October 31, 2011, 10:21 Culture

“I can’t distinguish between the shades of meat and blood”

Interview with Nicolas Refn

Ekaterina Chen close

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This week sees the release of Drive, one of the biggest hits at the recent American Film Festival, a spectacular thriller directed by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling. His character is a Hollywood stuntman who works as a driver for robbers; his desire to live a measured life is hampered by the habits of a superhero - he is ready to risk his life for the sake of the weak and at a certain moment enters into combat with his own patrons from the mafia. Before the Russian premiere of Drive, Nicolas Winding Röfn told Park Kultury about working on the film.

— Nicholas, for their productions, especially in European auteur cinema, as a rule, directors choose actors. But here it turned out the other way around: Ryan Gosling chose you - tell us why this happened.

- In fact, this is quite common practice. Well, that is, she is not that unusual. American film star Steve McQueen, for example, once sent Peter Yates from Europe to film Bullitt, and Lee Marvin invited John Boorman . I'm not comparing myself to them, I'm just saying that this is not a unique case. And it’s easier to work this way if there is contact between the actor and the director before filming begins. When you two have agreed, everything is smooth, things move, and you are capable of anything.

— So you made the decision about what the film would be like together?

— Yes, we understood what exactly we wanted after the first meeting, while driving around Los Angeles. At first, Ryan must have thought my behavior was strange; I had just caught a cold, taken some medicine, and was taciturn. We were driving and listening to the radio, and suddenly a familiar song began to sound, I began to sing along, beat out the rhythm, and it dawned on me: this would be a film about a guy who cuts through empty night streets to the music, and the music frees him from negative emotions.

— When you came to work in Hollywood, weren’t you afraid of the dictates of the studio, weren’t you afraid of losing your independence as an author?

— Of course, before going, I heard a lot of terrible stories about the restrictions imposed on the director’s work here, warnings that I would be met with hostility. That I will be like in the desert. But I was lucky: if there was a desert here, I definitely found an oasis. After talking with Ryan, I felt like I was in the right place, that Drive needed to be produced and filmed here in Los Angeles. We had, if you like, intimacy on an emotional level. Ryan and I are like a married couple now.

— Was your relationship with the producers as excellent as with the leading actor?

— Producer Marc Platt is a very smart guy, he saw that we sang and showed full support. He simply said: do what you promised and you will be my hero. As far as I know, the Universal studio has been hatching an action project based on the first version of this script for six years. I changed a lot, our version became much closer to the original source, the book by James Sallis. In general, when I was young, I liked this, as a director, to arrogantly keep everything under control. Now it doesn't seem so important. The so-called “Hollywood” style of work also has a right to exist if the result is a movie that pleases the public.

— So your Hollywood experience is completely positive?
- What should I complain about? Everything was great. The main thing is that everything happened so quickly - I arrived in America in July 2010 and just started reworking the script, and in the fall filming had already taken place, and in May 2011 there was already a premiere in Cannes. Cool! We did everything at such a speed that I don’t know if I could do it again.

— Was it easy to find the intonation, style, and language of the film? Did you strive for realism or did you want to stay in the territory of fiction?

— Well, we definitely weren’t going to make a documentary. Although our cameraman did a wonderful job of capturing the backstreets of real Los Angeles. But we tried to get away from convention and too much stylization. Ideally, I would like to shoot Drive as a fairy tale. People are wrong to think, by the way, that fairy tales are written in “children’s” language - I assure you, this is not so: read fairy tales to children, you will see for yourself. So, our story has elements of a fairy tale. An innocent girl who needs protection and a hero who comes to her aid.

— Ryan Gosling’s character is wearing a jacket with a scorpion. Did you choose this symbol yourself?

- More like together. In my opinion, you should always give the actor the opportunity to choose his own costume. This is part of creating an image. Character on screen is built through details like these, so let the performer work on it. But we both probably associate Scorpio with the 1960s rock movie Scorpio Rising.

— Your main character is silent - it’s probably not easy in Hollywood to defend a character who is silent all the time? And how to direct silence?

“In my opinion, silence is the loudest thing in the world and the most frightening if used correctly.” Take Hitchcock, the films of the 1940s and 1950s. In those days they knew how to use the power of silence. As for directing with a minimum of dialogue, there are no difficulties when you work with like-minded people. I was lucky with the team. And with Ryan Gosling : when he’s on screen, you can watch him for hours. Few actors have this, except that some silent film stars possessed this magic. The director doesn’t have to do anything special, just set up the camera and shoot.

- Well, you did do something: there is quite a lot of violence in Drive. Why did you feel the need to bring it in?

— Many people do not separate physical and emotional violence. And these are different things. Yes, in my film people die, they are killed. But the main thing is not what happens before your eyes, but what you don’t see. What you just feel. I am colorblind, I cannot distinguish between red colors, shades of meat and blood. But I can feel these colors, work thanks to instinct. In films like Drive, scenes of violence are like wine for dinner, you can’t do without them, but you need them to evoke the right emotions. By the way, we were talking about fairy tales here - and there is a lot of horror and violence in them.

— Do you like Tarantino’s films?

- Yes, they are absolutely beautiful. It is important, by the way, to note that Tarantino grew up watching video - he proved that you can become a director and make movies just by watching enough movies.

— “Drive” has a remarkable soundtrack. Tell us how you worked on it and what kind of music you like.

“I grew up in the 1980s, and Ryan and I talked a lot about the previous decade. In general, everything interesting in music happened in the 1970s: punk was a more creative style than disco or what came after disco. As for the film, while we were driving, we first of all thought about what would be authentic to listen to in the car. More symphonic music than rock and roll. I didn't want rock and roll. And I didn’t want retro in its purest form. What was needed was... tuning - arrangements that would bring the good old music closer to the electronics and techno of the Internet era.