DRIVE - AUTHORSHIP & STYLE

Drive is a fast-paced action thriller film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, which tells the story of a rather mysterious Hollywood action stuntman, mechanic and skilled getaway driver who ends up placing himself into violent situations and the wrong kind of trouble when he helps out a neighbour. 

Although Drive may seem like any other action film to any spectator at a cinema, Drive runs in a very specific and unique style you don't often see in most action films and that is Nicolas Winding Refn's signature touch to the film.

The style in this film is really signature and unique in the film, this is simply because Nicolas Winding Refn  as from the very beginning of the film and throughout, there is noticeably  the huge contrast of colour and tones in every scene, for instance, when Ryan Gosling waits for the two burglars to get in the car at the beginning, there are literally no midtones in that scene, this means that most lighting seen in that scene would be predominantly orange and turquoise  or bluish green lighting and a slight green tint in the scene. 

This is an important device in the film as it creates a really unusual effect on the setting as it features both warm and cold colours. The bluish green lighting on the street lamps and buildings create this cold, dark and quite hostile outlook on the setting at night, whereas the orange is mostly lit on Ryan Gosling's (the driver)  face which still creates this mysterious feel about the setting.
Also, the use of just the orange and turquoise as lighting in the scene almost makes the scene unnatural and lightly surreal in a way that the colours of the streets are altered and transformed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX0H9moUGsI


Winding Refn's unique Authorship in the film is the outline of the story itself.

Winding Refn's intentions with this and many other of his screen works is that the character goes through a change in the story as it progresses. Furthermore, his intentions was was for this underground, criminal getaway driver becoming this sort of hero in the story still maintaining his mysterious nature who later on falls in love. However it does not work put and there is this sense of realisation that who he was in the first place was who he was destined to be and therefore turning back into what he was before, a getaway driver.
This is evident as in the film as Ryan Gosling's character starts off as a mechanic and getaway driver who is associated with robberies and crimes, then as we progress he meets this young woman named Irene, who Ryan's character ends up becoming fond of. Then, he gets caught up in a trade and violence

Nicolas Winding Refn also wanted for his style film to be fetish, the things that that he would like to see about particular things so in this film, its love. It was going to be a sort of love story in Los Angeles to not show complications of love but the innocence of it, but in order for the Driver in the film to protect that, he would need to justify the extreme violence later on in the story.

Nicolas Winding Refn had also limited the amount of information we would know about the driver in the film because he had preferred that in the film, the driver would become this really mysterious figure and was more of a tradition of a great american hero that would come to save a person's life with violence. 


Another point about Winding Refn's authorship is that Gosling's driver had until this moment seemed like a basically sympathetic, romantic guy – involved in crime of course, but who made a point of not carrying a gun.
Furthermore, Winding Refn's idea was for the film to be this sort of love story about a mysterious hero who saves the day on a low-profile status. Also, with the use of Gosling's driver having to not use any guns at all throughout the film, prevents the idea of a heroic love story being forgotten by spectators.

Nicolas Winding Refn also used scenes of ruthless and brutally violent scenes to almost show what extreme measures this "hero" has to go to in order to save the day.
This shows Gosling's Driver's justification in the story, and is evident where at one part of the film, a villain gets horrifically stomped to death on the head in an incautious location, with the body is airily exposed and  undisposed of. This had demonstrated how dark the Driver goes in order to have justice and save a lives of others so as violent Gosling's acts are, it always shows that his character has this side to him that's caring but however not presented in a very soft, emotional way and this was apart of Winding Refn's intentions in the film, to have this traditional american hero who is restricted in identity.