Mise-En-Scene: Drive and Sixteen Candles - Essay Example

This is mostly shown through their visual elements. These auteurs are very stylish and very distinct, making their movies memorable and equally arresting. Examples of these directors are the Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and Robert Zemeckis. Once you see one of their movies, you pick up a certain style and when you see their other movies, you are sure to find their signatures on the screen because of their unique visual style. In this paper, we attempt to examine the mise-en-scene of the movies Drive and Sixteen Candles.

Drive is a movie by Nicolas Winding Refn and stars Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. The film is character-driven and is reminiscent of the characters of Clint Eastwood in his films with Sergio Leone – The Man with No Name. The driver also reminds the viewer of the aloofness and coolness of the character in Le Samourai. In fact, the driver and the killer in Le Samourai live by the same “code”. Both of them are loners and are dark characters and that dark character of theirs turns out to be their most human attribute.

The film Drive is actually very rich in visual elements. The film is very visual, quite stylistic and is full of visual metaphors. From the props to the lighting to the costume to the music, the small details are all full of meaning. The driver, although quite violent, is very passionate. The aloofness and the distance, the silences and the glances, are all part of his mystique, part of his character. The film sends out the message that even if the driver is silent and “aloof”, that part of him is only trying to suppress most of the impulses that makes him vulnerable.

Like most brooding characters in literature, the driver is afraid of being vulnerable and hides in the shell that is cold and lonely. This is evident in the “placement” of the driver in most of the scenes. He is mostly apart from the rest; there is almost a safe distance between him and other actors in the scene. He is silent and communicates mostly non-verbally. The lighting of the movie is mostly quite dark, using very low key light (low-key lighting) to produce shadows. This is reminiscent of noirs films and this tells that the movie is also quite dark in nature; a bit tragic.

This is evident in the visual theme of the movie, wherein the director uses expensive cars as props. The car is his protective shell. With the car, the driver is in comfort zone, he feels protected and safe; he is confident. However, the car is not for everyone: they are expensive cars. He drives a Mustang GT, and several other stunt cars that are, well, expensive. One car that he drove, which was made for the racing circuit, costs $300,000. This means that the cars he drives are inaccessible to most people.

Only select people can have these cars, specifically those who can afford to and those who can steal cars. This is reflective of his character too: the only people who can be near him are those who pay him (the clients for his getaway driving job) or those people who “steal” his heart, namely Irene. He let himself be vulnerable for her, and for her family. The music also provides another dimension of the mise-en-scene in Drive. The music sounds like 80s pop music. The lyrics are so blunt (“