysticism of a hero’s visions, whether of his past and future family tree, alarming premonitions, or ancient deities.
The Northman is a far more ambitious affair, a full-on Viking epic that tries to succeed where previous attempts – sorry, Nicolas Refn’s Valhalla Rising – failed, and thankfully, I got to see it in a better state of health, as well.
No wonder the end credits include a thank you to director Alejandro Jodorowsky, impresario of such arthouse/grindhouse sideshows as " El Topo " (a mystical Spaghetti Western) and " Santa Sangre " (an allegorical slasher film).
The director has dedicated the film to the avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (" El Topo "), whose inspiration remains superficial at best.
The film is dedicated to Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose surreal Western "El Topo" was an early midnight-movie hit; certainly with its sadistic violence and holy atonement, "Only God Forgives" could be a homage.
And like “Showgirls," which was also directed by a foreigner in the U.S., Paul Verhoeven, it has a surface sheen that distracts from the dark humor underneath.
The early “Who’s she fucking?” barbs of the first meeting of models recall Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, but the film’s vision of the beauty industry is fierce.
Decades after 1967’s Valley of the Dolls and decades prior to 2016’s The Neon Demon, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven‘s Showgirls, the over-the-top tale of ill-gotten fame, busted dreams and the skeezy, grimy underbelly of Las Vegas, dragged its garish arse across screens across the world.
Perhaps the most apt cinematic point of comparison for The Neon Demon is Showgirls , Paul Verhoeven’s disgustingly glitzy satire of fame.
Elle — which is directed by returnee from Hollywood Paul Verhoeven (of Total Recall, Showgirls and, more recently, Black Book) — is essentially a startlingly enjoyable character study with an extraordinarily difficult starting point.
Cliff Martinez's score twinkles and purrs and lulls, and coupled with the star-is-born-tale, Jesse's vintage-inspired wardrobe, the aggressively colorful visual design, and the dry, wry campiness, "The Neon Demon" feels like a 1970s cult flick, inspired by the female-driven horrors of Dario Argento's "Suspiria," or Roman Polanski's sexual-psychological doozy "Repulsion," starring Catherine Deneuve.
Among The Neon Demon’s clear points of reference are Walerian Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales (1974), likewise steeped in the legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), from which Refn cribs the image of hands emerging from the walls of a claustrophobic chamber to menace a panicked virgin, here Jesse in her Pasadena motel room, a riot of loud, clashing patterns lorded over by manager Keanu Reeves.
But at the end of the day, she, like the film, is relegated in a third act plunge toward horror that it is easy to imagine is meant for the same catalogue as Polanski’s earliest chillers, like Rosemary’s Baby and especially Repulsion.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Directed by Russ Meyer
influenced The Neon Demon (2016)
Visuals
The closest Refn comes to self-awareness is when he has Keanu Reeves, playing a sleazebag motel owner, recreate a scene straight out of Russ Meyer's cult classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, sneaking into a sleeping girl's bedroom and sliding a weapon between her parted lips.
Refn had his Neon Demon stars watch Russ Meyer’s infamous rock-star psychodrama Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls for inspiration, and that's no particular surprise: Neon Demon is lurid, lush, and overripe in the same sort of way, with a vulgar vapidity that's baffling and hypnotic at the same time.
SoCal Satanism, glam trappings, and messianic pathology can recall Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington, while in his gesamtkunstwerk ambitions, at least, the filmmaker Refn most resembles is Paul Schrader, particularly in the period of American Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1982), the latter evoked when a mountain lion makes a cameo in Jesse’s room, the former in everything but the breakthrough of spiritual succor, which has no place in Refn’s nihilistic fable.
American Gigolo (1980)
Directed by Paul Schrader
influenced The Neon Demon (2016), Drive (2011)
Visuals Themes
“Drive’s” opening sequence felt a little like Schrader’s 1980 hit “American Gigolo” and the nighttime sequences in the city felt like Schrader’s forgotten gem “Light Sleeper.”
SoCal Satanism, glam trappings, and messianic pathology can recall Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington, while in his gesamtkunstwerk ambitions, at least, the filmmaker Refn most resembles is Paul Schrader, particularly in the period of American Gigolo (1980) and Cat People (1982), the latter evoked when a mountain lion makes a cameo in Jesse’s room, the former in everything but the breakthrough of spiritual succor, which has no place in Refn’s nihilistic fable.
While Refn crafts occasionally crisp and dazzling images, he can’t compare to the work of David Lynch in “Mulholland Drive,” imbuing them with a voluptuous peculiarity that truly unsettles.
Much of the film is as potent an elixir as the “Drive” auteur has mixed to date, marrying sensual visuals to a dreamlike Tinseltown yarn (the film borrows heavily from David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”).
Nicolas Winding Refn's new film is as if "2000 Maniacs" moved to "Mulholland Drive," took some acid, and decided to completely reboot "Suspiria."
Con la influencia del estilo visual expresionista de Dario Argento en Suspiria (1977); los guiños a las atmósferas surrealistas y enigmáticas de David Lynch en Mulholland Drive (2001) e Inland Empire (2006); y las referencias al body-horror temprano de David Cronenberg en Rabid (1977) y The Brood (1979), Nicolas Winding Refn (NWR, como una marca de alta costura) configura un thriller de horror a partir de una premisa bastante clara: el mundo de la moda funciona como un mecanismo perfecto que se devora a sí mismo para renovarse y continuar; es un proceso de regeneración cíclica.
The film offers a similar story to that told in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars.
As well as skimming off Argento, Mario Bava and Walerian Borowczyk, it’s a film that seemingly teems with a vast array of influences — Cat People, Heathers, Black Swan and Mulholland Drive come to mind— yet still feels like it it can only come from Refn.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Directed by David Lynch
influenced Only God Forgives (2013), The Neon Demon (2016), Drive (2011)
Visuals Themes
The shabby apartment house where Gosling's "driver" lives down the hall from the depressed yet sparkly Irene might be the Deep River apartment that serves as Isabella Rossellini's lair in Blue Velvet, and the secondary casting has a definite '80s flavor.
The superb Carey Mulligan plays Irene, a Denny's waitress who lives down the hall from Driver in their MacArthur Park-area apartment complex, which is decorated like Dorothy Vallens' place in "Blue Velvet."
More Blue Polyester than Blue Velvet.
Indeed, Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller has shades of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Dr ., and Lost Highway — but it’s the Chilean-French surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky that Refn refers to most directly, particularly in those moments that speak to the spiritual or imply otherworldliness.
Lynchian in its violent, sexually viable weirdness, like 1986's " Blue Velvet " transported to Thailand and given an extra splash of gore, the film enthralls and, on occasion, perplexes.
Pitched somewhere between Kubrick and Lynch, Only God Forgives possesses the same formal precision of A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut and the same what-the-hell-is-happening nightmarishness of Blue Velvet and Inland Empire.
All About Eve (1950)
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
influenced The Neon Demon (2016)
Themes Visuals Plot
Think "A Star Is Born" meets "All About Eve" and "The Valley of the Dolls" – except in this case, all the girls want to be models, not actresses.
Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn tosses “All About Eve” into the blender with alluring moodiness and bloody malice in this rapturous, sometimes ingeniously inane, tale of superficial nihilism and the obsessive pursuit of perfection.
The film’s most enigmatic image — a symbol consisting of three triangles on an otherwise black screen — may remind you of another shot of Jesse admiring herself in a three-way mirror, which in turn may take you all the way back to “All About Eve.”
Refn, working with playwrights Mary Laws and Polly Stenham to build the script from his story treatment, moves through a familiar string of plot points transposed from All About Eve and a host of newcomer starlet narratives.
Enduring as “All About Eve” has proven with its musings on stardom, there’s nothing about the jealousy-fueled ruthlessness on display that flat-out makes us gasp.
Perhaps they've seen All About Eve or Showgirls , and have figured out how these things usually end.
Le Samouraï (1967)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
influenced Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013)
Characters Visuals Themes
As played by Ryan Gosling , he is in the tradition of two iconic heroes of the 1960s: Clint Eastwood 's Man With No Name and Alain Delon in " Le Samourai ."
Think early Michael Mann (Thief) and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. Driver is a loner, suggesting Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï.
Certainly there could be no more familiar character to movie fans than the film’s protagonist, so iconic he’s reminiscent of Alain Delon’s Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic “Le Samourai” and as written by Hossein Amini from the James Sallis novel so self-consciously mythologized he doesn’t even have a name.
Like many of Refn’s prior protagonists, Gosling’s Driver is a lone wolf with a volatile streak, though in this case, he’s less an embodiment of barely contained masculine rage than a neo-noir cool customer (toothpick in mouth, puffy silver jacket embroidered with a giant red scorpion on its back) in the mold of Alain Delon’s Le Samouraï crook or James Caan’s titular Thief .
Owing a debt to the Zen-like simplicity and nocturnal L.A. ambience of Walter Hill’s The Driver —which, in turn, took a page from Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï —the film is little more than an exercise in style, but it’s dazzling and mythic, a testament to the fundamental appeal of fast cars, dangerous men, and tension that squeezes like a hand to the throat.
An obvious touchstone is Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 “Le samouraï,” a genre gangster film that was also, elegantly, an illustration of the chambers of a schizophrenic mind.